Dog sled racing can trace its origin’s back to the Alaska gold rush era when dog sled teams played an important role in transporting freight and mail through the remote stretches of Alaska. Those 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 to serve 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.
The trail to an Iditarod finish in Nome has been anything but easy for 62 year old Deborah Bicknell of Auke Bay Alaska. Born in New Hampshire, her 50 years of dog sled racing experience began with a race when she was 11 and pulled by the family pet - a Saint Bernard. She later gained sprint race experience with New England and Lakes region sled dogs but had to put the sport on hold when she moved to southeast Alaska with her husband in 1981 given the lack of consistent snow cover in that region. After they purchased some land in the Yukon territory for maintaining and training dogs several years later, she was able to take up the sport again this time concentrating on distance racing, and by 2000 she finished the 1000 mile Yukon Quest winning the red lantern award for that race.
She would try the Yukon Quest again in 2002 and 2003 but ended up scratching both years. She decide to retire after that, but by 2006, she changed her mind setting her sights on the Iditarod after observing that year’s race by flying to each checkpoint. She ultimately decided to enter the 2007 Iditarod race, which turned out to be the adventure of her life.
After waiting out a storm at the Rainy Point checkpoint while the rest of the teams pushed on, she found very little in the way of trail markers when she returned to the trail. She incorrectly ended up on Ptarmigan Pass following tracks laid down by the Irondog snowmobile race held prior to the Iditarod. Searchers worried about her spotted her from air on that pass the next day. The substantial detour along with spending the night hunkered down in a makeshift camp drying out from gear soaked from overflow had her team checking into Rohn 1 and 1/2 days later and a full 12 hours after the last musher had left that checkpoint. That ordeal left her no choice but to scratch and a renewed commitment to retirement. However, her husband signed her up for the 2008 race and soon she decided he was right and prepared in earnest for the race.
Bicknell is the winner of this years Iditarod Red Lantern award but is already on record stating that this will indeed be her last race. “I’m retiring after this no matter what happens,” she said, adding that some friends and family don’t necessarily believe her. “They say they’ve all heard that before.”
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