March 15

On the Iditarod web site the trail from White Mountain to Safety is described as following:
This can be one of the most dangerous stretches on the race when the wind blows or a storm hits. This can make or break champions.
Checking the weather before leaving White Mountain is a must.
Mushers have nearly died within what would normally be a few hours easy run to Nome. Trail conditions in this leg can range from excellent to dreadful and usually include sually glare ice, overflow, drift snow, bare tundra, sand and exposed gravel on the road.

I think this describes it all very well. I didn't really have a storm with whiteout conditions, but it was blowing allright and sand hit me in the face and my sled was blown around on the glare ice patches - I found myself often besides or even in front of the dogs. In addition, since there was not much snow at all trail markers were obviously no present and if it wasn't for two other teams in front of me, I probably would have gotten terribly lost out there.

Once we got to Safety the wind calmed down and I told me dogs to "go home". They knew now the end was in sight and we picked up speed.
A few miles outside of Nome I also caught up with Rick Swenson again and chased him to the finish line. Vanilla wanted to pass him, but unfortunately Linus was tired and didn't really understand why we should pass this team in front of us.
It was exciting nevertheless.

It's difficult to describe what goes through your head when you see Nome and the finish line in front of you. I never really thought of it to be a huge accomplishment, but then I think about how long it took me to get there. It's not just 6 months of training - it took me many years to do this. So, I guess it's quite an accomplishment and I'm very happy I had the chance to do this.

Nome in sight