Book Traces the First Ten Years of the Iditarod–Iditarod The First Ten Years  An Anthology Compiled by the Old Iditarod Gang

Book Review by Martha Dobson

If  you’re fascinated by this race, then you need to read Iditarod The First Ten Years. Dedicated to the volunteers who dreamed this race into being and to the volunteers who keep it going, this anthology of history, stories, photographs, dogs, pilots, artwork, music, veterinarians, HAM operators, mushers, trail breakers and people from Anchorage to Nome takes the reader out to Cripple, on the Yukon, in the Cessnas and Super Cubs, at the checkpoints cooking Krusteaz pancakes, making one say, ‘ “Man, I wish I could have been there!” ‘

The Old Iditarod Gang, a group of people who worked with the race intimately in various ways in its early years and who have a passion for all things Alaskan, is responsible for this new book, published in late 2014 and delivered to enthusiastic readers in early 2015. The Gang’s goal, to set down the history of the race’s first ten years, is admirably achieved in the book. Chronologically, it tells of Joe Redington Sr’s dream of a sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome to recognize and commemorate the role of mushing sled dog teams in Alaska’s history. Firsthand, first person accounts of the efforts to start the race, to raise the money, to find the long fallen into disuse gold mining trail from Seward to Nome, to organize the people not only at the beginning and end, but in between, too impress one with their efforts, and successes. Names are named, their photos are there.

Collected and recorded, anecdotes and sidebar stories throughout the book located on just the right pages fill the reader with the sense of being on the scene, some 40 years ago. Volunteers’ and mushers’ personal experiences paint the background and fill in the composition of the first ten years. The sled dogs, their history as well as individual dogs, trot through the book. Mushers, sometimes racing, sometimes just surviving, tell their stories as if it happened yesterday, so clearly it remains in their minds. Campfires cooked on, tea drunk, village families stayed with, fellow competitors run with just so both could “make it”; it’s all here.

And while the race has changed from 1973 to 2015, it stays the same. The long trail, the cold, Mother Nature’s quirks of no snow to unrelenting snow, the question is there…”Can I do it?”

The Old Iditarod Gang: Al Crane, Jo Crane, Frank Flavin, Frank Gerjevic, Raine Hall Rawlins, Gail Phillips, Walt Phillips, Rob Stapleton, Jon Van Zyle, Jona Van Zyle and Anne Patch Winters. The team also includes writers Joe May, Slim Randles, Tim Jones, Shelley Gill, Rod Perry and race photographers Bill Devine, Richard Burmeister, Jim Brown, Jeff Schultz, Fran Durner and many, many more. Tricia Brown is the editor.