Behind the Scenes of the Iditarod: Part I

By Isabel Rhodes

One doesn’t have to follow the sport of dog mushing to know what the Iditarod is. I’ve met people from the East Coast, Sweden, Germany, and the UK who watch the notorious race from behind their computer screens, and every year, thousands of fans congregate at the starting line. However, few could comprehend the amount of effort, money, and planning that comes before even getting to the weather-beaten, moose-infested, 1,000-mile trail. This year, I got a close glimpse of the Iditarod mania that happens before the race starts because my dad, Will Rhodes, is running it.

Before we get into glamorous banquet dinners and men in sparkling purple blazers, like any athlete, the dogs and their musher must train before competing. Training the dogs starts on ATVs during crisp autumn mornings as soon as it’s cool enough outside to run them. When snow hits the ground, they’re able to get on sleds and go on long camping trips on the Denali Highway, Nenana flats, and the White Mountains. 

All photos by Isabel Rhodes

Aside from miles of training put on the dogs and mushers, there are the miles of organizing that are an actual test of mental strength. The amount of supplies that need to be gathered, like gear and vet papers, would bore you to read about, but it is necessary to run the race.  

Mushers must pack drop bags filled with dog food and supplies shipped to twenty checkpoints along the Iditarod trail. For the mushers, drop bags are stuffed with dry gear to change into, extra headlights, and toothbrushes unless you don’t mind letting your teeth rot for ten days. But more importantly, the drop bags carry a menu for the dogs: kibble, rice, beef, fish, liver, chicken, and fat to snack on. The dogs also get extra gear like fresh booties and fleece blankets to cozy up while resting.

It’s funny that a sport involving so many hours of chopping meat and inspecting the consistency of dog poop could be so glamorized. And yet, I witnessed the romantic stares of adoring fans just this last weekend that I had grown up hearing stories about. One I find particularly amusing is about my Uncle, Lance Mackey, who had women ask him to sign their breasts on various occasions. He would do it, holding the pen with missing fingers lost to freezing temperatures. 

I flew into Anchorage from Fairbanks two days before the race for the banquet dinner. I met my folks at a seedy hotel where they could keep twenty sled dogs and one German Shepard (my pet, Sleepy Joe). As it turns out, few places are keen on housing twenty dogs, even if they live outside. I have to say: after I walked into my parent’s hotel room and was assaulted by the sight and smell of raw beef dethawing in a bucket, I realized that mushers aren’t exactly ideal guests.

The banquet was held downtown inside of the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center. Up several flights of stairs, the banquet sat in a large event room on the second floor. I passed a bar service and several fundraising tables pressed against the wall of a massive hallway before walking through a pair of double doors. I was met with a sea of heads and a wall of conversation here. I was characteristically running late, so people were already eating, bent over their steaks and lemon cakes. Silver pitchers of black coffee sat on each table next to small white mugs. Dog mushers live on little cups of coffee, whether glass or Styrofoam. 

I floated through the packed room, overwhelmed, swerving around the circular tables, bloating the room until I saw my party. Introduction videos of the mushers played off screens hanging down from the ceiling while a fast-speaking man called out rising numbers on a stage. He was running auctions, the sequins of his blazer flaring as he jumped around the stage. Finally, someone would win a mushing tour on a glacier or a few nights' get-away at a luxury stay. 

It was comically easy to tell who was a musher and who wasn’t. There were folks in classic musher-core outfits: boots, hoodies, and scraggly hair spilling out of hats. Next to them, finely dressed men in suits and women in fur coats and sparkling heels. These fans help fund the race when they buy seats to watch the evening take place—a plate costs one hundred twenty-five dollars per person. Also, it’s the fans who participate in the auctions. 

During the dinner, my dad recounted the events he’d had to attend since arriving in Anchorage two days before. There was the mushers meet-n-greet, where the mushers sat at long tables and met with lines of people asking for their posters to be signed. He was shocked by the floods of people, but he really hadn’t been expecting the tiny old woman who hobbled to the front of the line. With tears turning her eyes glassy, she told him about her recently diseased service dog, Sebastian, whom she called the love of her life. As people behind her tried to push past, she described how the little dog had a violent heart attack and died in seizing convulsions before her. My dad was stunned, unsure why she was telling him this. 

She explained that she had purchased a medallion through the Iditarod website and chose him to carry it down the trail. It will be his last journey, she had said. No pressure, Dad, but you had better get to the finish line for Sebastian if there was no one else. But really, how healing it must be for her to imagine Sebastian on the trail with the team. While I found much of the fan behavior silly since no other race gets it as much as the Iditarod, this story made me soften. 

The following day, I went to downtown Anchorage, where the eleven-mile ceremonial start is held. This is a faux start for people to come out and see all of the mushers easily, and then the next day, the real start takes place in Willow. 

The streets had to be doused in snow brought in the day before for the sleds to make it over the pavement, and hundreds of volunteers had to be wrangled for everything to go smoothly. While my parents tried to quietly focus on getting the dogs out and setting up the sled, countless people came up to pelt them with questions. Mostly, are you excited? But also mind-numbing ones such as, do you know all their names? Later, my mom laughed, saying she could recognize the dogs by their barks without even seeing them, let alone remembering their names. I also cringed as some strangers petted the dogs without asking and even called doggie! with their phone cameras pointed at a shy, though massive, boy named Ox. 

On a lighter note, a central part of the ceremonial start is the second sled rider and the IditaRider. To be an IditaRider, people bid to win a ride in the sled basket. The auction starts at 1,200 dollars. My dad’s IditaRider was a young woman from California who had to stand in for her mother, who had gotten a bad burn on a shoulder and couldn’t go. She was terrified of what her mom had gotten her into, but her terror turned into a thrill during the run.

I rode the second sled, tied to the first sled by a long rope, and got whipped around the corners, cutting through Anchorage. We glided above highways across overpasses and swooped down under tunnels. Every aspect of it was surreal. I was handed beaded necklaces from groups of people dressed in shiny metallic snowsuits and had boxes of Girl Scout cookies thrown at my sled bag. The sea of faces and cameras pointed at us while the dogs barreled past was nothing short of unbelievable.

The next day, the actual race began. The starting line was on Willow Lake in Willow, a town a few hours outside Anchorage. It was just as chaotic as the prior days, with cameras and interviewers cropping up at every corner, and it was a relief to send the team down the trail. Off they went, Sebastian’s medallion safely in my dad’s pocket and sixteen incredible dogs in front of him.