Along the Iditarod Trail

Defending Iditarod champion Lance Mackey departs the Rainy Pass checkpoint (3/9).

It’s the third day of mushing on the Iditarod Trail and I can’t help but to get caught up in the excitement of the race. The event is a big deal throughout the state. Although Kodiak is more than a thousand miles from the finish line in Nome, our local public radio station, KMXT, broadcasts race updates every morning and afternoon. Born from a diphtheria epidemic, the Iditarod Sled Dog Race signifies a compelling moment in Alaskan history. On February 2^nd 1925 a sled dog team, part of a relay that began in Anchorage, delivered diphtheria serum to Nome. Diphtheria, a contagious respiratory tract illness, took 14,000 lives in the U.S. during the 1920s. In Nome alone nearly 10,000 individuals were threatened by the 1925 outbreak. Earlier, in 1918 a Spanish flu epidemic killed 50% of the Native Alaskan population in Nome. The expected mortality rate of the diphtheria outbreak was estimated near 100%. Winter ice had blocked all shipping traffic to Nome and the board of health rejected a proposal by an Alaskan delegate to fly the necessary antitoxin to Nome. William Fendtriss “Wrong Foot” Thompson, publisher of the Daily Fairbanks News-Miner wrote several scathing editorials about the decision not to fly the serum from Fairbanks to Nome. As the illness spread members of the federal government proposed a second plan to fly serum to Nome from Seattle. The Navy, pilots and Governor Bone rejected the flight plan. For those suffering in Nome the only hope was a relay team of sled dogs and mushers who would brave the 1,000 mile slide across frozen tundra. The -40º temperatures and gale force winds that dropped the mercury to -85º afflicted mushers and sled dogs alike with severe frostbite. Many dogs did not survive their leg of the relay. Through sheer determination the dog sled teams rushed the diphtheria serum to Nome effectively saving the population from a larger epidemic.
Today dogs and mushers race toward Nome for personal glory, though hazards remain. A rookie musher and her team crashed early this morning at a precarious spot on the Iditarod Trail. Read the Anchorage Daily News account of the crash, ensuing bottleneck, and rescue here.
Who's your musher? One might ask. While it's easy to root for a proven champion like Lance Mackey who has amassed a small fortune with his Iditarod winnings, I have to pull for the two Colorado mushers - Kurt Reich from Divide and Tom Thurston from Oak Creek.