Pandemic forces route change, other precautions for Iditarod
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Traveling across the rugged, unforgiving and roadless Alaska terrain is already hard enough, but whatever comforts mushers previously had in the world’s most famous sled dog race will be cast aside this year due to the pandemic.
In years past, mushers would stop in any number of 24 villages that serve as checkpoints, where they could get a hot meal, maybe a shower and sleep — albeit “cheek to jowl” — in a warm building before getting back to the nearly 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
When the race starts today north of Anchorage, they will spend the next week or so mostly camping in tents outside towns, and the only source of warmth — for comfort or to heat up frozen food and water — will come from their camp cookers.
“It’s a little bit old school,” said Iditarod CEO Rob Urbach.
This year’s Iditarod will be marked by pandemic precautions, a route change, no spectators, the smallest field of competitors in decades, the return of one former champion and the swan song of a fan favorite, all against the backdrop of pressure on the race and sponsors by an animal rights group.
The most noticeable change this year will be no spectators. The fanfriendly ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage, which draws thousands of people, has been canceled, and the actual start in Willow of the race is being moved to a boat dock 7 miles out to help cutdown on fans who would normally attend the race start just off a main highway. Urbach is encouraging fans to watch the race start and finish live on TV or on the Internet.
The route has also been shortened to 860 miles. For the first time in the race’s 49-year history, the finish line will not be in Nome.
Instead, mushers will go from Willow to the mining ghost towns of Iditarod and Flat, and then back to Willow for the finish. This, Urbach notes, was the original vision of the race co-founder, the late Joe Redington.
Howard Farley, 88, of Nome remembers that well. He disagreed with it in the early 1970s when Redington proposed it, and he’s against it now.
He said he told Redington before the first Iditarod in 1973: “There’s nobody in Iditarod. It’s a ghost town. There’s nobody there to clap. I said, ‘Just bring it to Nome.’”
The Iditarod could have easily and safely held the finish in Nome again this year, too, he said.
“It just makes me sad that all of our work and all of our prayers down through the years have come to this,” Farley said.
Since the mushers will have to double back to Willow for the finish, they will go over the Alaska Range twice. Mushers will have to navigate the dangerous Dalzell Gorge and the Happy River Steps, or a series of steep switchbacks that routinely leave competitors bruised and sleds broken.