Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ledges that it's a lot of work, but “The town appreciates the Iditarod as much as the Iditar-
od appreciates the town. I think each town on the trail feels the same way.”
Tuesday, March 15
Sorlie makes White Mountain at 12:59p.m.. It's been raining and the trail is rutted and
icy with overflow.
Down at race central local Peggy Fagerstrom stumbles across a homeless photographer
and offers him a bed. Jeff Schultz has been the volunteer photographer for the Iditarod for
twenty-five years. “This is my Iditarod silver anniversary.”
Jeff spent the last two nights sleeping on the floor of a church in Unalakleet, waiting on
weather. “I follow the racers,” he says, “where they sleep I sleep.” Five minutes after he
walks into the house he's in the shower.
Handlers, veterinarians and much of the Iditarod Air Force are weathered in in Un-
alakleet and Kaltag. Martin Buser's wife Kathy Chapoton and Iditarod Air Force pilot
Paul Claus step in to help out Howard Lincoln as race checkers, veterinarians and dog
handlers in White Mountain. Nome's mayor Denise Michels is interviewed on television
looking a little shell-shocked but says bravely that the city graders will clear the roads of
the snow and slush and then get it back out in time for the dog sled teams tomorrow.
Wednesday, March 16
Norway's Robert Sorlie is first beneath the burled arch at 8:39 a.m., winning his
second Iditarod in three years. Kotzebue's Ed Iten is second, in half an hour later with a
grin you could see from orbit. He slings dog booties at the cheering crowd like he's
throwing beads from a Mardi Gras float.
An urgent call goes out on local radio station
KNOM
for musher housing, anyone who can
volunteer a bed please call immediately. “Sometimes mushers don't know where they're
staying until they cross the finish line,” says Sue Greely.
This isn't a problem for this year's thirteenth place finisher Martin Buser, who has been
staying at Sue Greely and Pat Hahn's house a block away from the finish line since 1992.
