The Ceremonial Start 2017—-AK. Gov Bill Walker and Senator Lisa Murkowski at the Start Line.  Walker rides the runners with Team Baker

Joe Runyan

Attended by state leaders Senator Murkowski and Governor Walker, Iditarod 2017 officially began this morning at 10 AM.  Mushers are obligated to appear on 4th Avenue with 12 dogs (of their sixteen dog teams) to join the Ceremonial Start and then course through town on a 12 mile route constructed by the City of Anchorage with dump truck loads of snow.   Times are not recorded, but all 72 mushers are obligated to complete the trail. Other than a few obligatory requirements, the Ceremonial Start is low stress for mushers and a grand parade of the teams for thousands of fans lining the trail in downtown Anchorage.   There is only one goal in a mushers mind and that is be alert and avoid a mishap.  The real race starts in Fairbanks on Monday.  

 

Bottom line, thinking like a musher, today is just a show.  On a media level, it was a great chance to catch up with a few mushers.

 

 

Our Iditarod Insider film crew assembled in the hotel lobby of the Lakefront at 7AM this morning.  Already bus loads of fans had departed for downtown Anchorage by the time we cranked up two crew cab trucks in direction 4th Avenue. The crew and I splintered in different directions and gathered hours of images which can be seen at the Insider.

 

Sebastian Vernaud out #13

 

Now for the street by passing under some rope barriers to the inner sanctum of the mushers.  Trucks are parked on side street behinds the start line on 4 th avenue.   My first target, I realize, is a rookie musher I have not met.  But I have read about this European adventurer and want to find what makes him tick.

 

I introduce myself to rookie Sebastian Vernaud, a french musher from Rioux, but who has spent much of his adult life in the Scandanavian arctic.  He is a first time musher on a budget and does not have the luxury of some of the other established kennels.  He is racing  twelve dogs, although he could be allowed sixteen.   Later, I find that a few mushers with extra dogs have offered them to Sebastian, but he is determined to use his own team.  I like this guy immediately, who seems delighted to be in one more great adventure.

He looks at other trucks lined up the street and asks , “Why does everyone have two sleds?”   His entourage is also a little quizical, like, you know, he may have a point.  Sebastian discovers that his single sled is not adequate as he must carry an Iditarider in his sled (a paying passenger that helps support the race) and also a handler to insure that the team travels safely on the streets.  A temporary confusion follows but then it’s determined that he has a couple of hours to sort things out.  I think he will borrow another sled so his handler can tether behind the front sled and provide security.

I ask him about Alaska and he tells me it’s a special place.  He has a five year sports visa and will stay in Alaska until 2021.   Number 13 is his favorite number and tells me that he drew it as his bib number as if to offer one more validation that he is in Alaska for a good reason.

Ketil Reitan—-3,000 miles and Kaktovik or bust

Just ahead I see an old friend, Norwegian Ketil Reitan.  I haven’t seen him since his last visit to Alaska when he lived in Kaktovik, a far north arctic village east of Barrow not unlike his home in Trondheim, Norway.   Nor, his wife Evelyn who is Inupiat from Kaktovik.  The two raised their children in Norway and now have returned to Kaktovik.   While Ketil and his adult son Martin attend to the dogs, Evelyn fills me in on the last several decades.  She is tri-lingual and speaks fluent Norwegian–“No one can tell I am not from Norway” as do her two sons.  They have raised their two boys in Norway, but have now returned to her home village

“Martin will follow the trail by machine,”  Ketil tells me.  Then he describes an ambitious expedition.  Ketil, an Iditarod veteran, will race to Nome, then proceed North up the Bering Sea Coast to Kotzebue, where he will race 400 miles.  I am assuming he will take a shower and stop for a cup of coffee before heading north again to the far north of Alaska and east to Barrow, and finally to Kaktovik, Alaska’s furthest north village on the Arctic Ocean (correct me if I am wrong).  Ketil looks at me with a very satisfied gaze, in his perfect Norwegian english, “We will have travelled over three thousand miles with the dogs and arrive in Kaktovik in the second week of May.”    

Do you ever get the feeling that your life is quite boring?  I was just thinking about what’s for dinner later on today untill I met Ketil and Evelyn.

 

WE encounter the 4x Champ, Dallas Seavey

Departing from Ketil’s parking spot and rounding the bend onto 4th Avenue, I make a fortuitous encounter with Dallas Seavey.   If you like strategy, contemplating scenarios, and the great mental sport of pondering then you will find Dallas Seavey extraordinarily interesting.  By any calculation, he is the hands on favorite in this year’s 2017 Iditarod and a great counterpart for a race analysis.   

I feel like I am well supplied with information, having just called my old friends and Iditarod veterans Bill Cotter in Nenana (first checkpoint) and Stan Zuray of Tanana for trail reports.  Since I lived in both Nenana and Tanana,  my knowledge is theoretically quite complete.  However, I am immediately impressed with Dallas’s recall of the details of the trail.   He won on this trail in 2015 and informs me that he has also explored by snowmachine.  

In particular, he is focused on the giant 120 to 130  mile run from Tanana to Ruby (check out your Insider race map) because of its pivotal raw importance in the race.  On a good trail, he can hop that distance in two stops, but reports of very deep snow,  the tendency of the Yukon River, a giant refusing to be tamed, to dismiss a trail with a down river wind of constantly swirling snow.  He ponders,  “I could do it in three runs…..” but that would require extra food.  His mind is swirling like the snow on the Yukon.   Then, as if to settle it all, we divert the conversation to his overwhelming notoriety.  “I have learned to say no.  Sometimes the media just calls me for a statement because I am easy to reach.  Somebody else can answer the same questions.”  He is a very focused individual, 

 Distill the Iditarod to one idea and here it is.   The object is to travel effortlessly, never having ever exceeded a physiological threshold.  Dallas stops, turns, seeming to have solved the problem.  “If I have to, we’ll stop ten miles short of Ruby and rest.   If the snow is deep, the team will be exercising different muscles.”   He continues to stop and sign posters, politely saying hello to his fans, and talks to a little girl who has told him she is mushing.  “Do you want to run the Iditarod?”  Not at all perplexed, she replies convincingly, “Yes.”   Comically, her father seems surprised.

 

JOhn Baker, the Kotzebue Champ, recruits the governor of Alaska to ride the runners of his second sled.

 

 

I think I would not be disputed.  Alaska is an uncommonly egalitarian society.   The citizens of the great State of Alaska and its dignitaries mix with uncommon familiarity.   Iditarod Board president Andy Baker and I met Senator Lisa Murkowski and Governor Bill Walker in a big crowd of fans at the start line.  The two were formally announced and the crowd responded with some exuberant yells and applause for these popular political entities.   

Senator Murkowski mixed with the crowd, also taking time to talk to mushers, handlers, and their Iditarider passengers.   Gov. Walker, wearing a classic Alaskan marten fur hat, moved among the Iditarod as 64 mushers exited every two minutes from the start chute.  I can say that both Senator Murkowski and Governor Walker were wonderfully congenial and sincerely enjoying the Iditarod celebration.

Meanwhile, John Baker, Bib number 65,  and his crew of handlers were busy harnessing a twelve dog team which would pull the lead sled of John and a second sled in tow.  The second sled is controlled by a handler who provides more security and braking power while coursing through the streets of Anchorage.  Governor Walker is the handler scheduled to manage the second sled for John Baker, the Iditarod Champ from Kotzebue, Alaska.

I talked to John Baker about an hour before his scheduled start time and he was slightly amused by Gov. Walker’s mushing prepartion.  He had arrived sans parka and suitable gear.  I thought it was a great work of spontaneity.  Quickly,  a parka was found and warm pair of arctic coveralls transformed Alaska’s state governor into a legitimate contender.

Team 65 and a regiment of  husky handlers arrived in the start chute two and half hours after the first team left.  John and Gov. Walker secured a little boy, somewhat unsure about his adventure, into the basket of the governor’s sled.   Moments later, the train of 12 dogs, Champ JOhn Baker and Governor Walker were travelling down 4th avenue, a rooster tail of snow from the brakes waving like a white flag.

 

A special appearance.  4x Champ Lance Mackey encourages his brother Jason Mackey and the Iditarod pack

 

I had a chance to spend some time with great friends John Baker and Lance Mackey.

Lance Mackey, the indestructible and INCREDIBLE 4x champ, stopped by John’s parking spot.  He had just sent his brother Jason Mackey out on the trail.    It was a special time to reminisce for a while with great friends.

Lance is not running the Iditarod this year, but he is still on a characteristically hard work schedule.  He was in Anchorage for the day but was driving back to his kennel outside of Fairbanks to attend to his adventure business.  His hands have been ravaged by the effects of radiation treatment for cancer, but he is hopeful he can design some strategies that may enable him to race next year.  “I have a great team and the personal drive, I just need to get my body in shape.”

Lance and I wrote a book together entitled “The Lance Mackey Story.”   It is at one time a mushing story of an incredible 4x champ, but also a chronicle of a bold adventurer who confronted cancer and his own personal uncertainties.  Lance has inspired his fans with a resolve to own your station in life and grow with it.   AS an experience, I have to say constructing that book also affected me and my view of life.

Initially,  Lance and I joined forces just because of our common mushing experience.  I was the first musher to win both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest, but in separate years.  Lance however, not only won the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest in the same year, but managed to win the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest four times.  The accomplishment is astonishing.  

However, as we joined in writing his life story, it quickly became obvious that his personal resolve when confronted with cancer was probably his best story.   Later, never suspecting that his story was so powerful, I had my own adventure with cancer and can say that his sphere of influence is a guiding star.

John Baker has leveraged his Iditarod Championship of 2011 in many ways to serve his alaska community and to provide young people a map to success.  Expansive, generous, always happy for his friend’s successes, you can tell that Lance and I get a kick out of the humor of our great friend John Baker.

 

What’s up with Tomorrow?  Mushers and Iditarod entourage are travelling 350 miles north to Fairbanks and the Monday Start on the ice of the Chena River.

 

Flash, flash, flash  just got a call from Iditarod veteran Bill Cotter in Nenana.  A rough trail, compromised with three feet of loose snow blown about by winds on Minto Flats is in to Old Minto.  No trail, however, exists from Old Minto to Manley, according to my first hand reports.  More as race time nears!!!