Iditarod Ceremonial Start

Meghan cheers as a Scottish team heads down the Cordova St. hill

On Saturday morning Meghan and I walked a few blocks from our house to the watch the Iditarod Ceremonial Start slide through town. The Ceremonial Start is a chance for people in Anchorage to see the all of the mushers and dog teams before they head out on the trail for the 1,000 mile race to Nome. The actual race starts several miles north of Anchorage in Willow. We chose to watch the start from a spot where mushers must control their teams as they descend a steep hill. With one hand on the sled and one hand waving to the crowd, the first 35 teams had no trouble navigating the hill. As the morning progressed minor adjustments were made to the course. Volunteers added snow to bare spots on at the top of the hill. Suddenly a dog team jumped out of the snowy course and onto the city street, barreling toward crowds of people lining the course to watch the teams from what they thought was a safe distance. As the team continued to race down the hill fans scurried out of the way. With a loud "haw" the musher was able to command his team back on course at the bottom of the hill avoiding a serious incident. To add to the excitement, a second team jumped the course and soon righted itself -- it was defending champion Lance Mackey.

Do you need a better reason to follow the Last Great Race?

Along the Iditarod Trail: Update

Matt Hayashida of Willow, Alaska drives his team along the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race trail near the Takotna, Alaska checkpoint (3/11).

Day five of mushing brings more news of crashes and scratches along the Iditarod. Norwegian Bjornar Anderson was seriously injured after a crash in a treacherous section of the trail known as the Buffalo Tunnels. Named for the Farewell Burn bison herd that winter in the area, the "Tunnels" sounds like the exact opposite of good dog sledding terrain. In some spots the trail narrows between spruce so thick that only a sled width will slide through. When not guarded by trees, the area opens up to an ice-covered field bumped with frozen tussocks. It would be hard enough to ski through this section let alone mush a sprinting dog team safely across. The Anchorage Daily News reports that Anderson lost control of his sled and was dragged through the unforgiving terrain bouncing from tussock to tree stump. Though the veteran musher thought his health might improve during the mandatory 24 hour rest period, he soon realized that after constant vomitting and other definite signs of internal injuries he would be forced to scratch from the race.
Experts say that after the mandatory 24 hour rest period the field begins to separate. The contenders pull ahead while the novices slide farther back. As for the Colorado mushers, looking at the current standings Tom Thurston is way back in position 54 and Kurt Reich is well behind him. And defending champ Lance Mackey? He is "right where he wants to be" averaging over four MPH with 16 dogs out and holding third place.
Oh, and for you gear heads, I found a blog about riding the Iditarod Trail on a mountain bike - check it out. Just goes to show that if you think that you are doing something hard core, there is someone in AK doing it more to the core.

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.