March means different things to different people, most of them positive. Pirate fans like spring training, when “hope springs eternal” and their team hasn’t yet been eliminated from the pennant race. Horticulturalists celebrate the return of daffodils and hyacinths after their winter dormancy. Basketball fans are thrilled by the NCAA tournament and their own “brackets”.
For me March is the time for my favorite sports event – the Iditarod. My interest in this wonderful race dates back nearly two decades to an equally wonderful trip my wife and I made to Alaska. Intermingled with many other enjoyable experiences on this trip were visits to five different sled-dog kennels, including meeting Susan Butcher and Jeff King.
It was hard for me to follow each year’s race until Internet access became widespread. The mainstream sports media ignore it completely; they are too busy speculating on the Steelers’ salary cap and the next NASCAR superstar. I think they are missing a bet by ignoring the Iditarod.
Fortunately Internet coverage has improved each year in the past decade and now serves as an acceptable alternative. The combination of on-site coverage at checkpoints and the GPS (Global Positioning System) location of each musher, being updated every minute, makes it possible for the fan to follow the race in nearly “real-time”.
Like all the other sports, Covid-19 forced the Iditarod’s sponsors to make some significant changes. The normal route of the race from Anchorage to Nome is about 975 miles long, commemorating the 1925 Serum Run which delivered diphtheria antitoxin in time to head off an epidemic. This year, primarily to protect the Native American (Inuit) villages through which the second half of the race normally passes from Covid-19, the route was dramatically changed.
Instead of starting at Willow, near Anchorage, the race began this year at Deshka Landing, five miles along the normal route and safely away from habitation. Iditarod, a gold mining ghost town, is the last checkpoint heading west before the native villages are encountered. This year the race’s sponsors decided to run the race that far, then turn around and retrace the route the mushers had already run. The combination of these changes reduced its length to about 850 miles.
This significant change generated considerable discussion among the analysts. The first half of the race includes a difficult climb to the top of the Alaska Range, then a steep run with many switchbacks down Dalzell Gorge on the west side of the Range. What would be encountered on the return trip, “up the down staircase”? How would the dogs react to turning around and retracing their steps instead of charging on to Nome?
Another major source of speculation centered around Dallas Seavey. He won the Iditarod four times between 2012 and 2016. Following the 2017 race four of his dogs tested positive for a banned substance. Although he never was specifically charged with a violation, Seavey’s response was to boycott the next three Iditarods before returning this year.
How competitive would he be after sitting out for three years? In two of those years he went to Norway to compete in the 800 mile Finnmarkslop, the Scandinavian version of the Iditarod, ending up with one third place finish and a scratch. Further complicating things was the fact that he was adding several dogs from his father’s team; father Mitch Seavey won the race with the all-time fastest time in 2017 while also becoming the oldest musher to win an Iditarod.
Prior to the race Ally Zirkle announced that this, her twentieth Iditarod, would be her final race. Easily everyone’s favorite musher, she had three straight second place finishes from 2012 to 2014, but had never taken a first. Was this to be her year?
When the race began, Ryan Redington immediately took the lead. He is one of six Redingtons who have competed successfully in this race. His grandfather, Joe Redington, is credited with being the driving force behind initiating the race in 1973. He was concerned about the decline of dogsledding and the breeding of sled-dogs in Alaska and suggested a long-distance race to commemorate this heritage.
As the pack navigated the Fairless Hills “Burn”, an area where the wind had removed much of the snow cover, Ally Zirkle’s sled hit an obstacle in the trail, throwing her off, giving her a concussion and a badly bruised shoulder. She rallied her team, mushed five miles to the next checkpoint, tended her dogs, and then announced she was scratching. A helicopter flew her to a hospital in Anchorage. Her fans were relieved to learn there was no permanent damage, still this was a difficult ending to her final race.
Alaska weather can be severe. One night at checkpoint Ophir there was chest-high snow and minus fifty-five degrees (probably wind chill) temperature.
The strategy of resting is key to success in this race. The mushers prefer to run for five or six hours, then rest for three or four. In addition, they are required to take two eight hour rests and one twenty-four hour long one at checkpoints. The voluntary rests may be taken at checkpoints or camping out along the trail. Some mushers think the distractions at checkpoints are more detrimental than the minor amenities available.
The voluntary rest stops primarily benefit the dogs. Once the team stops, the musher then spreads straw for their beds, heats water (actually melts snow to produce water), feeds the dogs, massages their paws, and nuzzles each one lovingly before putting them to bed. The musher then tries to catch a catnap before waking up the team and getting back on the trail.
As a result the race eventually resembles a leapfrog event. The front-runner stops to take a rest and a few hours later several pursuers charge past him, only to experience the same fate when their turn to rest comes. This year the leapfrog phenomenon involved Redington, Dallas Seavey, Aaron Burmeister, and Brent Sass.
The winner of a leapfrog contest, obviously, is the competitor whose final leap reaches the finish line. After the fact, the analysts explained that Seavey’s strategy had put him in this position. He had selected his rest stops carefully so he could be the first to reach Skwentna, the final checkpoint an hour before his nearest pursuer, Burmeister. Skwentna was the mandatory final eight-hour rest stop; the sixty-seven miles from there to the finish line was a milk run, which he easily navigated.
Thus Dallas Seavey, at age 33, won his fifth Iditarod, tying Rick Swenson for the most victories. At his age, he could easily win five more.
Second place went to Aaron Burmeister, in his twentieth try. He is a native of Nome; turning around at Iditarod and heading back to Deshka Landing must have been a surprise to his team. His previous best finish was a third place in 2015.
This year’s third place went to Sass, bettering his fourth place the previous year. Unlike most of the mushers who live close to civilization, Brent’s kennel is in “the bush”, in Eureka, near the Yukon River. His team is trained for rough going; the pundits suspect they would have been very competitive had this race gone the normal route, to Nome.
A “feel-good” story was that of Dr. Larry Daugherty; his day job is as a radiation oncologist. At Iditarod he delivered Covid-19 vaccine to the mayor of Shageluk to be distributed to the native villages.
Sixty-two year old Martin Buser has run the Iditarod thirty-eight times and finished thirty-eight times, including four first place finishes. This year his frost-bitten hands lost their circulation, forcing him to change his strategy. Instead of forging on as fast as possible, he elected to stay close to other teams, in case he couldn’t properly care for his dogs.
Each of the mushers begins the race with fourteen dogs. If a dog becomes ill or shows questionable symptoms, it can be left at a checkpoint and airlifted back to Anchorage. Most of the top finishers ended the race with ten dogs. Sass and Rookie of the Year Chad Stoddard (twenty-third place) hit the finish line with thirteen. Redington was at the other extreme, with a team of six.
The Iditarod is criticized severely each year by PETA because of presumed abuse of the dogs. This is certainly a reasonable attitude for an organization that promotes a vegan diet, but to most of the rest of us their criticism is unfounded. Anyone who has a chance to observe the interplay between the mushers and the canine athletes must conclude that this is the converse of abuse. One could easily assume that these dogs have a much better life than the typical house-bound pets the rest of us have.
An interesting tradition is that of the Red Lantern. In the bush, the roadhouses leave a red lantern burning as long as they expect mushers to arrive, to help them find their destination late at night. When the Iditarod begins, a red lantern is lit at the finish line. The final musher to come in is given the honor of extinguishing it and is crowned “Red Lantern Finisher”.
This year Dakota Schlosser left Skwentna in last place, two minutes behind Victoria Hardwick. Nine and a half hours later they approached the finish line neck-and-neck. At the last second Schlosser pulled ahead, besting Hardwick by two seconds! A great effort to avoid coming in last – or was he being a gentleman and allowing her to win her second Red Lantern?
Actually Victoria was nursing a badly damaged sled. She hit a tree in the Farewell Hills and limped into the next checkpoint where a group of volunteers patched her sled with ski poles and duct tape. The mushers are allowed to trade out sleds at checkpoints; many of them have spare sleds flown to checkpoints, just in case.
An important part of the impressive volunteer effort required to put on a race of this magnitude, mostly in the wilderness, is the Iditarod Air Force. This year two dozen pilots brought their own planes, mostly Cessna 180s, and flew hundreds of missions delivering supplies and people to the remote checkpoints. Included were drop-bags of food for dogs and their handlers, bales of straw to bed down the canine athletes, and fuel for the portable cookers each musher carries.
Time for me to start counting down the months till Iditarod 2022! I hope it is able to get back to the Nome run.