Skwentna - Finger Lake
Start/Finish
Checkpoint
Dogdrop
The mushers have to plan on four to six hours for the run to Finger Lake. Their next food drop after Skwentna will be Rainy Pass (another four or five hours past Finger Lake). They will also want to take a rest during the heat of the day. Most people combine the two and stay the afternoon at Finger Lake. They have to take enough food with them from Skwentna to keep the dogs happy. (Note: Many of the front-runners will quick-stop through Skwentna and then camp for a few hours on the trail between Skwentna and Finger Lake. Then they'll blow through Finger Lake well by dawn on Monday enroute to Rainy Pass.)
It's uphill most of the way to Finger Lake, but the trail isn't overly tough. The trail leaves Skwentna southbound on the Skwentna River, cuts off the left bank to parallel the river in a swamp for eight miles, then swings west to cross the river at the site of the old Skwentna Roadhouse about ten miles out. It then climbs up into the heavily wooded Shell Hills for a mile and a half, down through open swamps and wooded areas to cross Shell Creek after another mile and a half, then on for another three miles across small lakes, swamps, and woods to Onestone Lake, where you're about 25 miles from Finger Lake. After two-mile-long Onestone Lake, the trail works west along open swamps and meadows, through occasional treelines, and across a few lakes, steadily climbing to Finger Lake.
One caution: In the past few years this stretch of trail has seen vastly increased snowmachine use, including the hugely expanded Iron Dog snowmachine race a couple of weeks before the Iditarod. Beginning in 1998, the Iron Dog sent more than 100 racing machines with heavy-duty tracks along the trail, and they made no attempt to repair the trail after they went over it. Much of the trail from Skwentna through Finger Lake and on to Rainy Pass was reduced to an endless series of huge moguls, big ruts, bare uphills where the snowmachines spun out trying to climb up, and generally terrible trail conditions. This may turn into a miserable run, and you might have to take your time to avoid breaking your sled or injuring your dogs.
