THE RACE BEHIND THE RACE
by Nathaniel "Nate" Yaekel

Although the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is now an incorporated organization, it's a non-profit organization (in more ways than one) and still relies on volunteers and donations to make it work. It has only a tiny permanent staff. In an average year, it takes a two million dollar budget and a couple of thousand volunteers to stage the race.

When considering the scope of the Iditarod and what's required to put it on, it's important to remember there are no roads or railroads west of the "rail belt", Anchorage-Fairbanks. The only way to get to Nome in the winter is by airplane or snow machine or dog sled. Because of this, the race logistics effort, including grooming the trail and handling all the myriad of details in Anchorage and all of the enroute towns and villages, is similar to a major military operation.

Every musher must provide a specified amount of food and supplies for his or her dogs at 20-odd checkpoints along the route (usually a total of about a ton or so). Each musher must also carry a required amount of equipment in the sled at all times, much of which is survival gear because the mushers are completely on their own between checkpoints, some of which are more than 90 miles apart.

Once the mushers are on the trail, they can receive no outside assistance and must rely on what they have carried with them or sent ahead -- just as in the old days where they had to rely on whatever was available at the roadhouses and villages. Of course, meals are available for the mushers at some of the checkpoints, including some sumptuous spreads provided by certain towns, and the mushers are free to visit friends and even grab a beverage or a shower if they can find one. However, mushers cannot add or replace dogs and they must keep and fed their dogs in a common area at each checkpoint.

So as to be in place when the mushers arrive, the race organization ships out of Anchorage the food and supplies for each checkpoint. Such an operation provides the equivalent of an old-time network of roadhouses along the trail. The race organization also ships out supplies for race personnel ranging from food to tents to fuel. For a field of 75 mushers, several hundred on-the-trail volunteers, and maybe 1,200 dogs, the total can be more than 200,000 pounds.

Getting this mountain of goodies out to the checkpoints is a story all by itself. A few of the checkpoints are good-sized towns (good sized for Alaska, anyway) with major airports. Some are Native villages with small airports, a couple are ghost towns, several are conveniently located near frozen lakes with a lodge or cabin, and some are just wide stretches of snow covered river in the middle of nowhere with nobody around for miles. The resulting delivery system is truly Alaskan and definitely unique.

First, all but about a half dozen checkpoints have regular mail freight service, thanks to the Postal Service's "bypass mail" program, which allows many larger items to be dropped directly at airfreight company loading docks in Anchorage. For the race, these shipments include one or more 70-pound sacks of frozen dog food and bales of hay for every musher to every checkpoint with a zip code west of the Alaska Range.

All told, it's cheap to use the U.S. Mail to ship goods to the Bush, thanks to the subsidies given to Alaskan air carriers. The system isn't very cost effective for the taxpayer, but without it many Alaskan Bush communities would have no air service at all. By the way, the mammoth Anchorage International Airport Post Office is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's worth a stop all by to watch people carting in things like refrigerators and engine blocks to ship to some remote Bush village. One can only wonder what Carl Ben Eielson and other early airmail pilots would have thought if they knew where their pioneering efforts would lead.

For checkpoints without mail service, a slightly different method is used. Some checkpoints (McGrath, Unalakleet, Nome, and also Galena in even-numbered years) have major airports with regular passenger and air cargo service. The bundles for the boonies are mailed to the nearest of these "hubs" for onward shipment. Also, those items that can't be shipped through the mail, such as big disassembled tents, perishable vet supplies, and 30-odd cases of Heet for use in mushers' alcohol cook stoves, are air freighted to every checkpoint in the hub.

Entrusted to move most of the supplies to the outlying checkpoints is "The Iditarod Air Force". They are a group of volunteer pilots who use their own planes, some on skis, some on wheels, some on both. The race committee pays for gas, oil, and insurance and provides food and warm places to throw a sleeping bag at night. (In 1995, Tesoro Alaska covered the fuel and PenAir donated a twin-engine Navajo and a pilot to help haul volunteers.)

On the one hand, flying for the race can be a lot of fun. On the other, it's even more work--and it's sometimes dangerous because of the places and conditions that are an inherent part of the race. In the history of the IAF and its tens of thousands of hours in the air, a few airplanes have been damaged or lost but no IAF pilots or passengers have ever been seriously injured. That is just short of amazing considering the abysmal conditions that often prevail. In any case, the informal selection process usually limits the IAF to experienced Alaskan pilots.

Some of the loads in IAF planes run to the truly eclectic: everything from trail marking stakes to snow machine fuel to tent heaters and the tents they go in. Sometimes this even includes the proverbial kitchen sink (in the form of portable camp kitchens). Packs and sleeping bags stuffed to the ceiling and dogs on passengers' laps aren't uncommon (and these aren't even the really challenging loads!).

Canines make particularly interesting passengers. A Cessna 185 or 206 with the seats removed can hold 18 or even 20 dogs, and race pilots have developed unique tricks and techniques to ensure harmony during flights that could otherwise be, well, eventful. One ubiquitous commodity in IAF planes is dog food. The dogs dine like kings during the race, wolfing down 5,000 calories or more each day. Their food includes lots of protein, fat, and other high-energy stuff. Some mushers make their own concoctions from ingredients like fish, hamburger, beef, horsemeat, lamb, beaver, moose, caribou, and sometimes even seal meat. The "dog food" is stored outside and normally freezes solid. Now and again, however, a harried IAF pilot forgets what he's hauling and turns up the cabin heat, resulting in a near in-flight emergency as acrid, eye-watering fumes from fish or seal oil waft forward from the thawing bags. (Yes, you can fly with your window open at 20 below zero if you really have to.)

At each checkpoint along the trail, there are numerous race personnel with specific functions. The first person the musher sees on pulling into a checkpoint will usually be the checker, often a local resident who is a musher himself. The checker formally inventories the sled for the required gear, counts the dogs, and records the official times. The checker often has one or more assistants who help him keep track of the official arrival and departure time for each team, and see that each musher's pre-positioned food and supplies are readily available. Automatically disqualified is the musher who does not physically have every dog he or she has left the previous checkpoint with. And a stricter rule imposed by the organization is in the interest of the dog's safety and welfare. Each and every dog is immediately examined at every checkpoint. If a dog were to be too tired or drastically sick or injured to carry on during a race, the musher must carry it to the next checkpoint, a station that is usually manned by at least three veterinarians who are also volunteers from the International Sled Dog Veterinary Medicine Association. Dogs are left behind for two reasons. One, if a vet decides that a dog is not fit to continue, or two, if the musher decides not to want to continue with a dog. The vet can also treat a dog on the spot and let it continue the race, if appropriate. The vets care for dogs dropped at outlying checkpoints until they can be flown back to a hub by the IAF, from which they are returned to Anchorage on air cargo runs donated by Northern Air Cargo in their sturdy old DC-6Bs.

Next month we will wrap up this series and then we are off to Alaska!