Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
back of the pack and pray for a storm to slow the front runners down so the back of the
pack can catch up and there will be only one banquet this year.
“I've often thought it'd be easier to run the Iditarod than put on the banquet,” Mitch
says.
Thursday, March 10
Five-time champ Rick Swenson scratches in McGrath. Robert Sorlie is first into
halfway checkpoint Iditarod to claim $4000 in gold nuggets.
At Leo Rasmussen's house Iditarod veterans Mike Owens and Urtha Lenharr sit down
with Leo, Judge Ben Esh, and Howard Apple to plan the manning of the final checkpoint
on this year's Iditarod, where they will record each musher's time in, check for mandatory
gear on the sled and receive the mail packets the mushers have carried on the trail.
Each mail packet holds forty-four envelopes designed by a different local artist every
year that are stamped and cancelled in Nome at race end. Two letters carried by the first
and second place finishers are then auctioned off at the awards banquet, sometimes for as
much as a thousand dollars each. The rest are sold to raise money for the race.
If mushers leave the packets at a checkpoint they must go back to get them. One year a
musher forgot his packet, refused to go back and scratched. “That was his last year.”
Another musher accidentally packed his mail with his dirty laundry and sent it home from
the trail. And then there was the time Colonel Vaughn turned in his mail three years late.
“We didn't keep track of things then like we do now,” Leo says.
The two most important things for the final race checkers to collect are the mail and
each musher's veterinarian topic. Leo cautions everyone that sometimes it can be hard to
convince a musher to give up his vet topic. “Mushers don't like to give that up,” Mike
says. “It's been so precious to you on the trail.”
“Some mushers aren't ready for the end, either,” Leo says, and smiled. “They want to
know where to go next.”
Friday, March 11
Aw, hell. Charlie Boulding scratches in Anvik.
