IDITAROD: Special Coverage from APRN

Back in the Alaska gold rush era when dog sled teams played an important role in transporting freight and mail through the remote stretches of Alaska, mushers relied on a series of roadhouses between their village destinations. Word was sent ahead to the roadhouses that a musher and team were on the trail, and a kerosene lamp was lit and hung outside the roadhouse. This served as a signal that a team or teams were somewhere out on the trail. The lamp was not extinguished until the musher safely reached his destination. Beginning in 1986, the Iditarod honored that tradition by hanging a “Red Lantern,” on the burled arch in Nome. Each year the lantern is lit at the beginning of the race and remains lit while there are still teams on the trail. Once the last team crosses the line, that musher then extinguishes the lantern, signifying the official end of the race. Thus, the last musher in a race is called the “Red Lantern” musher.

Dr Ellen Halverson who practices psychiatry in Wasilla guided her team under the famed burled arch in Nome at 2:56 this morning and ceremoniously extinguished the red lantern. Lead dog Cosmo pulled Halverson across the finish line in 16 days, 11 hours and 56 minutes. This is the third time that Halverson has attempted the Iditarod, but the first time she has finished. Her finishing time was good enough for 58th place, but she was only 14 minutes behind 57th place finisher Donald Smidt. Had it not been for a broken sled Halverson suffered before reaching the Elim checkpoint, she may well have passed Smidt. She struggled into Elim 2 minutes after Donald Smidt but ended up spending 9 hours at the checkpoint repairing her sled.

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In a media advisory dated March 17, the Iditarod Trail Committee (ITC) provided notification that Ramy Brooks had been disqualified from the 2007 Iditarod Sled Dog Race. An ITC 3-person panel investigated reports from witnesses in Golovin regarding alleged abusive actions by Brooks to his dog team while traveling through that town on the way to the White Mountain checkpoint. Separately the Brooks team incurred a dog death to a 3-year old female named Kate between the White Mountain and Safety checkpoints. According to Race Marshal Mark Nordman, he had no reason to believe there was a correlation between this incident and the death of Kate.

The death of Kate was the subject of two earlier ITC media releases affecting the Brooks finish position. Initially Brooks was not given a finish time when he crossed the finish line in Nome. Later he was given a finish time that dropped him three places in the standings. In the initial media release, Nordman explained that the finishing time would be decided upon evaluation of the resulting necropsy on Kate. The media release further explains,

“Had this occurred at a checkpoint on the trail Ramy may have been required to have stayed in that checkpoint for up to eight hours.”

Understandably, this statement caused some confusion since the rule applies to a dog death whether it happens at a checkpoint or not. Nordman later provided clarification stating,

“…the volunteers at the [Safety] checkpoint told Brooks to go to Nome. He did. Afterward, the vets called Nordman to tell him what had happened.”

Thus when Nordman did provide a finishing time for Brooks as noted in the second media release, it reflected the additional time Brooks would have been held in Safety had the evaluation of the dog death occurred there instead of Nome. The initial necropsy failed to find a cause for Kate’s death and further studies including histopathology and cultures have been ordered.

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