There are an increasing number of visitors to Alaska in the winter… and many of them are coming here to experience the Iditarod.

The Iditarod starts in Anchorage on the first Saturday in March, and the race lasts about two weeks. Most guests arrive on the Thursday before – you wouldn’t want to schedule a Friday flight into Anchorage and end up stuck in Chicago because of a Midwestern blizzard – you’d miss the start of the race!

Dogs discuss race strategy while sitting in the back of a musher's dog truck.

The ceremonial start is on Saturday. This is when all of Anchorage turns out and lines the the streets to watch the mushers as they head through town. Most people head to Fourth Avenue, which is the starting line… but there are many great places to watch the mushers all over town, so it isn’t necessary to fight the downtown crowds. Among the more favorite spots are on the hill on Cordova Street as the mushers head down towards Chester Creek.

The route winds its way south through the parks in Anchorage. At one point the mushers cross a bridge over Northern Lights Boulevard, and a tunnel at Tudor Centre. In 2009, the Anchorage trail ended at Campbell Airstrip in Centennial Park.

A view of the "chute" at the ceremonial start of the Iditarod.

One advantage of heading to Fourth Avenue is to see the mushers prepare their sleds and dogs for the race. While the festivities on Saturday are purely ceremonial – the clock on the race doesn’t start until Sunday – there is still plenty to see in the “chute”. The area of downtown on Fourth Avenue west of D Street (the actual starting line) is fenced off, and each musher brings in his or her “dog truck”. A dog truck is how the dogs, sleds and equipment is hauled to different locations. The most distinctive feature of a dog truck are the boxes on the back where the dogs ride. You’ll often see dogs sticking their heads out of holes in the doors of the dog truck.

This is a great opportunity to get some photos of the mushers, talk to them a bit, and see the dogs. Most people can’t imagine the preparation and training that goes into a run to Nome. While the show on Saturday is just a very small piece of the entire process, it is very clear from watching the mushers get ready that a run to Nome in the Iditarod is something that takes years of planning.

Musher heads down Fourth Avenue in Anchorage at the ceremonial start of the Iditarod.

After the ceremonial start, the mushers pack up the dogs and sleds and head for Willow, where the race restarts on Sunday afternoon. Several thousand spectators attend the restart in Willow, and this event is an even more authentic Alaskan event – people arrive by car and truck, snowmachine (this is Alaska-speak for snowmobile) and even a few by airplane.

The atmosphere is a little different in Willow; the trail heads out across the frozen lake, and spectators line the trail and cheer as the mushers head out to Nome. At the same time, snowmachines race across the lake, and airplanes on skis come and go.

After the restart, many guests head north to Talkeetna, where they catch a flight out the next day to some of the remote checkpoints in the foothills of the Alaska Range. Flights leave in the morning and head to Skwentna and Rainy Pass. The first day is often a very entertaining time to be on the trail, because this is when the fastest of the teams try to set the pace.

For guests that are serious about the Iditarod, you can fly from checkpoint to checkpoint in a “Chase the Race” package. Other guests take a few days off and head to Fairbanks where you can take in the World Ice Art Championships, do a dogsledding adventure, where you can actually learn to drive a dog team and spend the night under the northern lights in a cabin or arctic-weight tent. After your dogsled adventure, an afternoon soak at Chena Hot Springs sounds like a very good idea.

The following week the lead mushers approach Nome, and guests fly out to this Norton Sound community to greet the mushers as they arrive on Front Street.

Iditarod packages have become more popular over the last few years, but there is still time to arrange your package if you’re up for a winter adventure in Alaska. Alaska Vacation Store creates custom Iditarod packages that include lodging, rental cars, and all of the activities. Packages can be as short as four days, or last for as many as twenty.

I was headed out of my office yesterday for lunch, and ran into the woman who has the office next to mine. She was just coming inside the building from the pouring rain. I looked at her and said, “We should be a little more careful when we start wishing it would warm up…”

I then dashed out into the rain-and-50-degree weather. For the uninitiated, rain and 50 degrees is actually a fairly common combination in Alaska in the summer and early fall. In January, it is, thankfully, rare.

Alaska had been suffering from some rather intense cold weather, stretching back to around Christmas. Clear skies and falling temperatures were the rule, with many places in the interior of Alaska dropping into the -50F range. Here in Anchorage, temperatures ranged from -20F to -30F. In theory, Alaskans are prepared for such weather, and to our credit, we seemed to get along just fine. But one could not wander down the street or into a restaurant, or answer a phone without launching into a conversation about the relentless cold.

Alaskans can do cold, but we don’t like it too much. Even I was complaining – and I am usually pretty stoic about the weather.

Last weekend, I decided to make a trip to Fairbanks to visit a friend and take care of some business. I was greeted by -40F temperatures and ice fog*. I knew I would find these extremes there, so I packed all of my hard-core winter gear, and in fact, I was very comfortable wandering around in the cold. We even made a trip to Chena Hot Springs and took a dip in the outdoor rock pool.

The problem with the cold weather is that while most Alaskans have all the cold weather gear, it is rather tedious putting all the layers on just to make a trip to the store to get some milk. Heading out the door takes an additional five minutes of preparation as we stack scarves and hats and fleece and parkas over our sweaters, only to have to reverse the process when we get to where we’re going. So some of us skip a layer here or there, and shiver as we drive to the grocery store – and complain bitterly once we get there… “I wish it would warm up!”

So we got what we wished for. To be clear, our warmup was actually more extreme than our cold. On January 16, Anchorage set a high temperature record for the date, reaching 50 degrees (the old record was 44), and this was the second warmest official temperature ever recorded in Anchorage in January. Merrill Field, the large general aviation airport located on the north side of town reached 52. Up in the Fairbanks area, Eielson Air Force base reached 52F, and this is a 100 degree swing from the temperatures recorded there just last week!

You would think that we would be thankful for the warm weather… But in fact, the warmup has caused us all sorts of problems.

A winter of cold has chilled the ground quite well, and despite the balmy breezes, the ground is quite frozen. So rain and melting snow run into the roads, where they are immediately frozen to a sheen that any Zamboni driver would be proud of. All through our cold snap, Anchorage schools operated without a hitch. Warm things up to 50 degrees, and schools close for three days due to persistently icy roads.

To make it all worse, the warm weather is accompanied by strong winds. In fact, the warm weather wouldn’t be possible without the strong winds – the winds are warmed by their interaction with the mountains, creating what is commonly called a chinook. We get our share of chinooks every winter, but this one was accompanied by 100+ MPH winds, which downed trees and power lines. And to make the whole experience complete, the persistent warm weather and rain has melted snow. Storm drains are clogged with ice, so the water has no place to go, and forms small lakes on the roadways. The water that has managed to run off doesn’t sink into the soil, but runs along the ground and into ice-choked streams that have flooded several low-lying areas and roads.

My driveway is a sheet of ice. I am headed out today to get a couple large bags of salt (if there is any to be had), so I can try to break the ice up before it gets too cold to get rid of it.

The good news is, we’ll have just one more story about the weather to tell.

*ice fog forms when the atmosphere reaches a temperature where it has no capacity to hold water vapor. This is when temperatures are below -40. Moisture that enters the air from auto exhaust or from the burning of fuels are transformed into microscopic ice crystals that form a very dense fog.