The second half-century for the world's most famous sled dog race is getting off to a rough start. Only 33 mushers will participate in the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Saturday, the smallest field ever to take their dog teams.
Defending Iditarod champion Lance Mackey drives his team as he arrives first into the Unalakleet, Alaska, checkpoint on the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on March 15, 2009. Only 33 mushers will participate in the ceremonial start of the Iditarod on Saturday, March 4, the smallest field ever to take their dog teams nearly 1,000 miles over Alaska's unforgiving wilderness. The second half-century for the world's most famous sled dog race is getting off to a rough start.
The Iditarod is the most prestigious sled dog race in the world, taking competitors over two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and treacherous Bering Sea ice in frigid temperatures before ending in the old Gold Rush town of Nome. The roughly 10-day event begins with a "ceremonial start" in Anchorage on Saturday, followed by the competitive start in Willow, about 70 miles to the north, on Sunday.
"Being able to race the Iditarod and the expense of putting together a race team became more than they could bear to maintain themselves," he said of mushers. "You got to be totally prepared to run Iditarod, and have enough money in the bank to do it," said Sass, who lives in Eureka, about a four-hour drive north of Fairbanks.
PETA took out full-page newspaper ads in Anchorage and Fairbanks in February with a husky -- the predominate sled dog breed -- prominently featured with the headline, "We don't want to go to the Iditarod. We just want the Iditarod to go." "It doesn't have to be that there's waves crashing on the beach," Thoman said of the impacts of ice melt. "It just has to be at the point where the ice is not stable."
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