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Mike Williams Jr. can’t remember when he got into sledging, but once he was strong enough to ride sled dogs, it became his hobby. At first, he was busy walking the dog after school, taking his father’s dogs on the 3- and 4-mile trails near his home in Akiak, Alaska. He competed in the Iditarod for the first time in 2010 and has competed seven times since.
The Iditarod is Alaska’s most famous sporting event. Every March, sled dogs and their sled dogs set off from Anchorage on the roughly 1,000-mile trail to Nome to commemorate the serotesting of 1925, when 20 dog sled teams delivered to Nome Life-saving drugs were given to stop the diphtheria outbreak. The route is only accessible in winter, when rivers and lakes freeze over. But over the past two decades, as the region has warmed, the trail has become trickier, making trail conditions less reliable. The 51st annual Iditarod event kicks off on March 4, but this year there are fewer teams than usual. In the past, there have sometimes been as many as 85 teams, but now there are only 33 – the smallest field in the event’s history.
There are many reasons for this decline, but climate change isn’t helping. “Our ecosystem is under attack right now within the state of Alaska,” said Chase St. George, chief operating officer of the Iditarod Trail Commission, a nonprofit that organizes what it calls “the last great race.” St. George, who took office in 2016, said the race had to adapt to unpredictable weather, which created new obstacles and potential safety hazards for mushers and their dogs. Rivers, streams, and lakes at intersections no longer freeze as they once did, and vegetation grows in new places, blocking trails. The unseasonably warm storm brought rain instead of snow, washing away crucial sea ice in Norton Sound that the tosledgers had to cross before the race was over. Permafrost is melting, destabilizing once-frozen ground, while summer wildfires have become more frequent, meaning charred trees could fall on trails.
Trainer Williams from Akiak said that in the years since he started racing he has noticed changes in the landscape and how they affect the track. He remembers a warm winter in 2014 when the trail froze over in some areas and turned to bare ground in others. This made for such a bumpy ride that the mushers ended up with sprained ankles, bruises and broken sleds.
“It was a very difficult year for training and racing, driving the Iditarod in these conditions was very challenging for almost the entire race,” he said. “It was very humbling. I would say a lot of us were lucky to get through that class without getting hurt because some did.”
