Lew Freedman
Martin Buser is signed up for his 39th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which at 1,000 miles and perhaps an average of 10 days at a time, means he has invested more than a year of his life standing on the back of sled runners mushing across the historic trail.
This is something he never could have imagined so long ago when he arrived in Alaska from Switzerland as a dog handling apprentice for the late Earl Norris in Willow.
Or having two sons, Rohn and Nikolai, named after checkpoints on the trail. Or taking the oath of American citizenship at the finish line under the burled arch in Nome.
Not by specific design, the four-time champion has out-lasted all of the other kings and queens of his generation to be the last musher standing for the 50th annual celebration race beginning this weekend.
Since it was born in 1973, the Iditarod brain-child of Joe Redington Sr., is really just 49, but one can say it is 50 in dog years. Buser at 63 has more candles on his cake than the race he first entered in 1980, but says of this milestone event, “I wouldn’t miss it.”
Martin Buser
When the short list of Iditarod royalty is compiled, Buser, of Big Lake, is one of those special achievers who is casually mentioned by first name with all Alaskans knowing whom is being discussed. There is Rick (as in Swenson) and Dallas (as in Seavey), who are record-holders as five-time champions and with Dallas this year chasing the chance to stand alone. Then comes Martin, Jeff (King), Lance (Mackey), Doug (Swingley) and Susan (Butcher).
A half-century of long-distance mushing, something that did not even exist until 1973, intriguingly has been dominated by a mixed group of individual and family dynasties and has turned the biggest winners into the state’s biggest sports heroes.
The iffy, can-it-be-done creation of long ago morphed into Alaska’s signature sporting competition, perhaps the only event that all citizens, from Anchorage to Fairbanks to Kotzebue to Juneau can agree on each March as a unifying special occasion, making all residents feel just a little bit more Alaskan.
At its heart, the Iditarod was founded and developed as an homage to Alaska history, to a throwback way of living when huskies were an essential mode of transportation, and when the living was hard and one had to be hardy to endure it.
Also, over the years, the Iditarod has had a knack of being self-renewing by sparking fresh interest and support by regularly presenting Alaskans something new to applaud. The very first energizing achievement was proving dogs could race 1,000 miles. Then periodically Natives won to electrify Bush communities and their base of believers. The tales of old men and the trail, much like “The Old Man and the Sea” captivated, Joe Redington at 80 and Norman Vaughan with his “Norm To Nome” bumper stickers even older. And yes, we all learned, a woman could win. Could a comeback kid overcome obstacles? Absolutely. Would Swenson’s win record last forever? Maybe, maybe not.
Through coincidental or just-right timing, along came somebody to show the world what he or she could do and inspire sub-groups of fans within the majority. Over its half century, the Iditarod has had it all.
There is a boldness in setting out on the trail at all, for anyone who dares face Alaska’s harsh elements, the howling winds, the blizzards blowing up from nowhere, the temperatures dipping to the unfathomable. Sometimes the inspiration came not from a winner, but from a Red Lantern winner, the musher who persevered for a belt buckle in last place. The champs were cheered, the plodders more resembling those on the sidelines who understood just how challenging it is to get all of the way from here to there.
###
There was a mini-Iditarod in 1967, something cooked up by Dorothy Paige to celebrate the centennial of Alaska’s purchase from Russia. This was a 56-mile race.
At the time the mushing world revolved around the Fur Rendezvous in Anchorage and the North American in Fairbanks, two stage races with legs of 20-to-30 miles. But Joe Redington believed the husky was a powerful working dog which could run much farther. Redington floated the idea of a much longer race.
‘Father of the Iditarod’ Joe Redington Sr.
He went around talking up this plan, receiving mixed reactions. But Redington was a full-scale dreamer, a slender man small of stature, with a lop-sided grin, but with more determination than many realized. He was the kind of guy who when he crashed a small plane in the wild rather than seek help used duct tape to repair damage, then cut down trees to make a baby escape runway.
Redington promoted a race to Nome with a purse of $50,000 an unheard-of prize. His own son Joee asked if this scheme was going to so embarrass the family and he would have to “change his name to John Paul Jones.”
Dick Mackey, an original entrant, who aided with the initial organization, described the scene at the Tudor Track starting line as loved ones gathered around wondering if they would ever see their relations again.
Everyone lived to tell about it. And over 50 years everyone has always lived to tell about it, though there have been many close calls for the humans who became lost, injured, and had to be rescued. There have been dog deaths along the way, too. No one, but no one ever said completing the Iditarod Trail was easy.
It took just over 20 days, nearly three weeks, for a champion to emerge. A miner named Dick Wilmarth took the $12,000 first prize and never entered again, saying why should he bother since he had won it.
George Attla, who won 10 Rondy titles and eight North Americans, placed fourth. It was probably Attla who said the first, and other early Iditarods, were more camping trips than races.
George Attla
Dan Seavey of Seward, now 84, was another pioneer of the trail, finishing third. The patriarch of the Seavey clan, grandfather of Dallas and father of three-time champion Mitch, had to get extra time off from his school-teacher job to run
“For most people in that race,” Seavey said recently, “it was a matter of getting there. I would go, ‘Somebody’s got a fire going up ahead.’ You sat around and shot the breeze. I made lifelong friendships with Joe Redington, Dick Mackey and Herbie Nayokpuk through the race. It was real special times.”
Seavey, who wrote an account of the planning and racing of 1973 called “The First Great Race,” wondered if the Iditarod had staying power because it had to rely so heavily on volunteers.
“I’ll give it five years,” Seavey said then. “I’m glad I was wrong.”
Dan himself raced the second one, in 1997 for the 25th anniversary, in 2001 and 2012. Mitch has three victories, owns the speed record for the course of 8 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes, 13 seconds and is the oldest winner at 57. He could change that this year. Then there is Dallas, who tied Swenson’s win mark in 2021.
“Just think if I had taken up stamp collecting,” Dan Seavey said of what the family business might have been. He has traveled to Nome so often to see relations triumph, “I should have bought a condo up there or something.”
Ironically, Joe Redington, who so desperately wanted to do so, couldn’t compete in the first race because he was still trying to raise the money for the payout. He turned his team over to son Raymie, who hadn’t trained, just to have a Redington presence on the starting line. Oh, Raymie, just go as far as Knik.
“I didn’t know if I was going to keep going,” Raymie Redington said. He raced until McGrath. “All the village people loved it. It (the trail) was a lot harder than it is now. A lot of times you couldn’t find the trail.”
This Redington is 77 now and for the last 25 years he has provided dog-sled rides to tourists at Iditarod headquarters in Wasilla. Three of his sons, Ryan, Ray Redington Jr. and Robert. Raymie raced 12 times, most recently in 2001.
There will be a Redington on the trail in 2022. Ryan is representing the family legacy. Not that Redington name is being ignored. This year, Jon Van Zyle, the official Iditarod artist, featured in his annual poster a ghostly image of Joe Redington smiling down over camped mushers on the trail.
###
It didn’t take long for mushers who survived the first Iditarod to begin chopping time from their travels, eschewing the camping approach for going all out.
Emmitt Peters, “The Yukon Fox” from Ruby, set a new standard of 14 days and 14 hours-plus in the third race. As mushers cut their own rest and learned about dog nutrition, the speed picked up.
When Rick Swenson, a native of Minnesota, moved to Alaska in his late 20s and won the race in 1977, he escalated the pace. Swenson, whose five victories are spread over three decades, also won in 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1991. His swiftest time among that group of triumphs was 12 days, 8 hours-plus.
Rick Swensen
He might well have earned an earlier fifth win, but in 1978, in a mad-dash sprint down Front Street in Nome, Dick Mackey edged Swenson by one second in the closest finish in race history. Officials were on their knees in the chute measuring the distance between dogs’ noses and tails and the like.
Although this was Mackey’s only win, he spawned a second generation of champs. Son Rick won in 1983 and then son Lance won four times in a row in the 2000s while also winning the Yukon Quest, the world’s other 1,000-mile race, four times, too.
Lance Mackey had overcome drug addiction and a bout with cancer before he burst on the scene with his first win in 2007, though recently he suffered a recurrence of cancer in 2021, 20 years after his first illness. Renewed addiction problems led him to rehab, and Jennie Smith, his partner and mother of his children, died in an ATV accident.
He has said he would like to return to the Iditarod Trail if he can.
###
There were no women in the first Iditarod, but Mary Shields, 23rd, and Lolly Medley, 24th, finished the second one in 1974 and soon jump-started conversation about the likelihood of a female winner.
The emergence of Susan Butcher in the early 1980s, placing second in 1982 and 1984 heralded the first win by a woman as the 1985 race dawned. Only on that occasion, Butcher’s team was attacked by a moose and she dropped out. A wild storm reshaped the race, paralyzing most of the leaders in place. Only Libby Riddles broke free, took the lead, and couldn’t be caught, causing a sensation when she arrived in Nome first.
Susan Butcher
Riddles said over the final miles to the finish line from Safety she listened to KNOM radio and when the station played Alaskan balladeer Hobo Jim’s essential Iditarod anthem tune she felt it was being played just for her. Soon, Riddles was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Leo Rasmussen, variously mayor of Nome and president of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Committee, later said the widespread notoriety her victory attracted was a pivotal moment Iditarod growth.
Butcher swiftly claimed titles in 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1990, so as the 1991 race approached with her team viewed as a powerhouse, she seemed likely to tie Swenson for most wins.
Only as sometimes happens with the Iditarod, the unpredictability of the Alaska weather reconfigured the ’91 race, one of the most epic of all-time. Butcher and a few other mushers were in White Mountain, 77 miles from the finish, but when they set out for Nome the winds were so vicious they turned back, claiming life-threatening conditions prevented movement.
Yet Swenson pushed on into the snow and darkness, fighting his lonely way over slow-downed trail, and with the weather grounding planes and sealing off communication no one knew where he was. Ultimately, a frosted Swenson appeared on Front Street at nearly 2 a.m. before a frigid crowd applauding in minus-50 windchill. The only one who chased him was Buser, who finished a few hours later, an effort he later said set up the rest of his career.
So it was Swenson with a fifth title, a mark that stood unmatched for 30 years until Dallas Seavey equaled it. Buser promptly won for the first time in 1992. Much later, Buser said the 1991 race contained so much drama a book could be written about that contest alone. Butcher never won again, stepping back from racing to raise a family, and she died from leukemia in 2006.
###
Buser led the next group of star racers, winning in ’92, 1994, 1997 and 2002 as the race became ever-faster with championship times first dipping below 10 days and then nine.
Yet Buser did not dominate solely. Over the next decade the race bred a series of roughly equal champs who traded off at the winner’s podium. Jeff King of Denali Park won in 1993, 1996, 1998 and then, after a gap, a la Swenson, in 2006, leading into the Lance Mackey streak. Mixed in was Doug Swingley of Lincoln, Montana, the first musher from Outside to win Alaska’s showcase race. Swingley won in 1995, 1999, 2000 and 2001.
Martin Buser
John Baker of Kotzebue, a Native musher who once again sparked support in the Bush, was a popular winner when he set a new record of 8 days, 18-plus hours, though it was broken again. As long as the humans could stand upright and skip sleep, there seemed to be little end to the improvements made by the dogs.
A new country was heard from, literally, when Norwegian Robert Sorlie won in 2003 and 2005. Interspersed around Dallas Seavey and Mitch Seavey regularly commanding from the front of the pack, were Joar Leifseth Ulsom and Thomas Waerner, two more representatives of Norway, which many times over has demonstrated its mastery of snow and ice in Winter Olympic Games sports.
King is 65 and has not been competing in the Iditarod lately. He operates a tourism business called Husky Homestead, helps educate younger mushers and even this winter competed in shorter races of up to a few hundred miles such as the Willow 300.
At his age, King said, he “just barely, if at all,” was tempted to enter the 50th Iditarod because his body had used up most of its allotment of aches and pains. King competed in 26 Iditarods, won the Yukon Quest, and the Kusko 300 a record nine times.
“I’ve had a wonderful run,” he said recently.
Jeff King
Then a twist followed. Just four days before the Iditarod 50 ceremonial start, King became an accidental entrant. Contender Nicolas Petit flunked a COVID-19 test and had to withdraw. Petit had a fully prepared team and offered the opportunity to race it to King. So the four-time champ was back in the hunt.
Only once in four Iditarod victories did King win by a significant distance, usually being stalked to the finish line.
“They were all pretty special,” King said. In 2006, he won more handily with a very admired lead dog named Salem. “He was a really special dog.”
One of King’s greatest memories – and a heartfelt one for Alaskans following the race – occurred in 1996 when his IditaRider for the ceremonial start featured a 9-year-old boy named C.J. Kolbe. Kolbe was placed with King for the short mush by the Make-A-Wish-Foundation. The boy, suffering from bone cancer, gave King a lucky penny to carry on the trail – and in true, storybook Babe Ruth fashion, much as when the New York Yankee slugger hit a home run for a hospitalized child, King won the race.
Unfortunately, the terminally ill youngster did pass away, though King remains friends with Kolbe’s parents.
###
Race marshal Mark Nordman makes the trains run on time. First a competitor, then an administrator, Nordman has been connected to the Iditarod since 1983. He has traveled far to explain the Iditarod and instruct other mushing officials on the sport in Europe, Canada, and Argentina.
He is the race’s liaison to the village checkpoints, supervises the race as it goes, and oversees the volunteers, being constantly amazed by how many hundreds come from everywhere to be part of the 1,000-mile race in some small way.
“This is the most logistically challenged event in the world,” Nordman said. “It is the Last Great Race On Earth, the toughest adventure race on the planet.”
Tough enough even four-time champion Buser is certain he is just along for the ride this time, one of 50-plus mushers competing, but not one who can win it all again unless there is a fluke in the weather or something unusual happens.
Mark Nordman
That’s because he feels his 63-year-old body is too creaky, not capable of “20,000 time bending over” to fit booties on dogs’ feet, to feed them, or give them water.
“It’s an endless amount of bend-overs,” Buser said. “I’ve got lots of experience, but 30-to-40 is the prime for an Iditarod musher. Physically it gets harder. I’m the oldest guy in the field. I wore them all down.”
But one of the former champs who gives the lineup luster, along with Dallas and Mitch Seavey and Pete Kaiser of Bethel and Norwegian Ulsom.
Nope, Buser doesn’t expect to win No. 5. He is packing for the long haul, with first-rate food like shrimp, tenderloin, and stroganoff.
“It will take me two weeks to eat it all,” he said.
The last time it took at least that long for the winner to reach Nome was 1985. That was Libby Riddles’ year and the weather got in the way of everyone else’s plans. High winds, blizzards, icy trail, anything can happen over the course of 1,000 miles.
Lew Freedman is the former longtime sports editor of the Anchorage Daily News and author of numerous books about the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, including the recently released “50 Years of Iditarod Adventures.”