It was a good run, left from Willow around 9 am, river is in excellent condition, a great trail laid down with markers and groomed in areas.  Somewhere after Luce’s a Ski-doo comes flying by me and I was doing 65-70 mph, several miles later his partner comes by.  Got into Sweetna around 12 pm and found out it was Tyler and Aaron that passed us.  Headed over to Shell Lake and the swamp out back was flat with a few minor wind drift, taped the whole way across, groomed trail over to Shell Lake.  Visited with a friend that had just flown into to his cabin on Shell Lake, stopped by and said hi to Zoe, grabbed a little gas and took off for Rainy Pass.  I mentioned to Jerrod and Geoff that my last Rainy Pass trip started with leaving Shell Lake at 1:30 pm and returning at 2:30 am the next morning.  They laugh.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

We got up behind Shell Lake heading to Finger Lake and ran into Tyler and Aaron just a few miles short of Finger Lake, they had just spent 2-1/2 hour getting stuck and digging out, so they were headed back to Tyler’s house at the Butte which is where they started.  I thought damn, that’s a good run.  We went to Finger Lake and then headed back.  Just coming into Sweenta from Shell, we passed Palin/Davis, Tyson/Chad, another Ski Doo team heading out.  In Sweenta, Dixon/Wold had the cowling off of Dixon’s sled and he was on the Satellite phone asking someone if they put antifreeze in the sled and what kind, dooh.