Iditarod trail sled dog racers adapt: climate change, the bane of the dog musher.

• Author: Storm, Joette
• Position: VISITOR INDUSTRY

Northern Alaska was once a very warm country. Alaska was close to the sun." So writes William Oquilluk in his book, People of Kauwerak. Oquilluk, an Inupiat Eskimo, sought the history of his people from elders in Teller, Mary's Igloo and other northern villages. When he would hear the same story from three sources, he would write it down to preserve the legends.

Alaskans have been watching the weather and telling stories about it for as long as there have been people living in this Great Land. Some reports were for official purposes, some for passing on indigenous knowledge, and some as the topic of dinner table conversation.

R. L. Goodwin, district engineer of the Alaska Road Commission, surveyed a route from Seward to Nome to open the country to resource exploration. Goodwin reported deep snows in the passes of the Chugach Mountains in 1908.

Newspaper accounts frequently relayed reports of unusually harsh conditions, deep snows one season and a scarcity the next. The Nome Nugget and Iditarod Pioneer published Roald Amundsen's prediction of climate change in 1912. While in Nome, the famous explorer hypothesized that the "great ice wedge which lay between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans was constantly moving and would eventually break causing a flow into the Atlantic." Amundsen predicted warmer Pacific waters would then flow into the Bering Sea.

In 1925 when the port city of Nome was experiencing a deadly diphtheria outbreak, Wild Bill Shannon departed Nenana with the lifesaving serum in minus 43 degrees Fahrenheit weather. Winter ice had closed the port so it fell to the intrepid sled dog drivers to brave the elements and relay the serum 674 miles across tundra and frozen rivers.

Reports fixed the wind chill on Norton Sound at minus 83 when Leonhard Seppala took the handoff.

Today's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race competitors and race organizers face the same variable conditions that indigenous peoples, adventurers, miners and pioneers have experienced over both ancient and modern history. Dan Seavey, who has run the Iditarod five times between 1973 and 2012, recalls '74 being the coldest run in his memory.

"Seven of us went into snow cave survival mode in Ptarmigan Pass," he says. "When George Attla and I arrived at the Salmon River check point near McGrath, the thermometer registered minus 58 degrees."

However, a few days later upon arrival in Nome, water was standing in the streets.

Seavey says there are three common race conditions: warm, cold and windy. "One must...