The People and Dogs of the Iditarod

Dogs are sports, and the Iditarod is the daddy of them all.

This year's Iditarod saw more mushers start the race than in the past decade. Eighty-three teams left Anchorage on March 6; 71 teams finished a little over a week later. Dallas Seavey won the race again this year, crossing the finish line in Nome on March 14, just before midnight. He has won four of the past five Iditarod races. He finished 45 minutes ahead of the second-place musher: his father, Mitch, who won the race in 2004 and 2013.

Warm winters and light snowpack have beleaguered the race in recent years, and although the Alaskan winter has been warmer than average this season, snow conditions were tolerable—meaning that mushers were spared long traverses over barren ground. Still, for the faux start of the race in Anchorage (the race actually begins a few days later in Willow), railroad cars hauled in 350 cubic yards of snow from Fairbanks to coat the city streets.

Travis Gillett, a staff photographer for the clothing company Filson, joined the fray at the start in Willow and the finish in Nome.

"The Iditarod is a long, arduous, impressive, chaotic, bucolic, and bewildering race," Gillett said. "The people that choose to run it have a hardiness about them that I've rarely seen—they tell jokes as they super-glue their fingernails back together, battling the cold that wants to breaks them. That same hardiness is mirrored in the wild landscape of rural Alaska."

You can follow Gillett on Instagram @travisgellett.

The dogs are ready to race at the starting line in Willow. Although fresh snow fell just days before the start, early stages of the race were marked by warm weather.

Musher Elliot Anderson crosses Bering Sea ice as he heads toward the White Mountain checkpoint.

Elliot Anderson at his dog kennels in Houston, Alaska. Anderson finished in 62nd place; it was his second attempt at the race.

Anderson's dog Koyuk (named after a checkpoint on the Iditarod Trail) at his kennel. While some mushers use huskies, the critical qualities of a sled dog are athleticism and endurance.

Stormin' Norman, another of Anderson's dogs, a few days before the start of the race.

Roger Thompson in his snow machine repair shop in Nome.

Lance Mackey, four-time Iditarod champion, at the start of the race in Willow. Mackey scratched from this year's race for medical reasons.

Two dogs on musher Kristin Bacon's team catch up on rest at the Unalakleet checkpoint, a village with a population of 882 known as the gateway to the Bering Sea section of the trail.

Billy Snodgrass at the start of the Iditarod. He scratched from this year's race.

Tom Ellana is proprietor of the Safety Roadhouse in Nuuk, site of the final checkpoint on the Iditarod trail before the finish at Nome. The Safety Roadhouse is also a bar; it's only open during the Iditarod and for a month in the summer.

Musher Martin Buser waves to the camera as his team surges toward Safety checkpoint, the final checkpoint in the race.