In the hearts and minds of many today, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race commemorates the achievement of man and animal, the challenge between sled dog mushers, the extreme northern elements, the endurance across hundreds of miles of ice, snow, bitter cold, biting wind. And yes, it commemorates that diphtheria epidemic of 1925, where, in the far distant gold rush town of Nome, a virus was threatening to annihilate the lives of young children. In addition to this, a Norwegian gold miner turned musher, Leonard Seppala, is often cited.
You see, Seppala mushed his team close to 100 miles from Nome toward the southern Seward Peninsula village of Shaktoolik, where he met a local Inupiat musher Henry Ivanoff. Just outside of this humble Native Alaskan hamlet, Ivanoff passed on the vital serum anti-toxin to Seppala. As the Norwegian musher headed north back toward Nome, the temperatures reached -30f, the gale force winds lowering the wind chill to close to -85 degrees!
West of Golovin, along the coast, a local musher Charlie Olson passed on the serum to another Norwegian, Gunnar Kaasen at a place named Bluff, which lies just east of Safety Sound. Interestingly, in many ways, Safety seems, especially in winter, a euphemism. For you see, here is where the coastal winds often are the most severe and vicious. Just a few years ago, musher Jeff King, who was confidently on his way to his 5th Iditarod win, hit this “blow hole” during a violent storm and he and his team could do nothing but hunker down, fortunately, next to a pile of drift wood. (This drift wood, most of it comes from the vast and long Yukon River, where it makes it way north all across the Bering Sea coast from St. Michael to Nome to the tip of the Cape Prince of Wales).
Kaasen, who completed the last leg of the Serum Run, drove 13 dogs across this vicious storm led by a dog named Balto. Today, a variety of children’s books commemorating this Siberian Husky can be found in your local libraries and if you have the time, you can visit a statue of this famous husky in New York City’s Central Park!
To be continued...