Iditarod will restart in Willow

GENE JANSEN/For the Frontiersman

MAT-SU — Iditarod officials decided Saturday to relocate the scheduled Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race restart from Wasilla to Willow due to a lack of a snow base in some areas along the trail from the Wasilla Multi-use Sports Complex to the Knik checkpoint.

"The decision was not made until they went out one more time on Saturday," Iditarod public affairs director Chas St. George said Monday. "There was just not enough snow base."

Although some areas along the first stretches of the trail to the first checkpoint at Knik Lake were fine, he said, other areas did not have sufficient base to handle the onslaught of 79 mushers and more than 1,200 dogs sprinting for position during the first phases of the Last Great Race.

"It was going to deteriorate very quickly," he said. "It was just not feasible."

This will be the third different location for the restart in the last four years. Restart coordinator Debby Trosper agrees life would be simpler if the restart could be held in the same location every year, but in recent years, the weather has not cooperated.

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature, but it's also not nice to depend on Mother Nature," Trosper said Friday. "I would give my eye-tooth to have a [restart] home that's permanent."

The Iditarod restart is set to take place at 2 p.m., Sunday, March 6, from Willow Lake, just behind the Willow Community Center. The relocation requires pedestrians to cross the Parks Highway from the Willow Airport to access the start site, which is located at Mile 69.5 Parks Hwy.

Spectators will first be asked to park at the north end of the Willow Airport. When that area fills up, Trosper said, then vehicles will park at the south end of the Willow runway.

Passengers of motor homes have their own special area marked by signage, but they will have about a half-mile walk. Trosper also said there will be no camping at the Willow Airport site, and a wrecker has been contracted to tow vehicles attempting to stay overnight during the weekend.

Two school buses will be available for shuttling race viewers to the start site. One bus will leave from Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex at 9 a.m. and the other will leave at 11:15 a.m. Sunday. On the return shuttle, one bus will leave Willow at 4 p.m. and the other will leave at 5:30 p.m. for drop-offs back at the sports complex.