Iditarod 36 – Born to Run . . .

It’s that time again that I still love each year when men and women with their beloved dogs take to the trail in “The Last Great Race”. Thing have been totally crazy at work lately biding on the project for the coming construction season. It has been a grueling time of deadlines, planning, schedules, and getting it done. I need a break and Iditarod weekend came at a much needed time.

The first Saturday in March each year is the ceremonial start and this year is the 36th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. My Saturday started off much like most other weekends with our group breakfast at a local eatery. I tired getting my friend Scott to go see the start of the race again this year but to no avail. He has lived in Alaska all his life and does not view the annual running of the dogs with the same enthusiasm that I do. I still marvel that those who choose to runs dogs eleven hundred miles across the untamed landscape that is Interior Alaska in conditions that most of us could not even begin to imagine grows in size each year.

My brother and father in law finished our breakfast and headed downtown along with thousands of other people who lined Fourth Avenue and along the 11-mile route which winds through the cities trail system to finish at the Campbell Airstrip on Saturday. A record 96 Iditarod mushers started this year for their chance of a lifetime’s winter journey across the wildest reaches of Alaska.

With a biting 20 mph wind coming off Cook Inlet and funneling into the snowy streets of downtown Anchorage, people packed close together at the start line on the corner of Fourth and D Street, seeking protection from the wind. Those who braved the below-zero wind-chill, strolling the side streets that connect to Fourth Avenue and other wind- ravished sections, gave spectators a feel of what mushers will surely face on the 1,100-mile race to Nome.

There are plenty of first time ‘rookie’ mushers who must think it somewhat strange to start the race within the confines of the city . . . concrete buildings on every corner . . . glass covered store fronts reflecting their team running by . . . and the traffic that comes with another chance to party after a long winter. Anchorage has all the congestion and noise of a smaller city but after today’s restart in Willow the scenery will change dramatically.

Gone are the partiers yelling to wish them luck or giving them a wave as the dog teams run by. No cars waiting along the closed streets as the procession passes. Out there . . . in the vastness that is Alaska wait an overwhelming emptiness and great . . . white snowy silence.

It will not take the leaders of this 1,100-mile race heading to Nome very long to reach it. By nightfall they will be slipping beyond the last of the hearty partiers who venture out on snowmachines to cheer on dog teams trotting down the frozen Susitna River toward the turn north at the confluence with the Yentna River.

For the mushers of some Iditarod teams, all focus will shift quickly from the hubbub of Anchorage's ceremonial start to the demands and discipline required to win The Last Great Race. For most, though, there will be simply the total immersion into an earlier, more romantic world . . . before our automobiles & computers conditioned us all to live life in a constant hurry even when there's nowhere to go. Behind a dog team, there is no hurry. You can only go as fast as the dogs want to go, and for most people in this quote-unquote "race,'' that's not all that fast.

For the next two weeks for most of the competitors there will be only occasional contacts with what we consider civilization . . . a cluster of people outside the Yentna Station Roadhouse in the twilight . . . a swarm of airplanes circling the airstrip at the community of Skwentna on Monday . . . a another buzz of small planes at the Finger Lake checkpoint 45 miles along the trail past Skwentna. Civilization fades away as the cold, snow, and the beauty of the Aurora takes over during the long hours between check points and the occasional rest stops for the dogs, most who would rather keep going which is to say giving the musher a small break after tending to all his dogs.

Now we wait for “postcards” from the trail giving us the location of our favorites. Good luck to all in the starting field of Iditarod 36 as we wish you God speed for a safe and injury free run to the Bering Sea and those burled arches in Nome.

Ice