One of the more difficult aspects of writing a book about the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has been getting a feel for what the trail was really like. Never having run a sled dog race myself, I've relied on book excerpts and descriptions from those who've been there, but for the most part these have generally supplied only bits and snippets of the trail, an incident here, an accident there, with good descriptions of the trail and the surroundings, and slowly, piece by piece, I've built a haphazard sort of map in my mind of what the trail out there must be like.
One of the most valuable tools in this process has been the Iditarod.com site with it's wonderful maps and descriptions, especially the in-depth leg-by-leg explanations of what to expect. I learned that these were written by a fellow named Don Bowers, a name I'd heard many times in my research, but whose story I didn't really become familiar with until I started looking into the background of the notes on the Iditarod site. Then I struck what amounts to editorial gold!
Besides being an Iditarod musher and wearing several other hats, Don Bowers was the chief pilot for Hudson Air Service in Talkeetna. He and three others were killed in a crash near Mt. McKinley in June, 2000. Descriptive tributes to Don Bowers are still online from Craig Medred, Anchorage Daily News Outdoors Editor; and Lew Freedman, former Anchorage Daily News Sports Editor.
I'd heard from several people that Don Bowers was deeply interested in the history of the Iditarod race, and in fact I've referred to his historical essays on the Iditarod site many times. But in tracking the origins of those notes I found that some of the historical details had been omitted. They're still intact, however, at Don's 2000 Trail Notes. And each leg of the trail includes several photos of that section!
Already an author ("Back of the Pack,"), Don had planned to publish his Trail Notes as a book. I can't find any indication that it was ever published, but with his gift for almost prose-like descriptions paired with his marvelous photos, it would have surely been an Iditarod best-seller.
