“Mary Gooder of Wasilla was kind enough to sketch the figures on the page representing the feeling and emotions of the 1976 Iditarod mushers and their dogs because of the numerous snowstorms that kept them snowbound in various checkpoints along the trail.

For instance, many of the dog mushers were jammed in at Placerville for as long as two days, until mushers snowshoed a trail to connect with the trail being broken out from Ruby by snowmachiners.

When the trail makers connected, the mushers ‘broke out’ like water through a broken dam.

The Iditarod dogs are highly trained and conditioned.  Enforced idleness often doesn’t suit them any more than it does the mushers.

Perhaps this is the way the dogs felt.”

From the 1977 Iditarod Trail Annual

Click the image above  for a larger view of the sketch.  (The words on the side of the sketch on the page from the scanned copy of the Iditarod Trail Annual, appear on the side of this page so you can easily read what was originally written.)

Diane Johnson