The re-start of the 2015 Iditarod race route has been moved to Fairbanks due to lack of snow near Willow.
This is the second time in 42 years this has happened according to local musher Paul Gebhardt who sits on the Iditarod board of directors as the musher representative.
Gebhardt: “But the route is a little bit different from the 2003 route because this year when we get to Galina we’re heading up to Huslia and then back down to Koyukuk, which we’ve never done in any Iditarod.”
He added that in all the years he has run the Iditarod he has never seen the Dalzell Gorge in such bad condition.
Gebhardt: “Four of us on the committee flew out to Dalzell Gorge and the farewell burn and we looked at the trail to determine if it’s safe for travel. There’s literally no snow in the gorge itself, it’s glare ice and shelf ice that has broken down and large boulders that are in the trail because there’s no snow, and there’s no snow to make the ice bridges so we deemed it unsafe to travel through with a dog team.”
Gebhardt said there are now 79 mushers participating in this year’s race.
The traditional Anchorage Start will take place as scheduled on Saturday, March 7, beginning at 10:00 a.m. The Restart will now take place in Fairbanks on Monday, March 9, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
