IditaProject Forum

A rookie running a team from John Baker's kennel. I hesitate to call it a "puppy team" because in an interview with Laureli Kinneen Baker mentioned that she had some of his A team dogs. Impressed with what I have been seeing this race I decided to take a closer look and give her her own thread.

From Her ITC bio:

Katherine, 35, was born in Minnesota and lived there until completing high school at which point Katherine decided that it was time to pursue her dream of going to Alaska. She graduated from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks in 2008 with a degree in Renewable Energy Engineering. She had always dreamed of flying a bush plane, eating caribou, running dogs, and having a camp in the Brooks Range. She went to Kotzebue to handle dogs and has lived there off and on ever since Katherine began racing dogs in 2011 and soon realized that Iditarod was on the horizon. So she began competing in the races she needed to qualify for the 2014 Iditarod.

Katherine and John Baker raise and train over 50 dogs in Kotzebue, Alaska as they focus on having the best dog kennel in the world. Katherine and John also own a number of small businesses including Remote Solutions, LLC which allows them to professionally help meet the needs of rural Alaska. Katherine is an Ironman Triathlete and hopes to soon qualify for the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. She is also a proud parent of Amelia who is 10 years old.

Her web page http://www.akphoenixracing.blogspot.com/ Includes the story of her Kusko 300 run (she was 14th out of 24).

And a great interview with Laureli Kineen http://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2014/03/04/ ... n-nikolai/

I picked Abbie West as my ROTY but couldn't help notice that this was one rookie she couldn't seem to catch. I don't have a full timeline on her so I can't calculate her run/rest times but what I have seen is run times that are around the same as the lead pack and plenty of rest. I will track her after she comes off her 24.

She ran the stretch from Rohn to Nikolai on 1 runner! And still had one of the fastest times on that stretch! Her time of 10h 16m was 6th fastest. By comparason King was 11:50, Gatt was 10:57, Baker was 10:16, Ulsom was 10:00 and the fastest goes to the other candidate for ROTY Schroder 9:51.

With the emphasis the last few years on all the "young guns" pushing into the top 10 it is nice to see another woman come along showing some talent. I look forward to following her race.

I read her 411 before my TTP...impressed, especially with the Baker connection...silly me, I picked Alex running Jake's puppies..

I think we all would have picked her if we'd known how capable and together she has been.

(Instead I was blinded by Ralph's credentials. He had a rough start to the race, demolishing his sled - be interesting to see if he's able to pull it together again).

Katherine said during her restart vid that she's never gone past 300 miles (K300) and so that would be unknown territory.

Will be fun to follow her doswn the trail, thanks for highlighting her

elsietee wrote:(Instead I was blinded by Ralph's credentials. He had a rough start to the race, demolishing his sled - be interesting to see if he's able to pull it together again).

In addition Ralph is said to have bruised/broken ribs as well. Maybe his ambitions should be lowered to reaching Nome. Not a small thing this year

Oh yes - forgot about that (losing track of who did what to themselves).

Poor Ralph - a very rude introduction to the Iditarod. Hopefully it'll be a bit more plain sailing now that he's back into snow-trail.

Martin had flown his replacement sled from McGrath to Nikolai but then decided not to use it. After talking to Katherine he lent it to her so she could continue on (her sled was beyond repair). Yay Martin!

So Katherine is on Martin's sled.
Ralph is on Santos' sled.
Alex is on Jake's sled (?)
I think there's another one, just can't think who.

Ralph is on Karens sled

Is it Robert who is renting another musher's sled? Someone is renting a sled.