The starting line has been moved about 480 kilometers (300 miles) north to Fairbanks. Organizers say recent helicopter surveys of the Alaska Range near Willow, a small settlement 130 kilometers north of Anchorage, and the traditional starting point of the 1,000 mile long race, showed “snow conditions were worse in critical areas than in 2014 and therefore not safe enough for the upcoming race,” said the Iditarod Trail Committee in a statement.
The Weather Network reported on Fed. 12 that temperatures in Alaska have been rising twice as fast as the national average, increasing about 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years. Organizers of the race say the “ceremonial jaunt” is on schedule to take place on March 7 in Anchorage, but the official start of the race will be delayed until March 9 so that the dog teams and sleds can get to Fairbanks.
The route out of Fairbanks will be 19 miles shorter or 968 miles instead of the usual 987 miles long. There are 79 teams of 16 sled dogs and one human, signed up. The list of countries represented include the U.S.A, Norway, Canada, France, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. There are 26 female mushers in the race this year
For Iditarod followers, the weather at the various checkpoints along the course of the race can be viewed in real-time at the Iditarod Weather Center. On checking the temperatures today, Anchorage is experiencing temperature in the low 40’s through next Sunday while Fairbanks will average temperatures in the mid- to upper 20s to around 30 degrees F. during the same time period.
The Iditarod Trail and the “Great Race of Mercy”
Parts of the Iditarod trail have been used by native Alaskans for hundreds of years. But the trail reached its peak during the coal and gold mining periods of the 1880s and the mid-1920s. During these years, when winter snows made trails impassable, dog sleds were used to carry in mail and supplies to snow-bound communities in the north.
Up until the 1920s, roadhouses were built about every 15 to 30 miles, giving travelers respite from the weather. By the 1920s, bush pilots replaced dogsleds, and the roadhouses began to disappear. But dog sledding persisted, even making it through the heyday of the snowmobiles in the 1960s.
Dog sled racing has been a popular sport in Alaska since the start of the All-Alaska Sweepstakes (AAS) in 1908. This race was a total of 408 miles and ran from Nome to Candle and back. The AAS race continued up until the start of WWI in 1918.
The Iditarod dogsled race we know today traces its origins to the 1925 serum run to Nome. In the late summer of 1924, after the last supply ship had left, the only doctor in Nome, Curtis Welch, realized his 80,000 units of diphtheria antitoxin (from 1918) had expired. He ordered more from the health commissioner in Juneau, but the medicine never arrived. By January 1925, native children started coming down with diphtheria, having no resistance to the “white man’s disease,”
As the number of cases and deaths grew, Dr. Welch got off a radio telegram to towns surrounding Nome, and to the governor in Juneau, alerting people to the public health risk. Welch was most concerned with the 10,000 or more people in his area threatened with the disease because the mortality rate was right at 100 percent. In the end, the governor approved the use of a relay using sled dogs, running day and night to get the 20-pound canister of 1.1 million doses of diphtheria antitoxin to Nome.
The relay consisted of 20 mushers and 100 dogs, and amazingly, the canister arrived in the middle of Nome’s main street just five and a half days and 674 miles after it started out. The final stretch of the relay was handled by Norwegian musher Gunnar Kaasen and his lead dog Balto. Yes, this is the same dog made famous in books and in the 1995 animated movie by the same name.
