HAVE YOU HEARD _ If you haven’t brought the Junior Iditarod into your classroom, this is something that you need to start doing! The Junior Iditarod is held the weekend before the Iditarod for mushers who are 14-17 years old. Especially as grade school teachers, I think it’s important for our students to see what kids (the same age or not much older!) are accomplishing at such young ages. This year there were 14 mushers who ran in the race. While there are many similarities between the races, there are also several differences. Here’s a few fun/fast facts about the Junior Iditarod:
-Trail length is about 150 miles total, but the mushers only travel halfway on the first day.
-At the halfway point, they have a mandatory rest period of 10 hours before moving on to the finish line.
-The arrivals/departures are staggered over several hours at the halfway point.
-The mushers can send drop bags ahead of time to the halfway point.
-There is a list of mandatory gear that the mushers must have at all times.
PUPDATES _ The race this year was moved to Tolsona Lake due to a lack of snow in the Wasilla area. Once I arrived at the race start, I helped place tracking devices on the musher’s sleds. The tracker first gets placed inside a dog bootie, then attached to the front of the dog sled. Shortly before the race started, I was told that I was going to ride out on a snow machine with the trail breakers ahead of the teams. The purpose of the trail breakers is to make sure that the trail is safe for the mushers. They were making sure that the trail was properly marked (trail markers are placed differently at times to alert mushers of the trail ahead or which direction to go) and that there weren’t any obstacles in the trail.
At the halfway point for the first day (¼ of the total trail), I stayed with a vet and some trail crew as teams passed by. We could see the teams drop down onto the lake before reaching us. The dogs looked fantastic and definitely ready to keep running! After all the teams went through, we took another snow machine to the official halfway point for the race at Lake Louise. At one point, I became the Teacher OFF the Trail when I fell off the snow machine! We were going around a turn and I was convinced the snow machine was going to tip over, so I bailed ahead of time. A few bruises later and another story to add to my growing list of Alaskan Adventures! It was incredible watching the young mushers care for their dogs that evening and prepare to camp outside for the night next to their team.
Day 2 of the race was just as exciting. Emily Robinson left Lake Louise around 2:30 am in the lead position. The teams all took the same trail that they did the day before, just in the opposite direction back to Tolsona Lake. Around 9am, Emily made Junior Iditarod history when she came in 1st place for the fourth time. She is the only junior musher to win at the age of 14, 15, 16, and 17. All of the young mushers are amazing, but I really enjoyed listening to Emily and watching the way she interacted with her dogs, her family, and others at the race. From the moment her team was coming to the finish line and you could hear her telling her dogs “good dogs!”, to the moments she waited for the other mushers to come in to wish them congratulations, I was overall extremely impressed. I loved watching the joy of each family member when their musher finished and the way each musher loves on their dogs after checking in with the race officials.
Lesson Ideas _ Aside from researching the race and each individual musher, I recommend looking deep into the comparisons between the Junior Iditarod and the Iditarod. Start by comparing the official rules from the Junior Iditarod and the Iditarod. Have students compare race distances, course difficulty, location, performance and times, race history, cost to participate, mandatory equipment and the awards that follow. Just like the patch on the back of Emily Robinson’s parka, the Junior Iditarod is definitely blazing the way for future generations!
Questions? Ideas? Send me a message at emailtheteacher@iditarod.com!
