Doggone! Snowless Alaska forces Iditarod race change

Doyle Rice | USA TODAY

For only the second time in 42 years, the famed Iditarod Sled Dog Race has been forced to shift its route due to lack of snow, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.

The start of the race, which begins March 7, has been moved from its traditional location in Willow to Fairbanks; this happened once before, in 2003.

Members of the trail committee's board voted unanimously Tuesday to change the course "due to low snowfall in some of the most treacherous sections of the trail's roughly 1,000 miles," the paper reported.

"This year, you can't go through a rock," Nome musher Burmeister told the News- Miner. "There's boulders and rocks that we've never seen there in 20-some years that are littering all the gorge, places that you'd never even see a rock because you're going over feet of snow going through there. This year, you're looking at bare ground."

Over the past 50 years, wintertime temperatures across Alaska increased by an average of more than 6.3 degrees, due to man-made climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency reports. Overall, Alaska's temperatures are rising twice as fast as those in the lower 48 states.

Low-snow winters are a concern, race director Stan Hooley told the News-Miner. "I think we're all worried about the weather," Hooley said. "There's a pattern that's developed. And that's a concern to all of us."

The Iditarod begins with a ceremonial start March 7 in Anchorage. Dog teams carrying passengers make a leisurely 11-mile run from downtown to an airstrip on the city's east side.

Actual racing begins a day later and usually starts in Willow. The trail takes mushers and dogs through the Alaska Range, down the Yukon River and along the Bering Sea coast to the old gold rush town of Nome.

Contributing: Associated Press