h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Iditarod in Nome

Posted Jan 29, 2002

The depths of winter can be trying time in Alaska; The beer keg freezes up before you are half through, you use more gas defrosting your car windows than driving anywhere, your fuel bill looks like the latest foreign debt statement out of Mozambique, and the oil in your gun freezes up before you can deal with the pesky moose eating your greenhouse. The days which range in length from four hours to none (above the Arctic Circle) do not help matters. Sno-gos are great (Snowmobiles for those not conversant in Alaskan), but they can only go as far as the fuel you haul. So what do you do to keep the cabin fever away? You mush.
I am not a dog musher, the individuals that train and run dog teams, so I will leave it to someone who is to explain that insanity, but I am an avid fan. Living in Nome, Alaska, dog mushing is serious business for this is where the Iditarod, the grandest of dogsled races, has its finish line. Based on the emergency run of Diptheria Serum in 1925 when mushers brought the medicine over 600 miles in one week from Nenana to Nome to stop an epidemic in local children, the race was inagurated in 1973 By Dorothy Page and Joe Reddington Sr. A great deal of information about the race and its history is available at several Iditarod websites.
If you are considering running the race, there are a few points to note. The distance is approximately 1150 miles (in odd years the southern route covers 1141 miles, the northern route used during even years is ten miles shorter) over mountain ranges, rock covered fields stripped of snow by the wind, and in places over the sea ice (if possible). Most mushers now take 10-17 days to complete the run, with frequent checkpoints to assess the health of the dogs and required layovers to prevent total exhaustion. If you get too far behind the leaders you will be dropped from the race.
Hazards include the local fauna such as moose, bear, and drunk primates on sno-gos. A select group of intellectualy different individuals have started an event known as the Iditasport or some such in which they ski, walk, or even ride bloody bicycles up the trail during the race. Luckily, with a team of 12-16 dogs in front of you you can pretty much run right over any human obstruction, as one pair of iditabikers discovered when they pitched their tent in the middle of the trail and were quickly stomped by several teams last year. Additionally, keep in mind that the dogs do not stop to defecate but instead let go on the fly, so avoid riding in the basket of the sled unless absolutely necessary. Great way to introduce your tourist relatives to the joy of Alaska, however, and it makes for wonderful before and after pictures.

As to Nome, it is a unique place that goes absolutely Looney Tunes during the Iditarod. The Anchorage departure is fairly sedate, if any event involving 700 sled dogs can be called such, but Nome starts revving up about a week before the race even begins. A town with 3200 residents, 13 bars, half a dozen liquor stores, and basically no tourism perched on the Seward penninsula with no road connections to the outside, Nome is a bit different to begin with. For the two weeks of Iditarod we get CNN camera crews, EU, Japanese, and Aussie reporters, minor glitterati in gaudy ski outfits barely warm enough to wear inside, and a broad selection of the world's oddest travelers. If you really want to experience Alaska and the Iditarod, this is the place to start.
Begin with the tourists who volunteer to help with the race without realizing that this involves chipping dog droppings from the road where they have frozen in the -30F temperatures. The bars offer a wide variety of entertainment from the Annual Wet T-shirt contest and Safe Sex parties to the less organized but just as engrossing impromptu Olympics where people attempt to get home over obstacles such as ice, snow, and incredibly high blood alcohol levels. The annual Bering Sea Ice Classic involves painting a patch of the Bering Sea ice bright green, drilling holes with ice augers, and playing a few rounds of golf. Alcohol helps with this as well. The Nome National Forest is another big attraction, being the spot on the sea ice where everyone sticks their Christmas trees each year. This generates income during the spring as well when locals bet over the departure date of the last tree on the slowly collapsing ice.
As the mushers roll into town the fire alarm blares and people gather to watch, at least for the first dozen. After that the warm confines of a crowded bar seem much more attractive than standing in the screamingly cold weather to watch another team roll in. The locals try to greet them all, appreciating anyone that will willingly come to Nome in the winter. Most tourists are thrilled to shake the hand of newly arrived musher, until they smell what happens to a human after two weeks of no showers while under stress and caring for dogs. Once is usually enough.
All of this aside, there are great things to do outside the bars and the debauchery of Front Street. Craft shows with the incredible works created by both non-Native and Inupiaq and Yupi'k artists occur daily, and are worth the trip on their own. Educational lectures about the Iditarod and mushing displays abound, and the vast majority of the locals are glad to show off their town. Once they've showered the mushers are almost uniformly personable and pleasant, and the banquets are the affairs of the season for the whole community. The Miners and Mushers Ball features the Nome of the Gold Rush era, when it was the largest in Alaska and featured a whorehouse owned by Wyatt Earp (now used as the city government offices, how utterly appropriate).
If you come plan on getting here about a week after the race starts in Anchorage and spend at least ten days. The Red Lantern banquet (named in honor of the prize given to the final musher to come in to Nome) is one of the nicest but most casual events, and you will miss it if you leave early. Hotel rooms are booked six months in advance, and vary GREATLY in quality, but room can usually be found through the tourist office on a local citizen's floor. If worst comes to worst, the bars outside of town never close to speak of, so grab a comfy corner early. Dress warm, it may only be -30F ambient but the wind will start to make things chilly. Finally, bring a sense of humor. Bush Alaska is a third world country as far as services and pace of life. If you hurry or badger people they will simply not serve you, and once you have alientated one provider of a service there is rarely another within several hundred miles. Some homes still do not have interior plumbing, though all three hotels do. Read Jack London and Hunter S. Thompson, ponder them both for a bit, and then come on up. You may regret it, but you will never forget it.

Discuss this Journal entry [1]

Latest reply: Jan 29, 2002