Winter Snow Warning for the Susitna Valley

Well the race goes on. Chelsea left Yentna around 4 this morning and passed the Eagle Song Checkpoint at 6:53, in 5th place. She is now in 4th place and is ahead of all the other girls! We are in the middle of a huge snow storm/blizzard. We got about 1 foot of snow overnight and it is still snowing. So it is going to be slow going. Most of the teams are doing 6 to 8 mph instead of 9 to 11. The heavy snow is good news for Chelsea if she can hang in there. She has big strong dogs built for this kind of weather. The lead team (Seavey, 3rd generation of mushers) has smaller faster dogs made for hard fast trails. The other problem will be seeing the trail markers. If she stays behind the leaders, and they go the right way she should be OK. She also needs to watch out for moose. There are support snowmachiners out there, but since the snow is so deep, the moose don't like to get off the trail. All of the mushers had to spend last night camped out at the checkpoint, so she was in a sleeping bag in a bivy all night. Chelsea has been up on the sled for 4 hours with a good 6 or more hours to go. I know how tired she must be, but hopefully she can hang in there!