Skwentna Checkpoint: The end of an era

As much as this weekend marks the start of the 39th Iditarod Trail Sled Race, it also marks the end of an era.

Joe Delia was 43 in 1973 when his good friend Joe Redington Sr. approached him with an idea to organize a race to Nome using sled dog teams.

And if the Father of the Iditarod were alive today, he’d be the first to tell you he couldn’t have put the trail in for that first race without the help of his longtime friend, the other Joe.

It was Joe Delia who carved the trail that first year from Yentna Station to Rainy Pass. Rather than clearing a whole new trail, he did what made sense and put the trail in over a prime part of his trapline. For many years Delia also was a trailbreaker for the race, race checker at Skwentna until 1997 and since that first year, has hosted the Skwentna Checkpoint at his cabin, where he homestead in 1948.

But Skwentna isn’t like other Iditarod checkpoints that are housed at lodges or villages along the trail. Skwentna is one family’s home, so that family has recruited and organized its own crew of volunteers since the race began. At first, women from up and down the river rode their snowmachines over to help offer mushers a hot meal.

Over the years, hundreds of volunteers have traveled on their own dime to the Delias house to help Joe and Norma Delia dish up their trademark brand of hospitality.

This is the last year, though, that the Skwentna Sweeties will spend four days cutting, peeling, measuring, mixing, cooking and baking without amenities such hot and cold running water or flush toilets. It is the last year the Darlings — volunteers who work on the river during the race — will use an ice auger and bilge pump to coax water from the river’s icy depths.

Last summer, the Delias put their place up for sale and plan to move onto the road system as soon as it sells, Norma said. And January marked Joe Delia’s 81st birthday. It’s just time, Norma said.

On the phone with former race vet James Leach Friday morning, he can’t help reminiscing about how much the race has changed: He longs for the romance of the race’s early days when race updates were passed between crackling HAM radios.

“It’s very, very different than it was in the 1970s and 1980s,” he said. “Now it’s a corporation.”

Regardless of the legion of changes, volunteers remain at the core of the Iditarod Trail Sled Race.

In 2010, the Delias honored several of their longtime volunteers with the Rob Fritts Honorary Checker Award, which salutes checkpoint volunteers whose work makes the race possible. The honor is named in memory of Rob Fritts, who volunteered at the Skwentna Checkpoint for 22 years.

While some people work the race for a few hours one day a year, others like the Delias and the Fritts have spent 10, 20, 30 years in unsung service to the Last Great Race. After years of assisting the Delias with the checkpoint, Rob and Cyndy Fritts took the lead in 1997.

At the end of the trail — beneath the burled arch — it is men and women like Joe Redington Sr., Susan Butcher, Lance Mackey and DeeDee Jonrowe who are made legend by the race while men and women like the Delias and Fritts volunteer in anonymity to make it all possible.

We salute the men, women and dogs that compete in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and the volunteers who make it all possible.