Day 4 Onwards to Eagle

Where in the world is Tom?

Dawson City Check-in - ALL OK.

Tom Simmat and Steve Pizzy checked into Dawson City at 11.45am (PDT). A
radio relay to the team started about 5kms before the check point, with
all reports that they were going well.

The team stopped for no more than about 10 minutes and were able to report
that they were both still in good condition after 3.5 days paddling. They
got away from their overnight camp in good time and were able to maintain
their lead again early in the morning.

Land-crew waiting in the rain

Steve and Tom arriving into Dawson

 Steve

 Tom getting ready to leave Dawson, Steve has already left

Team STARFACTOR took the lead in the late hours of the previous night as
Tom and Steve took on more drinking water and treated it with "puratabs".

Tom said that they had to "really put-in" to take back and increase their
lead before the mandatory 11pm stop for 6 hours.

Tom said "we didn't muck around, we stopped at 11pm (PDT) found a fishing
cabin by the river and bunked down for the night" up at 4.30am we were
back on the water at 5pm and hit our "spot tracker" and got going again.

The landcrew have been tracking the other teams and were able to spur Tom
and Steve on with a report that they had increased their lead on
STARFACTOR to about 10kms (approx 30 minutes) - This is really a tight
race, over 3 days of paddling there is still only about 50 minutes between
the top 3 teams and 2 more teams trailing not far behind that. In this
type of wilderness race anything can happen, you could hit a log jamb, go
down a longer stretch of the river, not take the shortest channel and
loose your lead.

Between Eagle and Circle Tom and Steve really have to focus on their
navigation, the local maps are absolute crap, this wilderness area has had
no real up-dates to maps created for the military back in the 70's.

Landcrew relieved to find that the highway has reopened and are able to drive over the Top Of The World Highway. Unfortunately the road to Eagle is still closed so staying in Tok tonight and tomorrow will decide if a visit to the boys at Circle is possible.

Land-crew will stay in Fairbanks tomorrow night and then drive to the end of the race to wait for the boys.

keep and eye on their progress at...


www.yukon1000.com/10y1k/resultsx.html
www.tomsimmat.blogspot.com

Cheers Kobi Simmat

 We managed to track down our friend Igor who has taken some fabulous photos of Tom in the past. Pictured here with Fiona watching Tom and Steve at the rivers edge in Dawson.
See Igor's website