Iditarod

The last great race is one for all Alaska

By Casey Ressler

The Iditarod is many things to many people, but for many Alaskans, it is simply the biggest event of the year.

While the Valley and Anchorage, and this year Fairbanks, turn out for the start of the race, the real Iditarod begins once the mushers leave the road system. There, the race gets serious, and the real flavor of the Iditarod starts.

What makes the Iditarod unique is the fact it is so remote, among other things. When starting in the Valley, the first 20 or so miles are accessible by road, but the 1,080 other miles aren't. When the race started in Fairbanks this year, all of the race was off the road system.

To the villages on the Iditarod Trail, the event brings a huge economical windfall with it. The small hotels and beds and breakfasts are booked when they otherwise would be closed, restaurants are open to all hours of the night, and even kids with snowmachines become tour guides for a week or so.

But the race really isn't about money to many of the villages.

It's about getting to share in the race for all Alaska, a race that is known throughout the world (and following Norwegian Robert Sorlie's victory, that holds true more now than ever). For two weeks, villages with names like Shaktoolik, Unalakleet and Anvik get to play host to the world.

In Bush Alaska, the Iditarod isn't just a race, it's a winter standard. Every March, the show comes to town, and villagers look forward to it much like a young child looks forward to the circus coming to the city.

In even the smallest checkpoints, personal messages written by the village's students are hanging on the walls of the checkpoints, with hopes the mushers will stop and read them. Many do.

Out there, in the smallest of villages, it doesn't matter if your name is Martin Buser or John Q. Musher -- they love you just the same, because you brightened their spring.

There are warm receptions for the arrivals of mushers into the checkpoint, whether it be at 1 p.m. with a warm sun in the sky, or 1 a.m. with temperatures plummeting well below zero.

When the pack finally gets those 1,100 miles behind them, Nome comes into view. While the leaders have a grand entrance, the middle and the back of the pack often have to dodge traffic on their way to the finish line.

The mushers come right down Front Street, the main strip of Nome.

In perhaps no other city in the world will you find dog teams racing one way as trucks go the other way, and everybody thinks it is perfectly normal.

When people talk about the champions, they often say they captured "Iditarod glory."

Perhaps.

Talk to some young villagers about the Iditarod, and you'll probably find the glory of the Last Great Race right there.