Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Mike Koskovich and the Iditarod go way back. “I just happened to arrive in Alaska at the
same time the Iditarod was getting started.” It didn't hurt that he taught musher Dick
Mackey how to fly and that his wife, an elementary school teacher in Wasilla, taught three
of Joe Redington Sr.'s kids.
Joe Sr., also known as the Father of the Iditarod, drafted Mike into the Iditarod Air
Force, which began with “one guy in Kaltag with a beat-up Cessna 180” and now boasts
twenty-five volunteer pilots, each with their own plane. “We're a pretty eclectic bunch,”
Mike says, “one's a heart surgeon, one's a general practitioner, a couple are petroleum en-
gineers, and one owns the Alaska U-Haul distributorship.”
The Iditarod Air Force hauls dog food in thirty-five pound bags, two bags for each
musher to each checkpoint, as well as bales of straw for the dogs to rest on. They haul the
checkers, the race judges and the veterinarians up the trail, leap-frogging them from one
checkpoint to another one step ahead of the race. When mushers scratch, they haul mush-
ers and dogs from the remote checkpoints to the hubs like McGrath and Unalakleet, where
larger planes take them back to Anchorage or on to Nome.
In 1985 Mike was flying through a blue sky above when Libby Riddles was mushing
through a ground blizzard across Norton Bay below, which may be his favorite Iditarod.
“She had the guts to make that move against the advice of all the old, salty heavy hitters.
She gambled and she won. She added a really colorful chapter to the Iditarod.”
This year Mike and his Cessna 185 on wheel-skis hauled dog food and straw bales out
to the first four checkpoints before the race began. Right after the start he had to leave for
an eight-day shift on his day job, flying a 747 for Atlas Air from Anchorage to Chicago to
Toledo to Honolulu to Sydney to Shanghai and home again. In the Sydney Morning Her-
ald he found a picture of musher John Baker, which he brought home and gave to John's
sister when he saw her in Unalakleet, back flying for the Iditarod Air Force.
“She thought that was kind of neat.”
Saturday, March 12
One of Paul Gebhardt's dogs dies. The vets in Anvik report that he is weeping when he
brings the dog in.
