Today is an important day for Alaskans… and probably for anyone that lives in the far north. Today is the winter solstice – the day with the fewest hours of daylight, and the day where the sun reaches its lowest high point in the sky. For the next six months, every day will have a little bit more daylight. The gains are modest at first, but within a few weeks, we’ll be measuring the gains in minutes per day, and those minutes add up over six months. For Alaskans, today is the day that things start to get better.

That is, if what you mean by things is, the seasons.

Alaskans are probably a little over-focused on the solstice, given that there is some lag between the least amount of daylight and the most amount of crappy weather. However, if the issue is just the darkness, then sun-watching is a legitimate Alaskan Winter activity.

Which brings me to my office. The building where I work is a long, narrow building which is oriented almost exactly north-south. There are offices on either side of a long, central hallway, and at the south end of the building there is a lounge or waiting area that has large, floor-to-ceiling windows. Between the lounge area and the hallway is a door.

Diagram of my office

At local noon every sunny day, the sun shines in the windows on the south side of the building. If it is in the late fall through winter, the sun is low in the sky and it shines against the north wall of the lounge, through the door, and down the hallway. The sun shines down the hall quite a ways, depending on the angle of the sun. Today, being the winter solstice, the sun shines down the hall as far as is possible. A few days either side of the solstice, the sun does not stream quite as far down the hall.

Diagram of how the sun streams down the hall of my office on the winter solstice.

Diagram of how the sun shines down the hall of my office a few days before and after the solstice.

This makes my office a solar and geophysical observatory! If I mark the position of the sun on various days, I can use it as a calendar. If I note the time that the sun is centered on the hallway, I can use it as a sundial. If measure the length of the sun stream on the winter solstice, I can calculate my latitude, and if I know the time, I can calculate my longitude!

I know… this isn’t particularly interesting to most people… not even Alaskans. But a lot of ancient geophysical observatories worked just like this.

It is like living in a modern Stonehenge!

Happy solstice, everyone! It gets better from here on in (unless you’re in the southern hemisphere).

(Here are some 1 PM pictures from my hallway)

This photo was taken at 12:56 PM December 21. Note that the sun shines almost directly down the hallway. This view is looking south. It is difficult to tell from this shot, but the sun is still not quite directly south in this picture.

This picture was taken at 1:00 PM December 21. Note that the stream of sunlight has now moved to the left (eastern) wall... meaning that it is now past local noon.

A little more than a week after the mushers leave Anchorage (and then Willow) on their way to Nome, the focus shifts to this western Alaskan town on the shores of Norton Sound. The lead mushers arrive in Nome on Tuesday, but race fans start arriving a day or two before.

Our guests generally head to Nome on Monday, but some like to go out on Sunday, and visit with friends and explore the town. In our packages, we arrange home stays for our guests. Hotel rooms for the Iditarod are booked years in advance, and it is almost impossible to book them in a time frame that works for our clients. So we work with a small group of locals in Nome who open their homes every year for our guests. We also suggest that our guests rent a car while in Nome – the town isn’t that large, but it isn’t terribly pedestrian-friendly in winter.

As the leading mushers approach the town, everyone heads down to line Front Street and greet the winning musher.

Most of our guests stay in Nome until Thursday morning, and then start catching flights back to Anchorage and then on to their homes from there.

We get a number of inquiries every year for people who want to head to Nome for the finish of the race… but in general, we can’t arrange lodging in Nome unless it is a part of a complete race package.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

The ultimate Iditarod adventure has you on the trail every day of the race. A “Chase the Race” Package starts in Anchorage, and follows the leaders along the trail from checkpoint to checkpoint.

If you decide to do a Chase the Race package, everything up through Rainy Pass is the same as the rest of our packages. From there, you spend your days traveling along the trail, flying to checkpoints or watching from the air.

An Iditarod musher leaves a remote checkpoint

One of the beauties of this kind of package is that there is a fair amount of improvisation that goes along with the trip. Part of that is the necessity to take weather conditions into account when traveling by plane. The rest is the ability for your pilot to make adjustments to your daily schedule to get you to where the action is.

Chase the Race packages aren’t for everyone – they are quite expensive, and guests should expect highly variable facilities along the way. But if you have a sense of adventure, and want to experience every mile of the race, this is the package for you.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about heading to Nome for the finish of the race!

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

One of the things that makes the Iditarod such an interesting event is that most of the action occurs in the wilds of Alaska in the middle of winter. The central and western parts of the state are dotted with villages (and ghost town), but the only transportation between them is by air, river and seasonal trail. In the early part of the 20th century, it could take weeks for news and information to travel between villages, or between the villages and the outside world. Today, every village has modern telephone service, and many have high speed Internet.

This makes following the Iditarod quite a bit easier than it once was, but there is still nothing like being on the trail itself. Many of our guests get a taste of that by going to the Rainy Pass checkpoint the Monday after the start of the race, but further west and north, you really get to see a different world – one where, at least for a day or two, the world pays attention as the race passes through.

Every year we have guests that travel to some of the more remote checkpoints to watch the race. They thoroughly enjoy the experience, in part because they get to meet the locals and see frontier life as it exists in the 21st century. In even years, the Iditarod follows what is known as the “Northern Route”, and in odd years, the “Southern Route”.

2012 is a Northern Route year, and as such, many of our guests will be heading to Galena for the middle of the race. You will fly out to Galena on Thursday, March 8, and spend the night the nights of March 8 and 9. On March 10, you’ll depart from Galena, and then fly to Fairbanks and then to Anchorage.

In odd years, we send our guests to Grayling, on the southern route. We have also sent guests to McGrath, and it is possible to combine more than one checkpoint into your trip. It is also possible to combine one of the checkpoints with the dogsledding and northern lights adventures that we can arrange out of Fairbanks.

In future years we hope to be able to add Unalakleet to the towns that we can include during the middle of the race. Unalakleet is located on the coast, and is just a day or two from the finish of the race.

Tomorrow we will talk about the “Chase the Race” packages.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

After the mushers leave the Rainy Pass checkpoint on Monday, our guests find that they have almost a week before the mushers arrive in Nome at the finish of the Iditarod. Following the race from checkpoint to checkpoint is one option, but it requires a bit of an adventurer’s spirit and a fair amount of money (I will post a “Chase the Race” entry in a few days).

Most of our guests have at least a little adventurer in them, and for those that want to get a more hands-on experience with mushing can head to Fairbanks for a few days and learn to drive a dogsled.

Paws for Adventure is one of our longtime partners. Leslie has been taking guests mushing for almost fifteen years, and she offers a number of great options for those who want to experience the view from the back of a dogsled.

Photo courtesy Paws for Adventure

One of the more popular tours that Leslie offers is a three-day beginner’s tour. The first day you learn to handle the dogs and drive a dogsled at their mushing school site just outside Fairbanks. That evening you spend the night in Fairbanks. The second day you leave by dogsled out into the hills near Fairbanks, and spend the night on the trail. Some of these trips will be to a rustic cabin, and others will be a trail camp featuring Arctic Oven tents.

Spectacular northern lights displays are often visible from the Fairbanks area.

One of the reasons that this tour is so popular is that it is a great opportunity to see the northern lights. The Fairbanks area is one of the best spots in the world for viewing the northern lights. They are visible almost every clear and dark night. In addition, the weather in Fairbanks in March is particularly well-suited for northern lights viewing. March is a very clear and dry month in Fairbanks – and while that often means cold weather, the days are getting longer in March, so overnight temperatures are not quite as cold as they are in the middle of winter. This means that standing outside watching the northern lights is much more comfortable in March than it might be in January.

When you combine the good viewing conditions with a dogsled trip that takes you out into the wilderness where there are no city lights to interfere with northern lights viewing, there may not be a better opportunity to see them and be wowed by their spectacular beauty.

This adventure is one of our favorites… and we have even had a number of honeymoons and weddings that have included this trip. The weddings were performed just before midnight, with the northern lights ablaze overhead.

If you’re not feeling quite so adventurous, Leslie also offers shorter excursions, including just the mushing school (a half-to three quarters day experience), a dinner and aurora tour, and a one-hour dog sled ride. If you’re looking for a little more adventure, there are four, five and six day trips available.

Fairbanks also offers a number of other activities and attractions. In March, the World Ice Art Championships are held in Fairbanks. Ice artists come from all over the world to create spectacular ice carvings made from crystal clear blocks of ice. Sculptures range from the size you might see as a centerpiece, all the way to dozens of feet tall, made of multiple blocks of ice. At the beginning of the month, the artists are on-site creating the sculptures, so it is a great opportunity to watch a block of ice transformed into a spectacular form.

If you’re looking for a little relaxation while you’re in Fairbanks, you can make the easy sixty-mile drive to Chena Hot Springs. The hot springs offers an indoor pool, as well as an outdoor rock pool. I can tell you from experience that there is nothing quite as exhilarating as sitting in the rock pool with the northern lights overhead.

There is plenty to keep you busy in Fairbanks in March, and this side trip is a great way to spend a few days before you continue on with your Iditarod adventure. One of the beauties of this particular choice is that you can combine it with some other options, such as visiting one of the middle of the race checkpoints.

My next post will talk about hitting the trail.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

Once the Iditarod mushers leave Rainy Pass and head across the Alaska Range, following the race firsthand becomes a bit of a challenge. None of the remaining checkpoints are on the road system, so the only access is by air. Most of the checkpoints are served by regular air service of some sort, but in many cases, it isn’t very practical (or even possible) to reach some of the smaller checkpoints using scheduled air service during the race.

When our guests do head out onto the trail, we usually send them out to a location that is several days into the race. The Iditarod changes its route every year, alternating between a southern route and a northern route. In odd-numbered years, the best choice is Grayling, where three checkpoints are fairly close together and accessible by snowmachine, and there is excellent lodging and hospitality to be found. In even-numbered years, the choice is usually Galena.

It is also possible to do a “Chase the Race” package – where you fly to many of the checkpoints by air. This is definitely for the hard-core Iditarod fan, and because you’re in an airplane every day, the cost is quite high.

Some guests choose not to head out to the middle of the race checkpoints, and instead decide to spend the next week exploring other parts of Alaska. This is a great time of year to view the northern lights, do a dogsledding adventure (where you learn to drive a sled and do an overnight on the trail), or perhaps head to the Kenai Peninsula and enjoy the view on the ocean.

Our subsequent posts will dive into each of these possibilities… and also the option of combining them together!

• Iditarod 2012 – Dogsleds and Northern Lights
• Iditarod 2012: Visiting the Checkpoints
• Iditarod 2012: Chase the Race

View of an Iditarod musher from the air.

The Monday after the start of the Iditarod – this year, March 5 – most of our guests will start the day in Talkeetna. If you’ve never been to Talkeetna, it is one of our most favorite places in Alaska. The town is located at the confluence of the Susitna, Talkeetna and Chulitna rivers, and is known as the jumping-off point for mountain climbers who are headed to the Alaska Range to climb Mt. McKinley (and other massive peaks in the area). Climbers get to the mountains by air taxi, so Talkeetna airport is a rather busy place twelve months of the year.

Our guests will start the day pretty early, and head down to the airport, where they will head out to the checkpoints in the foothills of the Alaska Range. We try to get out guests to Rainy Pass checkpoint, which is the last checkpoint before the Alaska Range… but with the pace of the race and the weather, you may end up at one of the other checkpoints, such as Skwentna. The goal is to get there as the leaders pass through, and since this is less than 24 hours after the restart of the race, the mushers are still quite close together, but the fastest teams have moved to the front of the pack.

A view of the Rainy Pass checkpoint from the air taxi.

One of the big advantages of heading out to the more remote checkpoints is that unlike the experience in Anchorage and Willow, there are few spectators on the trail, so this is the Iditarod’s version of court-side seats and locker room passes all rolled into one. Our guests will have the opportunity to get fantastic photos and experience life on the trail firsthand. In fact, the photos in this post were all taken by one of our guests… so these are an accurate representation of what you can expect to see and experience along the way.

There is a lot of strategy and gamesmanship that goes on during the race, and visiting the checkpoints is a great way to see some of that going on firsthand. Weather, trail conditions and competition affect the decisions mushers make on the trail, such as whether to take a break at a checkpoint, or to pass on through. Later in the race there are mandatory layovers. Some are fixed, and others are at the musher’s discretion, so deciding when to take your mandatory layover could be a matter of luck, or a matter of strategy.

Mushers, vets, spectators, locals, and of course, the dogs doing their thing at the Rainy Pass checkpoint.

Our guests will spend about a half day on the trail. The pilot of your plane will guide you through the various checkpoints, with the goal of getting you to the front of the pack as they race through.

In the afternoon you’ll return by air taxi to Talkeetna. Depending on how we have arranged your package, some guests will overnight again in Talkeetna, while others will depart in the evening for either Anchorage or Fairbanks.

Evening in Talkeetna - The Roadhouse.

Our next post will talk about the middle portion of the race, and some of the various activities and destinations that we include in our packages.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

An Iditarod musher heads down the trail on Willow Lake at the Iditarod Restart.

On Sunday, the action shifts to the Willow Community Center and Willow Lake, where the race starts for real. In many respects, the scene is very similar at the restart to what you find at the start in Anchorage. However, restart Sunday has a much more Alaskan feel to it. Airplanes come and go off the lake ice, and there are dozens of people riding around on snowmachines (Alaskan for ‘snowmobile’).

Unlike at the ceremonial start on Saturday, the chute area is not as accessible as on the streets of Fourth Avenue, so this isn’t as good a place to meet the mushers or to get photos of the pre-race preparations.  However, you can get quite close to the trail, and there are great opportunities to see the mushers and to get photographs as they start off for Nome.

The first musher departs from Willow at 2 PM, and they continue every two minutes until everyone has left. Most of our guests arrive in Willow well before that – there is plenty of parking, but you may have to walk a bit to reach the Willow Community Center.  Inside the Community Center there are craft booths and food concessions. The center is a great place to warm up, since the lake is rather open, and it can be cold and windy.

We suggest that our guests get on the road to Willow between 9 and 10 AM. This gives you the opportunity to grab a cup of coffee or a nice breakfast, and still arrive in Willow in plenty of time. Plan to walk a bit today, and plan for moderately deep snow if you head out onto the lake. Some areas will be plowed clear and walking will be easy, but if you walk down the trail a bit, the snow on the lake surface might be deep. In any case, wear warm clothing, and warm boots!

After them mushers head off to Nome, most of our guests will continue north to the town of Talkeetna to spend the night. The following day, many guests will hop on a bush plane and head out to the foothills of the Alaska Range to visit the checkpoints at Skwentna or Rainy Pass.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

The Iditarod is a bit unusual in that the start of the race on Saturday is a ceremonial start. The reason is that there is no safe or practical way for mushers to traverse Knik arm, the Knik River and the Matanuska River. So the pageantry of the race start is held Saturday in Anchorage, but the real race doesn’t get rolling until Sunday afternoon in Willow.

Iditarod musher Dee Dee Jonrowe takes a moment to sign autographs for fans in the chute.

That doesn’t bother Alaskans, and it is actually great for visitors. Thousands of people come to downtown Alaska and line the sidewalks of Fourth Avenue for the ceremonial start. The starting line is at 4th and D, and the area to the st of the starting line is called “the chute”. This is where the mushers park their trucks, harness their dogs, and get ready for the race. While it is certainly fun to watch the mushers head down the trail, the real action is back in the chute, where you can get up close and personal with the mushers and their dogs.

If you have a favorite musher, and you didn’t meet them at the banquet, this is a great place to get a photo and shake their hand – provided you get there early!

The first musher heads down 4th Avenue at 10 AM, with subsequent teams starting every two minutes. The starting order is decided in advance, with the first starters at the far end of the chute, and the last starters in the front. You’ll want to get downtown early – perhaps as early as 8 AM, if you want to see the initial preparations of some of the early starters.

One strategy that some guests choose is to get downtown early, meet the mushers, get some photos, and then stake out a spot along the Anchorage portion of the trail. The race starts downtown, but winds its way throughout the parks and greenbelts of town, and ends at Campbell Airstrip. There are lots of great viewing locations around town, and you can have many of them to yourself.

Iditarod musher heads down Fourth Avenue at the ceremonial start

Most of the activities are over by about 2 PM… and this is good for both the mushers and for guests. Sunday at 2 PM the race starts for real, and it is nice to get a good meal, a good night’s sleep, and then head off to Willow on Sunday!

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

When we do an Iditarod package for our guests, we usually start the package on the Wednesday or Thursday before the actual start of the race. The race starts on the first Saturday in March, which is on March 3 in 2012… So most of our guests will be arriving in Anchorage sometime on February 29th or March 1 (yes, 2012 is a leap year!).

Our main reason for having people come so early is to avoid the unfortunate event of a flight delay. For example, if someone were planning to arrive in Anchorage on the Friday before the race starts, and there was some weather or equipment delay along the way, almost certainly he or she would miss the start of the race on Saturday morning.

Midway Rides at the Fur Rondy and Iditarod celebration

The days immediately before the start of the race are part of an annual winter celebration here in Anchorage known as the Fur Rondy. The celebration lasts two weeks, and includes balls, carnivals, fireworks, and dog racing. The Fur Rondy dog races are the week before the Iditarod. If you’re looking for an extended Alaskan vacation, this is a fantastic time to visit – Come for the Rondy, and stay for the Iditarod!

If you’re more focused on the Iditarod, the official events start on Thursday evening, with the musher’s banquet. Not all of our guests choose to attend the banquet… but it is a great event, and it is an opportunity to meet the mushers, and to get some sense of the atmosphere of the race. If you were going to include the Start Banquet in your package, you would certainly want to arrive in Anchorage on Wednesday – it would be a shame to count on an on-time Thursday afternoon flight to get to the banquet on time Thursday evening.

Friday is a day that we generally leave as a free day for our guests. Many of our guests have never been to Alaska, and having a day to explore on your own is often just what the doctor ordered. However, there are some activities that you could choose, either as a part of the package, of as something you could do on your own.

One of our guests snapped this photo on a drive down Turnagain Arm the day before the start of the Iditarod

In past years, we have been able to arrange kennel tours at a professional racing kennel. You’d think that mushers would be too busy the day before the race to take time to show people around… but they tell me that if you’re not ready by Friday, you’re not ready. You could also visit some of the museums in Anchorage, or take a drive down Turnagain Arm (a spectacular drive), visit Girdwood, or even take a day cruise into Resurrection Bay. There is plenty to keep you busy in Anchorage on the Friday before the start of the Iditarod.

Friday night you’ll want to get a good night’s sleep. The race starts at 10 AM on Saturday, but there are many good reasons to get downtown early and walk around.

More on that in the next post!

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!