I had a brief moment of panic this evening
when I thought I had completely filled up my 40 GB PicturePorter with four days left to go out here...but then I realized that I forgot to reformat the card last night after I downloaded yesterday's shots, so I had duplicates. Whew! Kind of a hassle deleting about 800 pictures one by one, but at least I can keep on shooting. 
We've been having horizontal snow and wind, but the pics look cool ... like the Arctic, appropriately enough.
I can't wait to get home and start sorting these out. We've had so much fun, and I'm very pleased. We have three more teams out on the trail. One should be in tonight around midnight, the other two probably 4:30 or so in the a.m. I haven't missed any.
Tomorrow is the banquet and then we have three days for just hanging out. Tuesday night is supposed to be good for auroras, so I'm hoping it's clear and not windy. I think I'm going to try to get them with the fisheye for something different.
So that's the update.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It sounds pretty exciting...
Good luck getting the auroras. I was majorly bummed at not seeing any in Iceland...
I don't recall whether anyone came in with the full 16 this year, but there have been some with 15. Dogs are dropped for a lot of different reasons, not always because they're having any problems. Some mushers like to finish the race with fewer dogs so they don't have so many to booty up at the last few checkpoints, or they may want to keep their faster dogs for the sprint to the finish. There's a lot of strategery involved. . The dropped dogs are flown back to Anchorage where they're cared for by the women at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center, who really devote a lot of attention. Good for everyone involved.
The Russian had some gorgeous dogs. They are a special breed of Siberians; I think they're called Chukchi Siberians. Their fur was very thick, almost like wool, and they had beautiful faces, some with blue eyes. I got some nice shots. The Insider videographer told us that Vladimir Putin had a videography team following him, but they got weathered in somewhere so the Iditarod Insiders took over the coverage. We were really surprised to know that it was such a big deal over there in Russia. The musher spoke no English but there were translators. Anyway, it was kind of cool, and the light was perfect with the sun shining through the blowing snow.
Yes, Volek late last night. He was cool. He was running a team of Martin Buser's young dogs; none of them were over two years old, and, boy, were they frisky. They looked like they could have run another 500 miles.
Sorry for the confusion ... I didn't get much sleep last night. Volek was around midnight, Bob Chluthbak (sp) around 4:30 and then we stayed up because we thought the last girl was coming in soon, but here it is, 10:40, and she's still not here. They've checked on her, she's okay, but she was probably waiting until daylight to come in since she's a rookie and didn't know the trail. If she isn't here before the banquet, we'll miss her arrival, but that can't be helped. 
Ed. Chlupach. The last musher left Safety at 10:21 so she should be here in time for the banquet. I bet she'll be hungry.
and least you didn't drop the camera which is what I was afraid happened reading just the title. Patiently waiting until you get home and get them all posted. I might envy you being there but not all the work once you get home. Sorting is work at time.
