IDITAROD TRAIL SLED DOG RACE

annual dogsled race held in March between Anchorage and Nome, Alaska, U.S. Both men and women compete together. A short race of 56 miles (90 km) organized in 1967 evolved in 1973 into the current race. The course, roughly 1,100 miles (1,770 km) long, partially follows the old Iditarod Trail dogsled mail route blazed from Knik to Nome in 1910. (The Iditarod also commemorates an emergency mission to get medical supplies to Nome during a 1925 diphtheria epidemic.) The racecourse crosses two mountain ranges (the Alaska and the Kuskokwim), runs along the Yukon River for 150 miles (241 km), and crosses frozen waterways, including the pack ice of Norton Sound. The course length and route vary slightly from year to year, and the middle third takes alternate routes in odd and even years. The first race in 1973 took the winning musher about 20 days, but the winning time has been reduced by almost half. In 1976 the U.S. Congress designated the original Iditarod Trail as a National Historic Trail.