| By

Off the keyboard of RE

Follow us on Twitter @doomstead666

Friend us on Facebook

Published on the Doomstead Diner on March 4, 2018

Discuss this article at the Frostbite Falls Table inside the Diner

It's Iditarod Time once again here on the Last Great Frontier!

The Iditarod for those who are not familiar with it is the Dog Sled Race that runs these days from the Matanuska-Susitna River Valley in Alaska up to Nome. Total length of the course is around 1000 miles, a very long trek for both the Dogs and the Musher. The race commemorates the Great Race for Mercy in the 1920's, when a Diptheria Epidemic hit Nome and they had to get medicine up there as quick as they could. They did not have the network of Bush Planes then that we have now, nor did they have Snow Machines.

The most famous dog that pulled this medicine to Nome was Balto, the last lead dog who pulled the sled for the last leg into Nome. There is a statue of Balto in Central Park in NYC. It is the Feature Photo for this article at the top of the page.

As a Kollapsnik and adopted Alaskan, I love the Iditarod for a few reasons. First off, the race is run through one of the last places left on the planet you could do such a thing. There are no roads through this part of Alaska, although the Start Point has had to be moved persistently northward to avoid the suburban development up here and the road system that goes with that. In fact, there is very little in terms of road development in Alaska as a whole, once you get off the main drag of the Parks & Glenn Highways, there is pretty much nothing. Then to get in or out of Alaska, there is in fact only ONE road, the Al-Can. It only got completely paved over in 1996, and to this day there are sections of it you really don't want to be driving on in bad weather, which is common. So in the modern age, the communities that Alaska supports are either along the narrow corridor of the 2 highways, or they are supported by the air network of Bush Planes. The main communities of mostly First Nations people are all along the coast, and they get their diesel to run their generators by sea, but this takes a while. Back when the Great Race for Mercy occured in the 1920's, it would have taken many weeks to get the medicine to Nome by sea. So they did it over land, with a chain of Mushers, who got it up there in about a week or so. There were only 3 available planes that might have been able to make the trip at that time, and no experienced pilots to fly them. So they went with the dogs and the traditional methods. They made it, and Balto led them into town.

The next reason I love the Iditarod is because it is one of the last examples left of the cooperation between Homo Sap and the animals we have domesticated as helpers. Those dogs were the ones that pulled that medicine, they were HEROES. So were the Mushers who trained them and who drove them to the finish line, IN TIME. No gas, no diesel, just Humans and Dogs working together over 1000 miles of the toughest terrain and the toughest weather nature can pitch out.

I also love the Iditarod because besides Alaskans, Canadians, Ruskies, Finns, Swedes and Norwegians, basically nobody knows about it or follows it. Even among the people who live in these places the fans are few. Mushing is not a lucrative sporting pastime, although a few of the top mushers make enough from endorsements to feed their dogs and train year around. For everyone below about the Top 10 Mushers, it's a labor of love and it costs them plenty every year to pursue this hobby.

In the past few years there has not been enough snow on the ground in the southern portion of the race to do the traditional start, now in in the Matanuska-Susitna River Valley rather than Seward where the original Great Race for Mercy began. In fact they had to move the start from Wasilla where the HQ of the Iditarod is up to Willow, because there simply has been too much suburbabn development and road construction around Wasilla to have a good place to start from safe for the mushers and the dogs even in good snow years. Lately though, even Willow didn't work, so they made a new route that started I think in Fairbanks.

The ceremonial start is done come hell or high water (or no snow) down in Anchorage the day before the real race begins. For two years they shipped snow down from Fairbanks via the Alaska Railroad to lay down on MainStreet in Anchorage so they could run the Ceremonial Start. Anchorage is the only place in Alaska you will get any media coverage whatsoever or enough spectators to come out and wave at the Mushers and make the event look semi-popular to anyone outside Alaska. This year, the Ceremonial Start has enough local snow in Anchorage to run the start there without resorting to using fossil fuels to ship snow in, which is nice. However, overall Alaska has had a very mild winter this year at least in terms of temperatures overall. Hovering mostly in the 20sF. However, particularly in the last couple of weeks leading up to the official Race Start today, we have had a few good snowfalls and the trail conditions are very good.

Favorite for this year's race by far is Ken Anderson, but I am rooting for the Berington Twins, Kristy & Anna. They run separate sleds of course, but I don't care which one wins. Also it's nice when female mushers win, the race gets more publicity. Susan Butcher was probably the most famous of the female mushers, and I followed her career even before I moved to Alaska. Sadly, Susan died of Cancer a few years back.

For the Kollapsnik though, the most important thing about the Iditarod is that the people who run this race with their dogs represent the type of people who can SURVIVE collapse. They are TOUGH & RESOURCEFUL people. They aren't QUITTERS like the Nihilists and Misanthropes on Nature Bats Last, Our Finite World and r/collapse. They are athletic and in good physical condition. They know the terrain, the weather and how to deal with it. They do use modern industrial produced material now of course to make the sleds lighter and to insulate themselves better from the cold, but I would bet most of them could put together a sled from scratch and hunt down the Caribou, Moose and Bear and make their parkas from those materials. Many of them live out in the Bush and do subsistence Hunting & Fishing, along with raising their dogs. Susan Butcher was one like that.

I will follow the Iditarod again this year with great interest. I will update Inside the Diner as I receive times in email for all the mushers I follow.

LONG LIVE THE IDITAROD! THE LAST GREAT RACE ON EARTH!