About 15 minutes ago at 958 AM AKT, Trent and the team checked in and out of Finger Lake at race mile 123 (112 if you back out the 11 miles they include from Ceremonial Start).
He checked in and out with all 16 team members. I would have to call this great news. The Leaderboard at the moment shows Trent jumping up to 16th place. Now this will not last, but it is a good watermark that his plan is going very well. The tracker now shows him a couple of miles out. I suspect he loaded straw at Finger Lake and will stop to camp any minute now.
Remember Trent camped just short of Skwentna last night. Look at the standings carefully of the teams of Petit, Ally, Kelly Maxiner, Dallas, Jason Mackay, Ketil Reitan, Hugh Neff, Mitch Seavey, Ray Reddington, and Jeff King. All of those teams also checked in and out of Skwentna so the Time Enroute is "apples to apples" in terms of what each team covered the 40 miles from Skentna to Finger Lake.
Trent and the youngsters did the leg in 4 hours 45 minutes which is similar to everyone except Nic Petit who is on a "hare strategy". I wouldn't look for Trent to be fast, but running that leg in same conditions, in a similar time, to the above set of mushers, with all 16 dogs is indeed good news!
A bunch of folks will pass Trent as the team rests now. Expect the team to nap until 4PM AKT and get up and go until near Rohn tonight. Tonight will be the Dalzell Gorge and the steps and real "Grinch down the Mountain" part of the course that left such carnage back in 2014.
