Anchorage Iditarod Headquarters
Circulating this Friday morning on the eve of tomorrow’s Ceremonial Start on downtown Anchorage’s 4th avenue, the fan will observe an early morning frenzy. While fans regard this Friday as a casual day of preparation, organizers, trail breakers, and volunteers are hustling to complete final arrangements for the start of the race.
Meanwhile, mushers are contemplating the facts, as we know them today. Clear weather forecasts make it likely that trail conditions are not going to change. Good trail with sufficient snow for a nice ride over frozen terrain from the Willow Restart to the divide of the Alaska Range puts mushers at ease while considering the first day of trail. At least, mushers can introduce their fired up teams to the rhythm of the trail under controllable conditions. To reduce speed, the primary responsibility of mushers on the first day of racing is to keep the team traveling at a reasonable speed, usually with conservative and slower leaders to the front, and by riding the brake or a drag especially attached to the sled.
However, on the second day of the race, trail conditions are advertised as dicey. The Dalzell Gorge, which takes mushers and teams down the north side of the Alaska Range, is famous as a technical and jarring ride to the checkpoint of Rohn River. Less snow means the packed trail will not camouflage the frozen ground, ice, rocks, and ice. Fortunately, Iditarod trail groomers have worked hard to keep this trail in good form. Mushers need to pay attention, but this section of trail should be a good transition.
Readers who watched some great musher interviews posted at the Insider will recall Dee Jonrowe’s great description of the next section of trail from the checkpoint of Rohn to the village of Nikolai. Collectively, this run that transitions from the shoulders of the Alaska Range to the wide and relatively flat basin of the Yukon Drainage is known as the Buffalo Tunnels and the Nikolai Burn.
As Dee pointed out, this run requires special attention for Iditarod 2007. Low or no snow conditions, and a warm weather thaw, has left the trail a petrified frozen bare dirt, glare ice image of itself in summer. Stiff winds are surely blowing whatever snow existed off the trail. What we have left is a concrete hard trail, with all the irregularities of root wads, rocks, and ruts in the trail, to test sled strength and musher endurance. Dee for example, who is slightly built, recognizes that she does not have great upper body strength. That means she is going to rely heavily on pre-race training of her sled dogs so she can “talk them down” to a reasonable and safe speed.
The most dangerous area in most musher’s estimation is about a twenty-mile stretch just outside of the Rohn checkpoint, known as the Buffalo Tunnels. Literally, this trail has been modified by a herd of local buffalo into a well-used dirt and rock game trail through thickets of brush and black spruce. On a good year there is very little snow, and this year it is reported that there is little or none—-which is precisely why the buffalo like this area in winter. As a result, visualize bouncing through this trail like a pinball over frozen ground, rocks, and root wads, with the occasional near collision with a trailside spruce tree or boulder. This is the testing ground for sled durability. In addition, for some contrary reason, dogs love to run through this section, rich with the smell of game, full of interesting turns in the trail, and bare ground footing which makes running easier.
Having survived the Buffalo Tunnels in good shape, the mushers and teams will begin the crossing to Nikolai through the Nikolai Burn—an emerging landscape of small green spruce growing between stark trunks of spruce burned by a fire. It is likely we will have one of those years in which we can spot mushers on the Nikolai Burn at 30 below zero from the air—–by looking for the clouds of dust that follow the trotting dog teams.
Two basic approaches work for this challenge on the second and third day of the race. One is to accept the situation with equanimity and not change plans. The other, for mushers with a little free time today to tweak their plan, is to think about altering plans to help get through this potential nightmare. Dee Dee Jonrowe’s solution? Stop at Rohn River and give she and huskies a wonderful 8-hour rest. With the rest and strength that will give her, hope she can control the exuberance of her team into a manageable speed, and negotiate her way through the Buffalo Tunnels, and then the Nikolai Burn.
Best Thought of the Day:
Our film crew producer and I found Ric Swenson at the Thursday night Mushers Banquet and cajoled him into an interview in one of the side rooms of the Sullivan Arena. Typically, filmmakers like to ask similar questions to all the participants so that they can develop a “thread” of interest through the final documentary. One of these questions went something like this: What sport or athlete would you compare a sled dog? To help the musher, one of our guys made a logical suggestion that sled dogs were the Lance Armstrong of the sled dog world. It was one of those very sensible questions typed up in New York that was sure to elicit a predictable answer. AT any rate, the expected answer to this rhetorical question was not going to come from Ric Swenson. Ric
Thought about three seconds, and debunked the suggestion. Of course not, Iditarod sled dogs are not Lance Armstrong. They are tough, gritty, soccer players or hockey players bouncing off the ground or ice, playing with no substitutions, adapting to constantly changing conditions. The film crew enjoyed Ric’s answer. You should too. Check it out on Iditarod Insider.
Up for Tomorrow:
The Ceremonial Start in Downtown Anchorage begins tomorrow at 9:30 AM. Although this display of sled dog power is not timed for the final results, it is mandatory. The obligatory gear required on the race trail will not be required. Mushers will be entertaining their Iditarider passengers, and at the same time carefully watching to keep the run fun and safe. John Baker told me this morning that he would have two passengers in his sled, followed by another sled connected with a bridle loaded with a passenger and handler. With twelve dogs he felt fortunate—the extra weight would keep the speed down. With four or five passengers, it just goes to show how much power a team of huskies can generate!