The world’s longest human-powered winter race is underway in Alaska. The Iditarod Invitational started on Sunday at Knik Lake. 46 competitors are skiing, biking or walking the trail this year.
Lacie Grosvold, KUAC - Fairbanks
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Allen Moore won the Copper Basin 300 sled dog race this afternoon. He beat out front-runner Sigrid Ekran of Fairbanks, who took a wrong turn during the last leg of the race and came in fourth. Iditarod and Yukon Quest winner Lance Mackey of Fairbanks came in second and Willow’s Linwood Fiedler took third.
Dan Bross, KUAC - Fairbanks and Amy Bracken, KCHU - Valdez
Hi folks. For the record, we are putting this site into a kind of “sleeper” mode for a while, as the season has come to an end and the controversies following the race have now run their course. The existing site content will remain available, of course. But as part of quieting down, we’re closing the commenting system for the time being.
We only expect one more story in the next month — the 2008 race signups, expected on June 30th. Beyond that, the race doesn’t really start gearing up (in a public or newsworthy way) until later in the fall. APRN’s plans for Iditarod news coverage in 2008 are not yet developed.
Meanwhile, if you would like to send in a comment or question, you can e-mail us anytime. Thanks for stopping by the site, and be sure to watch for some major web changes over at APRN in July 2007.
Oh, and one more note… For those wanting to continue discussion about the race, though we have closed our commenting system for the season, there’s always the option of starting your own web site or blog about the race. There are many free blogging services out there, though personally I’m partial to WordPress. If you do startup a blog about the Iditarod, we’d like to hear about it — just drop us a line when you’re up and running.
Canadian filmmaker Becky Bristow’s documentary Doggone Addiction will be showing in Anchorage soon. The film follows three women mushers running the Yukon Quest sled dog race.
Bristow says the women varied in age and experience and their endurance went well beyond physical strength.
(Listen to the attached audio.)
Doggone Addiction will be shown at the Bear Tooth Theaterpub in Anchorage on April 5, 2007.
Here’s a fascinating project at the Bering Strait School District (BSSD) out in Unalakleet, Alaska. Students create original video programs and make them available online, including some Iditarod coverage hosted by student news anchors. They even green-screen themselves into a fancy-looking news studio.
Sure, it’s not Brian Williams on NBC, but shoot — he never covers news in Unalakleet anyway, and how much Anna Nicole Smith coverage can you really stand? I’d much rather see the recent interview one of the students did with a snowmachiner on the Iron Dog race trail…
The kids have a video podcast, web pages and more. Here are some starting points:
- Student Broadcasting Team (SBT) web site
- SBT Video Podcast
- IditaProject web site
- Iditarod Media Gallery at the IditaProject site
- Bering Strait School District (BSSD) web site
I’m looking forward to what these kids do in the future. Perhaps they can help APRN turn into a video-based news service!
Want to follow the planes and pilots shuttling dogs, gear and people to and from the checkpoints? Be sure to check out the Iditarod Air Force web site.
Don’t miss their unique GPS-based tracking system — very cool. It plots the positions and movements of the various planes on a Google Earth map in near-real time.
Update: Even cooler, click on specific pilots in the menu to the left of the Google Earth image on the tracking page. It shows you all their positions over an extended period of time. Slick!
Looking for more candid shots from this year’s race? We’ve got a few (simple) galleries to share.
- Nancy Walter was kind enough to share her photos with us.
- Will Kuhlman got a special tour of the ceremonial race start in Anchorage and shared his snapshots.
- Ellen Lockyer, APRN’s trail reporter, also took some shots at the start and restart. We’re hoping to collect more from her as she chases the teams across Alaska.
UPDATE: Repointed links to our new gallery sub-site. The photos are the same, but are presented differently.
After watching the 2007 race start in downtown Anchorage Saturday morning, be sure to tune in to KAKM Channel 7 Saturday night (March 3rd) at 8:00 p.m. KAKM will be airing last year’s official race program, Iditarod 2006: Nature’s Turn to Dance. In just under 2 hours you can watch the dogs, sleds, mushers and crews make last year’s 1,100-mile journey, and watch Jeff King arrive under the burled arch in Nome.
This broadcast will be hosted by, among others, our very own Will Peterson, a long-time Iditarod supporter and volunteer who knows the race, the trail and the mushers like no one else. Shortly after the broadcast, in fact, Will is heading out with the “trail sweepers,” chasing the dog teams from Wasilla all the way to Nome, picking up stragglers, scratchers and all the gear and materials left behind.
We’re hoping Will can stay in touch with us while he’s on the trail, giving us exclusive insider views of the Iditarod world. Stay warm, Will!
It may not involve howling dogs, but there’s another long-distance winter race in Alaska named after the Iditarod diptheria run. And this year, an Anchorage cyclist has set a new course record racing across the wilderness from Knik to McGrath. It’s the annual Iditarod Trail Invitational, a humans-only challenge for bikers, hikers and skiers with a deep sense of adventure.
Reported by Dan Bross, KUAC
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