Date: February 28, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Seavey joins tail-dragger set, aims for second victory
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — I never thought driving an Iditarod-caliber dog team could be so easy, until I hitched up nine of Mitch Seavey’s dogs and headed down his home trails for my first run on the back of a tail-dragger sled.
From my seat – a padded fold-down chair bolted to a plastic tote – I had to convince myself it was OK to let go of the handlebar. I did. Then I reached into the handlebar bag, pulled out a thermos with one hand, and, holding the cup in the other, poured myself a cup of strong Irish breakfast tea. This was easy. Snowflakes pelted my face on the straight, flat trail as I lazily watched black spruce trees pass by at 9 mph and sipped the hot drink. Seavey piloted a 10-dog team just up ahead. “So this is what it’s like to drive a tail-dragger sled,” I thought. “I’m going to have to build one of these.”
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Date: February 28, 2007 at 10:44 am
Trail Conditions At Issue
Iditarod Trail Committee Race Officials met with key stakeholders yesterday and made the determination that the trail to Eagle River (Checkpoint #1) was not safe enough for the 83 mushers entered in IDITAROD XXV to traverse. Officials waited until the very last minute to allow for conditions on the ground to change. Iditarod Trail Committee Race Marshall Mark Nordman said that several portions of the trail were in good condition, but a number of areas were just not safe enough for the field. The field of mushers will end their trek through Anchorage at the Bureau of Land Management Offices at Campbell Airstrip.
Date: February 28, 2007 at 10:43 am
The 2007 Iditarod, this amorphous idea of a sled dog race, is starting to take form as volunteers, media, organizers, and fans converge on Iditarod Race Headquarters at the Millenium Hotel in Anchorage.
Walking around the rooms staked out as temporary offices, conversations are overheard. Media gurus discuss the merits of formats, cameras, and editors. Volunteers organize the telephone banks and central computers logging times and progress of the racers. At the same time, the Iditarod Air Force is beginning the transport of gear and food to checkpoints along the trail. This Wednesday, counting down to the Saturday Ceremonial Start, has this feel of chaotic energy, but there is no outright tension. Why? There are no mushers, and the reason is very logical.
The mushers are conspicuously absent. I am given the media assignment this Wednesday, inspired by an East Coast TV producer, to contact the considered top ten mushers and request that they schedule an interview for tomorrow—-and also bring their lead dogs for a photo shoot “in and around Anchorage.” I ask Mark Nordman, Iditarod’s wizened Race Marshal, the guy you see on TV with a beard and arms and chest like a black bear, if he sees the idea the way I do. Mark shrugs and looks at the wall.
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Date: February 28, 2007 at 10:42 am
Iditarod’s Race Insider
The Iditarod, Alaska’s premier sled dog race, begins March 3, 2007. Starting in Anchorage, the trail courses over the Alaska Range on old trade and mining routes, follows on the Yukon River through the Interior, then portages to the Bering Sea Coast at the Eskimo village of Unalakleet for the final 260 miles across wind blown treeless tundra and ocean ice to the old gold mining town of Nome.
Rules allow a maximum of 16 sled dogs, all of which are examined and monitored during the race by a team of veterinarians. Musher are allowed by the rules to position dog food and gear along the trail at twenty some checkpoints and villages before the start of the race. Once the race begins, the musher, following the traditions of the North, must take sole responsibility for the care and management of the team. No outside help is allowed.
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Date: February 26, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Thin snow, some ice may be on tap for 2007 race trail, barring a storm.
KASILOF, Alaska — As the days tick down toward the start of the 2007 Iditarod, mushers’ minds turn to their biggest competition – that is, the trail itself. And this year, the roughly 1,000-mile route from Anchorage to Nome is a reflection of the cold and generally dry pattern dominating Alaska all winter. Expect thin snow generally, areas of zero snow in the usual locations on the far side of the Alaska Range and some dicey sections of wind-blown ice as teams approach Grayling, says race marshal Mark Nordman.
Overall, the word appears to be “doable,” spoken with a grimace. Temperatures have been cold most of the year, so open water shouldn’t be an issue, he said. But a general lack of snow, assisted by a two-week spell of above-freezing temperatures and rain in late January, have left several areas largely barren. Mushers have seen this before, in 2001 and 2003, and Nordman said conditions in some places are better than those years; in others, it could be just as difficult.
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Date: February 26, 2007 at 10:00 am
KASILOF, Alaska — Rohn Buser seemed to be heading for a win all season, and he got it – decisively – in the 2007 Junior Iditarod, a roughly
120-mile blitz of a race that pits some of the best young distance mushers in Alaska against fast trails and temperatures dropping well below zero.
Rohn, the 17-year-old son of four-time Iditarod champion Martin Buser from Big Lake, finished a strong fourth in the tough Kuskokwim 300 in January. He followed that with a close second in the Goose Bay 120 in early February.
He capped that trend by completing the Junior Iditarod at 8:27 a.m. Sunday, more than half an hour ahead of second place, Megan Hedgecoke of Two Rivers. Hedgecoke surged ahead in a hard-fought battle for second place, nipping Jessica Klejka of Bethel by five minutes. Melissa Owens, the 2005 Junior Iditarod winner, was just a minute behind Klejka, claiming fourth. Ellen King, daughter of the standing Iditarod champion, Jeff King of Denali Park, closed out the top five.
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Date: February 19, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Norway win suggests another strong Iditarod for Robert Sørlie
KASILOF, Alaska — Two-time Iditarod champion Robert Sørlie should be a force to reckon with this year, judging by his recent victory in a tough 373-mile race in Norway. Sørlie and his team of powerful, evenly matched dogs are in peak shape.
Sørlie – one of the most influential Iditarod mushers this decade – is poised to make a bid for his third Iditarod victory in four attempts. That puts him in rare company. Maybe one other multiple winner, Rick Swenson, can claim such a rapid rise to success. Sørlie deliberately set a moderate pace as a rookie in 2002 and finished ninth, then won the next two races. If anyone can win in three out of four, it is Sørlie, who has all the gifts of a champion, which include stamina, focus, good humor in bad situations and the ability to inspire dogs to perform their best.
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Date: February 12, 2007 at 4:07 pm
A brief, incomplete history of the modern Alaskan husky
KASILOF, Alaska — When Aliy Zirkle set out to build a racing kennel, she went straight to the source. Instead of buying dogs from sprint kennels or Iditarod mushers, she traveled to villages near the Koyukuk River, a remote region of Alaska famed for producing tough, winning canines.
A team of these furry, hard-headed “village dogs” led her to victory in the 2000 Yukon Quest, and became the springboard for the Iditarod kennel she races today.
In going literally the extra mile – far, far off Alaska’s limited road system – Zirkle actually re-enacted a pattern of behavior that has gone on for decades, a pattern of buying and breeding between kennels across vast distances. Racing dogs were traded between Canada, the Koyukuk valley and Kotzebue and Nome. The net result of a century of dog deals by mushers – and before them, gold miners – transformed what once was a humble, hard-working village animal with a hint of wolf blood into the strange-looking but physically gifted genetic mutation now known simply as the Alaskan husky.
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Date: February 7, 2007 at 1:41 pm
IDITAROD XXXV MUSHER Dan Huttunen, (Bib #29) made the decision to scratch at 10 am this morning, (March 07, 2007) at Rainy Pass Checkpoint on Puntilla Lake in the Alaska Range. The Wasilla rookie musher was in 63rd position when he made the decision to scratch.
