The annual 1150 mile dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome will take mushers from 10 to 17 days to complete. Each team is made up of 12 to 16 dogs.
Anchorage is the starting line — a city of over 300,000 people, street lights, freeways and traffic. From there the field of dog teams which grow in number each year, runs to Eagle River, Checkpoint # 1. After a restart in the Matanuska Valley at Wasilla, the mushers leave the land of highways and bustling activity and head out to the Yentna Station Roadhouse and Skwentna and then up! Through Finger Lake, Rainy Pass, over the Alaska Range and down the other side to the Kuskokwim River — Rohn Roadhouse, Nikolai, McGrath, Ophir, Cripple, Iditarod and on to the mighty Yukon — a river highway that takes the teams west through the arctic tundra.
There are many great articles and news releases published on the Iditarod official website.
View Iditarod official website.