Monday, March 15, 2010

Iditarod GPS Confusion

The Ionearth GPS tracking page for the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race has had it's share of problems so far, and now that the race has reached a critical juncture with the leaders in the vicinity of Koyuk, it is on the fritz again. I have been unable to access the page for 10 minutes now, but this is what I observed 30 minutes ago. Lance Mackey and Jeff King were parked in Koyuk taking a break. Hans Gatt had apparently blown through (or aroound?) Koyuk and was on his way to Elim. Back on the Norton bay Ice, Ken Anderson appeared to be headed in the wrong direction going far west of the indicated trail. In fact he was so far west that Ionearth was showing him in first place mistakenly thinking he was on the trail heading west out of Koyuk. It appeared that Hugh Neff was starting to veer in that direction. Back on insider, Jeff King was explaining how he almost got lost on the bay mistakenly headed for the wrong lights, and he struggled to find his way to Koyuk. Given this explanation, it is entirely possible that Gatt missed Koyuk as well. The official current standings show Mackey and King the only teams to check into Koyuk. I sure wish I could get the GPS page to work again so give me some clues as to what the heck is going on.

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