The race is corporate, as compared to the Quest, and the Trail Committee serves the interests of its corporate sponsors to encourage them to continue supporting the race. It isn’t a sporting event, it’s a product. There would have been additional costs involved with moving the start, and corporations don’t like increasing costs.

I hope it isn’t going to be a disaster, but I’m not happy about the way things look at the moment.

The Committee seems to swing with a big stick most of the time, but perhaps the racing teams have more power than they realize. They just don’t use it, and I’m not really expecting it to happen this time, just thinking out loud here.

And Bryan, I agree. It’s the dogs I really worry about. I wonder what that says about me…and you…

I think it’s the fact that the dogs are so eager to follow their humans because they trust them, and it’s that betrayal of complete and utter trust we would all find appalling. For the most part though, they seem to take that trust seriously.

The trail committee should have had the trail reviewed by at least the previous winners who know it very well.

It takes years to get a good team together, and that is a lot of time and money invested. You don’t throw it away on one race. If the snow isn’t there, you’ll get paw and leg injuries that will make it pointless to continue. It is the beginning of the race that is so bad.

There is an endurance race for snowmachines called the Irondog, and the racers are all saying that the winner will be the one who spends the least amount of time fixing their machine. Those machines break when there is no snow. The tracks are lot like the chains on a chainsaw, but there is no automatic oiling system. Normally the snow lubes the track and keeps it cool. Without the snow, the tracks overheat and seize up. If you aren’t quick on the clutch, the engine goes with it.

It could start snowing tomorrow, making the issue moot, but I don’t see that on the weather maps.

Races have been cancelled before because of bad conditions. You can’t fight the weather. They could also compromise and move the start to Nikolai, which is beyond the major problems.

They need snow and consistently cold weather until the start of the race, and I don’t see either is the forecasts I’ve seen. I hope I’m wrong.

It would have eliminated the Happy Valley Steps, Rainy Pass, Dalzell Gorge, the Glacier, and the Farewell Burn, but the race committee decided not to change the trail. So, with little snow on the lower trail and all of those obstacles I see a race with a lot of injuries to dogs, mushers, and sleds.

The route from Fairbanks would have been the Chena River to the Tanana River to the Yukon River down to Ruby – Cold, windy, and fast. No worries about how you get to the bottom of Dalzell Gorge without snow to help you brake.

OTOH, the little settlements depend on the income they get from the Iditarod to survive, so the choice isn’t simple. All they can do is hope for snow, and the cold weather to continue.

The Iditarod starts in a couple of weeks and they are talking about shifting the start to Fairbanks because of the poor trail conditions around Anchorage. That really will be a ‘Northern Route’.

Like you said, they’re running the equivalent of four marathons each day, so once *stuff* starts to happen, I guess it’s hard to recover.