Lori Townsend: The five-decade history of the Iditarod is a story filled with adventure, skill, triumph and lots of change, and is best told by those who have experienced it firsthand.

Unknown: I describe our generation -- DeeDee Jonrowe, myself, Rick Swenson -- we are the first professionals that chose this as a career the first generations of full time dog racers, there was no such thing before the Iditarod.

Lori Townsend: We'll hear stories from the trail and talk about ideas for the future right now on Alaska Insight.

The Iditarod is quintessentially Alaskan.

F or people who follow the race and the racers there are many familiar and legendary names associated with it, like Joe Reddington, Herbie Nayokpuk, the Shishmaref Cannonball, Susan Butcher, Jeff King and so many others, including our guests this evening.

Before we meet them, let's hear from another Iditarod legend Martin Buser, a Swiss immigrant.

Buser came to Alaska in the 70s because he wanted to race dogs.

I visited him at his home near Big Lake in 2014 for the Faces of Alaska series.

He reflected on professionalizing the race.

Unknown: I describe our generation -- DeeDee Jonrowe, myself, Rick Swenson -- we are the first professionals that chose this as a career, the first generations of full time dog racers.

There was no such thing before the Iditarod and nobody could make a living.

Nobody still can't make a living off of the Iditarod.

And we, we hope that is going to change.

You know, the, the $400,000 that get distributed amongst the top 30, nobody meets expenses.

You know, we wish that was a deterrence priority to give that to the winner or the eventual winner.

So maybe 10,20, 30 years from now, maybe, maybe we have enough zeros behind the equation where, where young people actually have the vision of "If I do well in I did or maybe I can can make it."

They, right now it's still 18 hours a day, you got to have two or three different things going for yourself in order to live with and for the dogs exclusively so.

But since we are the first generation of full time racers, you do see all sorts of new innovations the sitdown sleds, I call it an OMS an old musher sled.

When I was 20 years old, I didn't need to sit down.

But after 30, I did ruts, I guarantee I'm never gonna go anywhere without a sitdown slide.

Just because of those few minutes that we can rest.

A little windshield on the on the handlebar.

That was nothing, 20 years ago, I was tough.

But now having that little change of you know, a three ounce piece of lexan that might deflect the wind a little bit over my face.

And that makes a big difference.

So the innovations, the changes that have come in part or because we are the first generations of professionals that have been doing it for a career.

Lori Townsend: Joining me tonight to discuss the history of the race, how it's changed through the decades, and what the future might hold is Libby Riddles.

Libby was the first woman to win the Iditarod in 1985, and we'll certainly discuss that story.

And Rod Perry is with us tonight.

He ran in the very first Iditarod in 1973.

Rod is also an Iditarod historian who has written two books on the history of the trail and the race.

Welcome both of you.

Thanks so much for being here.

Unknown: Thank you.

Great to be here!

Lori Townsend: Libby.

It's great, so great to have you on.

It's always fun to get a chance to talk with you.

And I understand you weren't able to run your dogs today.

But how many years have you been running dogs?

And is it usually daily?

Unknown: My dogs are almost too old to run daily anymore.

But I try to do it any day that it's a good mushing day or if even if it's just possible to run dogs, but I've got to get out there and cut a log out on to the trail before I can go out again, but I'm glad to be still doing it.

I've been doing it since about '75 I guess.

Lori Townsend: And Martin Buser in that clip that we just heard, he was talking about professionalizing the race.

What are your thoughts about that?

How have changes helped?

But does that also mean more expense going forward as there's more innovations and does that add expense?

Unknown: Well, it's a it's a big change in the race overall, like it used to be like in the 80s when I was running, I mean, we used our dogs for all kinds of things, like we hunted with them.

had nets under the ice, and we worked with the dogs and racing was just another way that the dogs could help her in their own keep, you know.

And nowadays, you know, I think as the race got more professional, they had to change some of the rules, and it changed the nature of the race and in a lot of ways.

And in some ways, it's a whole different ballgame now, but a lot of times even those, you know, the it's the same struggles that we all still have even it's so many years apart.

Lori Townsend: Mm hmm.

Well, thanks for getting us started.

Rod, I want to turn to you now, you ran the very first Iditarod, as we noted in 1973.

Instead, it was both glorious and absurd, which is quite a combination.

Why?

Why those two words together?

Those two descriptors.

Unknown: You think of you think of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and that that was just a glorious, glorious, romantic thing.

That's, you know, come down to us in our national lore that we hold high.

Then you get to the fact that there was virtually no money.

I mean, we were way into the Alaska Range, and Joe hadn't even secured the prize money yet.

He'd have been run out of town on a rail tarred and feathered if he hadn't come up with it.

But one of the checkpoints as Wilmarth leader came in, knocked on the door and said, "hey, it's Wilmarth is the food here?"

And the guy gets to the door, he says, Mr. Wilmarth, come in, if you're hungry, we got all kinds of food.

He says no, no, for the Iditarod for the dogs.

And the guy says, and he's a buddy of mine Al Basinsky, Al says, What?

Are they going to hold that?

I mean, if you if you were conjecturing, before the first race, where would be the major checkpoint, the major point of need on this whole race?

It would be that checkpoint.

Nobody had ever gone through the Alaska Range for 50 years.

We didn't know what was out there.

I mean, it looks like that area around the Moose's Tooth, as far as we knew.

Lori Townsend: So that was the absurd part.

Unknown: Pardon?

Lori Townsend: That that was the absurd part.

It sounds like Unknown: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Hold that.

At Bear Creek, they were trying to set up a checkpoint be in front of the in front of the race.

There was not one checkpoint between the Kuskokwim and the Yukon.

And as Martin and Libby could tell you, that's the most desolate part of the entire race.

There was no food supply nothing.

How did you -- Yes, go ahead.

I was gonna say, wasn't it great?

Lori Townsend: Well, Libby, or Rod, we're back to you again.

You started mushing after a friend got you started.

Tell us about how you first met Joe Reddington.

And that got you hooked on the idea of running in the race?

Unknown: Yeah.

My friend Mike Lee, who some people will recognize as an icon in the Alaska State Park system.

Mike got me started in 1968.

We had hunted elk together in Idaho before we ever moved to Alaska.

So we were already friends.

But he got immediately into dogs a year after I got here.

He came up.

And he got me started on my addiction.

I was visiting Mike in his lakeshore house.

He had a place right beside where the restart is today in Willow, and I was visiting during the Willow Winter Carnival.

I left the house walked across the ice toward the old log community building.

And there, I saw a ways away my friend Tom Johnson, visiting with a couple of guys.

And I walked over to say hello to Tom and he straightway introduced me to two, I mean to say icons it redefines the word, Dan Seavey and none other than Joe Reddington.

The topic of their conversation, I mean, I, I thought that it sounded like some kind of a hell bent for leather.

They devil take the hindmost dash across untracked Alaska, you know, form your own route, put in your own trail.

I mean, I don't know, it just but I almost levitated with excitement.

I could no more turn away and turn down my next breath.

Lori Townsend: Well, that sounds like quite an introduction and a way to get hooked.

Thank you for that awesome story.

Libby, I'm sure you've been asked this 1000 times, maybe more.

But please tell us about the risk you took the very real risk you took to win in 1985.

Unknown: Well, it was kind of a calculated risk, I guess.

But you know, it gets pretty windy up on the west coast up there by Norton Sound.

And you know, I was living and training up in a village even farther north than that the village of Teller, but even living in Teller, we would on purpose go out and train on stormy days so that you're prepared for what the Iditarod throws at you.

Because, you know, those blizzards, you could lose your life out there, I mean people do every year, you know.

So I was kind of in the lead of the race.

And I wanted to keep my league because I'd been working for years to rebuild my team and come back in the race.

And I was going through that blizzard and knew I was kind of risking my life a little bit, but I knew we'd done some training for it, too.

And we're as prepared as we could be.

So I just went for it.

Because you don't get to the start of the Iditarod in every race, you know, and I thought, jeez, it would be terrible to be thinking all these years "Oh I wonder what would have happened if I would have gone out in that storm?"

But yeah, it all worked out amazingly well, and the dog team was so great.

They were third place in '84 When Joe Garnie ran them and first place in '85 and then the second place in 86.

Lori Townsend: You, you sound so casual about it, but I'm trying to envision what that was like when it is a blinding snowstorm and you can't see and you have to rely on your dogs, I would imagine!

How?

Unknown: Well you realize your dogs and your wits.

But you know, you have to be mentally prepared for the Iditarod and to prepare for it.

I was learning about the Native people that live out there.

I mean, how am I supposed to feel sorry for myself?

Like I'm thinking, Oh, am I one night in a blizzard?

These people live in the blizzards!

You know, I'm there.

Okay.

You know, so it's the attitude you have to have and then, you know, to psych myself up for the idea, right?

I'm reading like about the explorers and how they're trudging to the polls.

And, and the just like Mawson's Will.

Oh my gosh, you read that story and I just feel like a wimp for even making a big deal out of that blizzard, you know?

So that's kind of how you mentally or for me how I mentally would psych myself.

It's like, alright, nobody made me do this.

I was the one that chose to go out here and do it, deal with it.

These other people can you maybe can too.

Lori Townsend: That's such an excellent point about the mental Unknown: I think we had the upper hand, you know, the Native preparation that has to go into something where you're, you're up against extreme weather and distance and remoteness and just you and your dogs, so that's a really important point.

Thank you.

Let's, let's hear from an Indigenous driver who also raced in the early days.

Ken Chase is an Athabaskan musher who first ran the Iditarod in 19 -- or ran the first Iditarod in 1973. drivers that first year because we were a lot of us were still into trapping with dogs and and feeding them dryfish, you know dried salmon and beaver meat and stuff.

Beaver meat probably was a secret weapon.

You know, everybody started using it after that.

Lori Townsend: Aha, a little secret given out there.

That was Ken Chase an Athabaskan musher who lives in Anvik and ran in the first Iditarod race in 1973, as did Rod, and 15 more races afterward.

And he remains involved today.

Rod, you said Reddington noticed how snowmachines, snowmobiles had rapidly been replacing dog teams in rural communities and Reddington saw that Iditarod as a way to sort of reinvigorate people to run dogs again, how well do you think that came to fruition, his dream?

Has been realized?

Unknown: It sounds like a great idea.

And it was at first, if you look, like Ken said the Natives really dominated the race.

And they may not have dominated first place all the time, but you look at that top 10 for the first few years of the race, they dominated it.

But then as we went along, there were more and more innovative, you know, more innovative thinking.

Everything started to ramp up.

If you don't get your dogs out until October, and start to train, well maybe I'll get mine out in September.

And then the other guy says, Well, hey, I'll get mine out.

And in June and the other guy says, After the race, I'm not even going to put them away.

I'm going to give them a week's rest and take my wife to Hawaii and and then come right back and I'll train all year long.

Well, it just forces each other's hand and somebody puts money into some part of preparations or gear.

It forces everybody to do the same or get left behind it gets wrapped up more and more and more expensive.

And here, the people in the Bush are out there away from a lot of potential sponsors.

They've got this tremendous shipping costs pretty soon, it just gets disheartening.

And and so we have seen fewer and fewer Native mushers.

As far as saving the dogs part of it, it's worked wonderfully.

And some people might say, Well, yeah, look at the dogs today.

They don't look anything like the old days.

Well, dogs were always in an evolution.

This is just speeded it up.

They're a fabulous group of animals.

I went over with my old area biologists friend, Rick Senate, what would you call these and he came up with a word I think fits pretty well.

It's a cast, C-A-S-T-E, or a lot of different physiological features, but they all are bred to do the same thing within about a 16th of a mile an hour.

I'm, by the way before before I go off to the next person.

Get Ken to tell you about I mean, the best quote he's got is, there were no rookies, if you can get him to tell you that.

That's that's his quote.

And it's a it's fabulous.

Lori Townsend: All right, thank you.

We'll drill down there when we'd speak to Mr. Chase next.

Libby this year, there are 49 teams signed up and 17 women.

Were there any other women racing when you won in 1985 I should have looked that up.

And I did not.

Unknown: Yes, but there was like, I remember, Monique Bene got the, had the moose knock her off her sled and was standing over her for 20 minutes.

And I think that was about maybe like the eighth woman to ever run the Iditarod.

So you know, of course, I knew hey, women can do this.

But you know, it's really cool.

Now as the See, like this year's Junior Iditarod and there's 12 kids running.

Ten of them are girls, and nobody even says it, it doesn't even make news because it's just like the new normal.

Lori Townsend: Oh, that's fantastic.

Thank you for that detail.

That's great to know.

10 of 12 are young women.

Let's hear from another one of the well known women of the Iditarod, Aily Zirkle has retired from racing.

But in this clip from an interview with Alaska Public Media's Annie Fedit and Zirkle in 2014, it's a great example of the very real connection and relationship between Aily and her dogs.

Unknown: So it's not just a one big, like, what can what can this team do?

It's like, what can Scooter do?

And what can Mac do?

And what can Leroy do?

And what can Maurice do and now what can they do as a team?

So that's what I love about it, because it's this individuals that make up this team, that you're coaching everyone individually down the trail, and when you know your dog's like, like I do, then you look at Mac and you go come on.

You're kidding me.

You feel you feel ready to go right.

And he's like, well, I kind of feel ready to go, but I don't know, put my booty on a little tighter, you know?

And then you look at Sissy and she's like, voom, voom, voom, we can we go, can we go?

Yeah, can we go yet?

You're like, just calm your jets.

We're not going yet.

Just calm yourself.

You know, and that's what it is for me.

Every single race has been this phenomenal connection between these dogs who do what they do, and this musher who tries to hang on and tries to do the best for herself and her dogs.

People are always like God aren't you, I mean, bummed about, you know, just barely not winning Iditarod and it's like, obviously, things didn't exactly come together as they should have, you know, because it's not just me.

That's winning.

It's that team.

It's not Aily Zirkle came second, in the Iditarod, it's Kito and Nacho and Boondocks and Willie and Waylon and Biscuit and Schmo and Scruggs and Olivia, it's them and me.

And so we have to be able to do it together or I'm not doing it.

Lori Townsend: I love how she names them off and talks about what happened like it was an actual conversation complete with a voice for her dog.

Libby, talk about that relationship, the intensity of it, and what people who criticize dog racing don't understand about that.

Unknown: Well, you know, in a way, it's one of the things that you have in common with the old time mushers, you have to have that connection with the dogs.

And I think it's so great that one of the ways that people really see the most about sled dogs anymore is through tours.

I mean, sled dog, tourism is just insanely growing.

And people go to it.

And they might be wondering, Oh, what's this like?

And then they see these dogs just crazy to go, you know?

And then they're like, oh, this is really cool.

You know, so there's that aspect about it, I think and, you know, you I think more people understand about it.

Like, the more they're going to get it you know, because everybody loves dogs and boy if you love dogs this is like one of the best lifestyles ever.

Lori Townsend: The late Susan Butcher was such a big figure in the Iditarod, talk about why she was a legend.

And do you see women racing today that could get to that status?

Unknown: Well, winning the race four times.

I mean, holy cow that says she's pretty tough.

And if there was ever any doubt after I won, you know that women could do it that, that kind of cleared the slate of that question.

But, you know, it's just really I'm sure it was the same for her as it is for me in a way that it just really feels like an honor to be an inspiration to these other gals.

And there's still very few sports where men and women compete together on an equal basis because of all the different kinds of skills that you have to have.

So, you know, Susan was definitely a legend.

It's kind of neat to see her daughter getting involved in racing now.

Lori Townsend: Climate change has to be a big consideration for the future of the Iditarod.

Talkeetna musher Anya Rodano ponders how much longer the race will be viable.

Unknown: That's why I was going to run it was like, I don't know how much longer we're gonna have this race, you know?

And not just because of like, how competitive or whatever it's like, yeah, I think global warming is gonna play like a bigger factor in the future for sure.

Because, I mean, with like, the ice freezing up for the coast and you know rivers and all those things.

I mean, who knows how much longer we can take around like that, you know?

I mean, it's been so warm, like our food drops, they're probably all melting away, somewhere out there.

You know?

Lori Townsend: What do you think about those comments?

Libby, you've been doing this for decades?

How is climate change affected your work with dogs, that you've observed?

And what do you think about the future for the Iditarod in that respect?

Unknown: I mean, it's definitely warmer, but it just seems like the weather's more extreme.

And I think that the Iditarod has done a great job of adapting to the weather, you know, starting in Fairbanks, you know, making it happen one way or another.

So, you know, it will adapt, I think, I mean, if we have to hold it in January some year, then that's how it rolls, you know.

But it's good in March because it gives people longer to train their dogs and things.

But hopefully, we'll figure out how to adapt.

It's the weather has been pretty epic this winter.

A lot of snow in a lot of places and Moose have been one of the biggest problems for the dogs.

Lori Townsend: Yes, yeah.

As it has been for a lot of people.

Rod turning back to you.

The original idea was to go to Nome and back.

Am I correct in saying that and how was it decided to go from Anchorage to Nome and not come back?

Unknown: No, no, it was to go to go from Knik to Iditarod and return.

Oh, well, I'm sorry.

Okay.

That was the locked in model for a number of years.

That was Joe's creation.

And the number of people were kind of indifferent to that.

And I ran into at least three, one who's a friend of mine, in particular, at least three people who suggested that he go to Nome.

When Gleo Huyck, and Tom Johnson came in beside Joe, in the fall of 1973 or 1972 and said, Joe, if we will help you get this thing off in 73, since you think we can actually do it that had been the target date, but it didn't look like enough was happening to bring it off.

And they said we will help you.

And the first thing they did was they formed a brand new Iditarod trail Committee.

It had been made up of homesteaders and trappers and people out in the Valley that were good hearted people.

They didn't have any kind of, of wallup at all.

So they came into Anchorage and they and they started putting together this brand new high powered group, Terry Aglietti has been a great success as an attorney in Anchorage, Steve Smirnoff, later Mayor Tom Fink's press secretary, and Jerry Ward, ran for or he was a state representative and then state senator and ran for lieutenant governor.

He was on it and Bill Weimer and, and you know, when people leave Weimer and that group out, it just shows that they don't really have any idea about how the Iditarod got going.

Well, anyway, they immediately said, you know, this sounds great, but you're not giving us much hope to be able to market it going from nowhere to nowhere and back.

where is Knik?

Back then you might stand on Knik road and see a car every five or 10 minutes.

We'll have Lori Townsend: to leave it there rod I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

We're gonna have to leave it there.

We will come back to this again and next year when it is the actual 50th year of the Iditarod.

I'm sure we'll be visiting with you again about this and your passion for the Iditarod.

Thank you so much to Rod and Libby.

The Iditarod offers so many different things to enjoy the thrill of competition, the exuberance and joy of the dogs as they yank pull and how to run.

The sheer awe of watching men and women work with their dog teams to make it 1000 miles through wintery Alaskan wilderness to Nome.

Here's to the next 50 years of Iditarods in celebration of those humans and canines who race all the way to the burled arch finish line.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

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We'll be back next week.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.