Images Of & Insights Into the Iditarod Start in Anchorage

Iditarod, “Alaska’s Super Bowl” highlights early March in  its largest city

Some people head for the Sunbelt like migrating birds. They boast that they “never have to shovel snow” as if it were some personal accomplishment. Others (like me) embrace winter, a truly glorious season when snow and ice become playgrounds. Anchorage in summer is high season for tourists — 300,000 or so cruise passengers, road trippers heading down to the Kenai or up into the interior, and anglers, rafters, climbers and others for whom Anchorage is the port of entry. But winter is for Alaskans and lucky visitors who come share the beauty, the activities and the very Alaska-ness of the place that appeals to some of us from “outside.”

I am writing this post from SeaTac International Airport, using free WiFi and an hour to post a few pictures from  the Iditarod ceremonial start, which is the best known annual event on the streets of downtown Anchorage. Locals and those of us who follow the race every year know the names of the top mushers and even some of their dogs — and we know their stories of fortitude, courage and wilderness smarts — and luck, bad or good, in previous races.

A Bit About the Iditarod

As I sit at SeaTac, the restart of Iditarod – “The Last Great Race on Earth” — is taking place in Willow, Alaska, and that’s when the real race begins. I wish I were there and someday, I’d love to be in Nome at the end, but here are a few pictures from yesterday’s ceremonial start. It is a street party for the media and for spectators. The Iditarod captivates me; click here for a primer about the race.

Carolyn Muegge Vaughan provided some insights. She knows what she is talking about. She has run three Iditarods and her late husband, the legendary Norman Vaughan, ran 13 including his last finish at age 84 . She says that many mushers far prefer rural Alaska and long, snowy trails to city streets and quietly ”hate” the start in the city, but they know the ceremonial start has to be. They get it over with before heading out on the 1,050-mile trail alone with their dog teams, heading north to Nome.  Each musher starts with 16 dogs and must finish with at least six.  An injured or exhausted dog is dropped at one of the two dozen checkpoints, examined by a volunteer vet and flown back to Anchorage. There, the dogs literally go to jail, where inmates care for them until a dog handler from their kennel picks them up.

Dog food and straw for bedding the dogs down are cached along the route. Even when the dogs rest, the musher needs to prepare food and check each dog’s four paws, fit them with new trail booties, repair the sled if anything has broken and undertake other chores. They sleep very little.  There are also requirements for what each musher needs to take on the trail, includimg  food for him/herself  and the dogs, a backcountry stove and other emergency supplies.  

Iditarod Ceremonial Start

More than 60 mushers and their 12-dog teams form up and depart at two-minute intervals for a short, 11-mile run out of the city. They add four dogs for a total of 16 at the restart the following day. Some dog teams are noisy, barking, howling and jumping in anticipation of the race, tails wagging at the prospect of the trail. Other teams are quiet, as if a Zen zone before a big race. These dogs are born to run and trained to pull loads. They love temperatures around zero. Even as the mushers and the dog handlers are at the start line and the 30-second countdown begins, each musher goes up the line — eye-balling each harness once more, talking to the dogs and patting most of them. And the dogs respond to “their” human.  The handlers unhook the dogs from the “holding” line, and the mushers step onto the sled runners only in the last few seconds before the “Go” signal. Then, they’re off! Here are just a few grab shots I managed:

A few dogs have personalized kennels on the back of mushers' trucks.

A bag of Distance Dog Food, developed by Wyoming musher and Iditarod veteran, Billy Snodgrass, sits behind a competitor's truck. Did Snodgrass donate it or did the musher buy it? Who knows? In contrast to other far less demanding sports, the Iditarod's commercialism is restrained.

Clad in her signature hot pink parka is DeeDee Jonrowe. This cancer survivor, perpetual top finisher, hopes the be the first into Nome in the 39th annual Iditarod. To do so, she'd have to best Lance Mackey, also a cancer survivor and winner of a record four consecutive Iditarods.

These kilt-clad laddies work with Scotland's Wattie McDonald. The temperature hovered around zero, but there was no wind.

Teams line up on the lettered streets and are directed onto 4th Avenue to the start line. On the trail, it's each musher for him- or herself, but in Anchorage, dog handlers keep each rarin'-to-go team in check till it's time to take off.

As the biggest annual event in Alaska, the Iditarod is the focus of media attention -- especially the easy-to-cover first day.

The teams take off at 2-minute intervals, with an Iditarider is in each sled and a second emergency sled towed behind in case of a problem on city streets, which are unfamiliar to reared-in-the-bush dogs.

Hello, Dolly! Iditariders are paying passengers on the start day's 11-mile run out of Anchorage. "Dolly," dressed like a Gold Rush era madam, is the most elaborately costumed.

View down to snow-covered 4th Avenue from the 14th floor of the Hilton Hotel.

And for Your Own Taste of the Last Great Race

If you get to Anchorage, summer or winter, take at least half an hour to visit the Bear and Raven Adventure Theater, which shows a wonderful film about the origins and heritage of the Iditarod. The inspiration was the famous “serum run” of 1925. Dipthteria had broken out in Nome (three children had already died), so serum to innoculate the other villagers was desperately needed. There were airplanes in Alaksa by then, but open-cockpit biplanes were no way to transport serum to the North in winter.

Serum was put on the train in Anchorage to Fairbanks and then taken to Nome by a musher relay in time for the local doctor to save many more lives. The annual Norman Vaughan ’25 Serum Run from Nanana, outside of Fairbanks, to Nome.  commemorates this feat. In the film “The Amazing Trail,” a Native elder narrates historic footage. It is moving because he might not have survived without the life-saving serum. Then in a lecer multi-media presentation, Noman Vaughan himself sits next to the screen and talks about Alaska and the race. Five years after he died just shy of his 100th birthday, Carolyn still got bit choked up  and had a tear in her eye seeing the program, even though she had seen it often before. I had the privilege of meeting the Vaughans on a previous trip to Anchorage and before that at Mountainfilm in Telluride, and I too got a lump in my throat  at the appearance of her late, great husband.