February 10, 2003

• Iditarod

  Eighteen days from now the 2003 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race will
  begin on 4th Avenue (AKA “skidrow”) in Anchorage.  It is never an
  easy race, either for the organizers, the mushers, or the dogs. 
  This year’s bizarre warm weather has created new challenges.

  One of the things the world knows (or thinks it knows) about Alaska
  is that we have an annual dog sled race along the Iditarod Trail
  from Anchorage to Nome.  But the Iditarod Trail doesn’t go from
  Anchorage to Nome, and neither does the race; and as any
  musher or fan will tell you, it’s not a dog SLED race.  It’s the
  dogs (and their mushers) that do the running–it is a sled DOG
  race.

  The Iditarod National Historic Trail,
  administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, is a network
  of over 2,300 miles of trails, named after an Athabaskan village
  which became a gold rush boom town.  Part of the race
  traverses part of that system of trails.

  This year, the exact route of the race is as yet
  unknown.   The trail committee is looking for a suitable
  location for the restart (more on that “restart” business later),
  someplace where there is some snow.  One of my favorite local
  mushers, Martin Buser, had a wonderful, funny description of trail conditions in today’s Anchorage Daily News.

  When Joe Redington, Sr. came up with the idea for this long-distance
  race, he was inspired to tie it in with the heroic serum run that took
  diphtheria serum from Anchorage to the little town of Nome in the far
  north.  The diagnosis of diphtheria was made on January 21, 1925,
  by Dr. Curtis Welch.  He sent telegraph messages to Anchorage,
  Fairbanks, Juneau and Seward.  The only serum in the territory
  (this was long before Statehood) was 300,000 units in
  Anchorage…. 

  “At Anchorage, Dr. Beeson packed the serum in a cylinder, which he
  wrapped in an insulating quilt. The whole parcel was then tied up in
  canvas for further protection. The parcel left Anchorage by train on
  Monday, January 26, in charge of conductor Frank Knight of the Alaska
  Railroad. It was at 11 p.m. on Tuesday that the train reached Nenana
  and Knight turned over the parcel to the first driver, William “Wild
  Bill” Shannon.

  Shannon carried the serum 52 miles to Tolovana, where he handed it
  over to Dave Green. Green carried it 31 miles to Manley and handed it
  over to Johnny Folger. Folger went the 28 miles to Fish Lake. Sam
  Joseph picked it up there and carried it 67 miles to Tanana. Titus
  Nickoli carried it 34 miles to Kallands and Dave Corning carried it 24
  miles to Nine Mile. Edgar Kalland picked it up at Nine Mile and went 30
  miles to Kokrines and Harry Pitka carried it another 30 miles to Ruby.
  Billy McCarty carried it 28 miles to Whiskey Creek and turned it over
  to Edgar Nollner, who carried it to Galena. George Nollner
  carried  it from Galena to Bishop Mountain, 18 miles. Charlie
  Evans went the 30 miles to Nulato and Tommy Patsy went the next 36
  miles to Kaltag. At Kaltag, Jack Screw picked it up and took it 40
  miles to Old Woman. Victor Anagick carried it 34 miles to Unalakleet
  and Myles Gonangnan carried it 40 miles to Shaktoolik. Henry Ivanoff
  started from Shaktoolik to Golovin with the serum.

  Leonhard
  Seppala left Nome intending to rest at Nulato and return with the
  serum. But Seppala met Gonangnan at Shaktoolik where he took the serum
  and turned around, heading back for Nome. He carried the serum back
  over Norton Sound with the thermometer 30 degrees below zero. Seppala
  had to face into a merciless gale and in the darkness retraced his
  route across the uncertain ice. When Seppala turned the serum over to
  Charlie Olson in Golovin, after carrying it 91 miles, he and his team,
  including the famous lead dog, Togo, had traveled a total of 260 miles.

  Olson turned the serum over to Gunnar Kaasen, who took it the remaining 53 miles to Nome.”

  The rest of that story can be found here. 
  The recitation of those mushers’ names, the sections of the trail each
  covered and the distances, never fails to move me.  My eyes grow
  misty just as they do when I hear the Alaska Flag Song.  I know
  descendants of some of those men, and one of the original serum
  carriers is another of my personal Heroes of the Trail, along with
  Norman Vaughan, Martin Buser, Libby Riddles, Dee Dee Jonrowe, and Danger the Dog Yard Cat. 

  Leonhard Seppala, the pre-eminent hero of the Serum Run, was
  never happy about the fact that Balto, running in Kaasen’s team, got
  all the glory because he was in on the final leg of the run. 
  Seppala (photo below) said, “What bothers me the
  most, is the fact that Balto, that miserable dog, got the honor for
  Togo’s achievement. By doing so, Balto was known as ‘the best sled dog
  in Alaska’, even though he had never been on a winning team! I know,
  cause I owned and raised both ‘Balto and Togo.”
  Balto
  has a statue in Central Park in NYC.  His stuffed carcass is on
  display in a museum somewhere in the Lower 48.  Togo’s stuffed
  form, shown in the top photo above, along with photos of his musher,
  Leonhard Seppala (left), is on display in the Iditarod’s museum in
  Wasilla.  I think the lower shot, of a living Togo with his race
  trophies, looks better.

  Now for the promised explanation of “restart”:  The “start” of
  the race in Anchorage is ceremonial.  The night before, dump
  trucks haul snow from the city lots where it is dumped for storage
  after being plowed off the streets.  They spread it on 4th Avenue
  and the teams mush a few blocks for the cameras and the town
  crowd.  If memory serves, there have been a few years when there
  was enough snow to allow the mushers to drive their teams from there to
  Wasilla, old Joe Redington’s hometown, for the “restart”, the actual
  beginning of the race.  Usually, however, they just load the dogs
  back into the compartmented boxes on the backs of their trucks and haul
  them to Wasilla.

  What with global warming and all, in recent years, the restart was
  moved a little north and farther up this valley, to Willow, the town
  most people think is where we live:  Greyfox, Doug and I. 
  It’s our postal address, yes, but we live elsewhere, closer (as Raven
  flies, but not in road miles) to Talkeetna.  This year, the
  Restart is going to have to go even farther north and higher in
  elevation, just like those truckloads of Anchoraguans who go by here
  pulling the snowmachine trailers.

  The heading up top on this entry is a link to the trail
  committee’s website.  If you are not already bored and burned out
  on Iditarod, you’ll probably enjoy it.  Last year, I got a kick
  out of the webcams at some checkpoints and on Front Street in
  Nome.  I watched them set up the Burled Arch at the finish
  line and haul in their truckloads of snow.  They do plow the
  snow from city streets even in Nome, y’know?

  If you go to the Iditarod website, don’t miss   the race behind the race, my favorite page there.

  • 7:54 pm
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