Zach LarkinsGREAT RACES - THE IDITAROD
I've never understood the fascination people have with NASCAR racing. I've tried to watch it but it seems to be nothing more than eye candy for race car wannabees. When I was a kid, we watched Daytona and the Indy, but basically all these races are the same. The idea is to stand on it and turn left. Big deal. Sure, going around the track at 150 - 200 MPH is pretty hair raising, but if the whole crowd is doing the same speed, so what? Unless someone screws up and blows a tire or an engine it's basically the same as you and I doing 5 MPH in that great commute we call ‘Rush Hour'.
I assume that people watch NASCAR in the hopes that a horrendous crash occurs. The same way some people will watch the fights in case a hockey game breaks out. I would like to think there are still challenges that pit man and machine or man and animal against the terrain without all the gore that accompanies the more well known or watched ‘sports'. One such challenge is the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, ‘The Last Great Race on Earth'.
You really can't compare this race to any other competitive event in the world. This is a race of over 1150 miles, where Mother Nature throws jagged mountain ranges, frozen river, dense forest, desolate tundra and miles of windswept coast at the mushers and their dog teams. Add to that temperatures far below zero, winds that can cause a complete loss of visibility, the hazards of overflow, long hours of darkness and treacherous climbs and side hills, and you have some idea of what it is all about. This race begins in Anchorage and runs to Nome, and men and women from all walks of life compete. Fishermen, lawyers, doctors, miners, artists, natives, Canadians, Swiss, French each with their own story, each with their own reasons for going the distance enter. The mushers come from Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Japan, Austria, Australia, Sweden and the Soviet Union as well as from about 20 different states in the USA.
In the early 1920's, settlers had come to Alaska following a gold strike. Once off the boats that brought them to coastal the towns of Seward and Knik, they travelled inland along a trail which today is known as The Iditarod Trail, one of the National Historic Trails, so designated by the Congress of the United States. The trail soon became the major "thoroughfare" through Alaska. Mail was carried across this trail, people used the it to get from place to place and supplies were transported via the Iditarod Trail. Priests, ministers and judges travelled between villages via dog team.
By 1910, the town of Iditarod, 629 trail miles west of the future site of Anchorage and half way to Nome, eclipsed Nome and Fairbanks to briefly become the largest city in Alaska with 10,000 inhabitants. It boasted several banks and hotels and even a newspaper, all supplied by regular sternwheeler service up the Innoko and Iditarod Rivers, tributaries of the Yukon River. During the rush, mail and supplies went in and gold came out, all via dog sled. In 1925, diphtheria threatened Nome and serum had to be brought in, again by the intrepid dog mushers and their faithful hard-driving dogs. The nearest serum was in Anchorage and the first thought, to fly it to Nome, was abandoned when the only pilot in the Territory considered capable of braving the unpredictable weather, Carl Ben Eielson, was found to be on a trip in the Lower 48 and was not available.
Instead, a Pony Express-type relay of dog teams was organized. Every village along the route offered its best team and driver for its leg to speed the serum toward Nome. The critical leg across the daunting Norton Sound ice from Shaktoolik to Golovin was taken by Leonhard Seppala, the territory's premier musher, and his lead dog Togo. Gunnar Kaasen drove the final two legs into Nome behind his lead dog Balto, through a blizzard with winds of up to 80 mph. Twenty mushers had covered almost 700 miles in little more than 127 hours (six days) in temperatures that rarely rose above 40° below zero and winds strong enough to blow over dogs and sleds.
A typical traveler on the Iditarod is a musher driving a team of twenty or more dogs pulling a massive freight sled capable of carrying half a ton or more. These mushers follow in the ancient traditions of Alaska Natives, who mastered the fine art of using dogs for winter transportation many centuries ago. The Malemiut Inupiat people of the Seward Peninsula developed a particularly hardy breed of sled dog that today bears their name, the Malamute.
Pound for pound, the sled dog is the most powerful draft animal on earth, and a team of twenty dogs averaging about 75 pounds each can easily match a team of horses weighing more than twice as much. Dogs are faster than horses over the long haul, capable of maintaining average speeds of eight to twelve miles an hour for hundreds of miles (including rest stops), and can exceed twenty miles an hour or more on shorter sprints. Better yet, dogs can be fed from the land with moose, fish, or caribou in the winter, while horses or oxen require expensive hay or grain.
Early mushers used a mixture of breeds, ranging from Native types such as the Malamute and Siberian husky to various domestic dogs imported from the Lower 48. Some mushers even used wolves. To promote Alaska statehood, an Alaskan musher drove a team of wolves all the way to the Chicago World's Fair in 1933. Dog teams hauled out the season's gold on the return trip to Knik. According to Ron Wendt in Hatcher Pass Gold, 2,600 pounds of gold arrived at Knik on December 10, 1911, hauled by four teams. In December of 1916, no less than 3,400 pounds of the precious metal came out behind 46 dogs.
The rules of the race lay out certain regulations which each musher must abide by. There are certain pieces of equipment each team must have - an arctic parka, a heavy sleeping bag, an ax, snowshoes, musher food, dog food and boots for each dog's feet to protect against cutting ice and hard packed snow injuries.
Joe Redington, Sr., co-founder of the classic is affectionately known as "Father of the Iditarod." Rick Swenson from Two Rivers, Alaska, is the only five time winner and the only musher to have entered 20 Iditarod races and never finished out of the top ten. Dick Mackey from Nenana beat Swenson by one second in 1978 to achieve the impossible photo finish after two weeks on the trail. Norman Vaughan, who at the age of 88, has finished the race four times and led an expedition to Antarctica in the winter of 93-94. Four time winner, Susan Butcher, was the first woman to ever place in the top 10. And Libby Riddles was the first woman to win the Iditarod in 1985.
This is clearly not a race you can watch from the sidelines. Unless you are in it, or in one of the villages it passes through, you're going to miss much of it. But it is available to follow on various internet sites and is truly one of the "Great Races".
I assume that people watch NASCAR in the hopes that a horrendous crash occurs. The same way some people will watch the fights in case a hockey game breaks out. I would like to think there are still challenges that pit man and machine or man and animal against the terrain without all the gore that accompanies the more well known or watched ‘sports'. One such challenge is the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, ‘The Last Great Race on Earth'.
You really can't compare this race to any other competitive event in the world. This is a race of over 1150 miles, where Mother Nature throws jagged mountain ranges, frozen river, dense forest, desolate tundra and miles of windswept coast at the mushers and their dog teams. Add to that temperatures far below zero, winds that can cause a complete loss of visibility, the hazards of overflow, long hours of darkness and treacherous climbs and side hills, and you have some idea of what it is all about. This race begins in Anchorage and runs to Nome, and men and women from all walks of life compete. Fishermen, lawyers, doctors, miners, artists, natives, Canadians, Swiss, French each with their own story, each with their own reasons for going the distance enter. The mushers come from Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Japan, Austria, Australia, Sweden and the Soviet Union as well as from about 20 different states in the USA.
In the early 1920's, settlers had come to Alaska following a gold strike. Once off the boats that brought them to coastal the towns of Seward and Knik, they travelled inland along a trail which today is known as The Iditarod Trail, one of the National Historic Trails, so designated by the Congress of the United States. The trail soon became the major "thoroughfare" through Alaska. Mail was carried across this trail, people used the it to get from place to place and supplies were transported via the Iditarod Trail. Priests, ministers and judges travelled between villages via dog team.
By 1910, the town of Iditarod, 629 trail miles west of the future site of Anchorage and half way to Nome, eclipsed Nome and Fairbanks to briefly become the largest city in Alaska with 10,000 inhabitants. It boasted several banks and hotels and even a newspaper, all supplied by regular sternwheeler service up the Innoko and Iditarod Rivers, tributaries of the Yukon River. During the rush, mail and supplies went in and gold came out, all via dog sled. In 1925, diphtheria threatened Nome and serum had to be brought in, again by the intrepid dog mushers and their faithful hard-driving dogs. The nearest serum was in Anchorage and the first thought, to fly it to Nome, was abandoned when the only pilot in the Territory considered capable of braving the unpredictable weather, Carl Ben Eielson, was found to be on a trip in the Lower 48 and was not available.
Instead, a Pony Express-type relay of dog teams was organized. Every village along the route offered its best team and driver for its leg to speed the serum toward Nome. The critical leg across the daunting Norton Sound ice from Shaktoolik to Golovin was taken by Leonhard Seppala, the territory's premier musher, and his lead dog Togo. Gunnar Kaasen drove the final two legs into Nome behind his lead dog Balto, through a blizzard with winds of up to 80 mph. Twenty mushers had covered almost 700 miles in little more than 127 hours (six days) in temperatures that rarely rose above 40° below zero and winds strong enough to blow over dogs and sleds.
A typical traveler on the Iditarod is a musher driving a team of twenty or more dogs pulling a massive freight sled capable of carrying half a ton or more. These mushers follow in the ancient traditions of Alaska Natives, who mastered the fine art of using dogs for winter transportation many centuries ago. The Malemiut Inupiat people of the Seward Peninsula developed a particularly hardy breed of sled dog that today bears their name, the Malamute.
Pound for pound, the sled dog is the most powerful draft animal on earth, and a team of twenty dogs averaging about 75 pounds each can easily match a team of horses weighing more than twice as much. Dogs are faster than horses over the long haul, capable of maintaining average speeds of eight to twelve miles an hour for hundreds of miles (including rest stops), and can exceed twenty miles an hour or more on shorter sprints. Better yet, dogs can be fed from the land with moose, fish, or caribou in the winter, while horses or oxen require expensive hay or grain.
Early mushers used a mixture of breeds, ranging from Native types such as the Malamute and Siberian husky to various domestic dogs imported from the Lower 48. Some mushers even used wolves. To promote Alaska statehood, an Alaskan musher drove a team of wolves all the way to the Chicago World's Fair in 1933. Dog teams hauled out the season's gold on the return trip to Knik. According to Ron Wendt in Hatcher Pass Gold, 2,600 pounds of gold arrived at Knik on December 10, 1911, hauled by four teams. In December of 1916, no less than 3,400 pounds of the precious metal came out behind 46 dogs.
The rules of the race lay out certain regulations which each musher must abide by. There are certain pieces of equipment each team must have - an arctic parka, a heavy sleeping bag, an ax, snowshoes, musher food, dog food and boots for each dog's feet to protect against cutting ice and hard packed snow injuries.
Joe Redington, Sr., co-founder of the classic is affectionately known as "Father of the Iditarod." Rick Swenson from Two Rivers, Alaska, is the only five time winner and the only musher to have entered 20 Iditarod races and never finished out of the top ten. Dick Mackey from Nenana beat Swenson by one second in 1978 to achieve the impossible photo finish after two weeks on the trail. Norman Vaughan, who at the age of 88, has finished the race four times and led an expedition to Antarctica in the winter of 93-94. Four time winner, Susan Butcher, was the first woman to ever place in the top 10. And Libby Riddles was the first woman to win the Iditarod in 1985.
This is clearly not a race you can watch from the sidelines. Unless you are in it, or in one of the villages it passes through, you're going to miss much of it. But it is available to follow on various internet sites and is truly one of the "Great Races".
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