With a surplus of celebration — and a strange deficit of the winter weather normally expected for southcentral Alaska in March — the 43rd running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race began on Saturday morning in the Great Land’s biggest city, Anchorage.
Per usual, the first leg of the Last Great Race was high on festivity but purely ceremonial. In 30-second intervals, each of the race’s competitors mushed their teams down Anchorage’s 4th Avenue in what is, effectively, an off-the-clock parade fueled by sled dogs and their often-famous human leaders. Iditarod luminaries and fan favorites like Aliy Zirkle, Jeff King, and John Baker waved to race fans while their dogs kicked up flurries of snow underfoot. The frequently-bright garb of the mushers made it a parade not only of sled dogs and humans but of colors, too: from the highlighter yellow of Ken Anderson’s parka to the distinctive shade of hot pink DeeDee Jonrowe has made her own.
With Anchorage’s recent thaws and unseasonable warmth — and its slush in the streets, as depicted within our photo gallery below — the Ceremonial Start will be a contrast with today’s (Monday) Iditarod restart in more ways than one. While the Anchorage fun fades into recent memory, the Fairbanks restart is the beginning of business for the trail competitors. (And, it’s about 30 degrees colder, too — more of what most of the sled dogs will be used to, not to mention their human teammates.)
Stay tuned for our first interviews from Iditarod 2015 — and, on KNOM’s AM and FM signals (96.1 FM, 780 AM), our daily Iditarod Updates at 10am, 2pm, and 6pm.
Our photo gallery from Anchorage’s Ceremonial Start is below. (Click any image to open the photo lightbox/carousel. Credit for all photos: Matthew Smith, KNOM.)
