"I'm on my third cell phone in two months," race manager Jack Niggemyer said Wednesday as his phone chimed once again.

The 1,100-mile run to Nome takes an army of volunteers and Iditarod staffers every winter. Even in normal years, it's a huge undertaking to coordinate trail breakers on snowmachines, airplane pilots transporting bags of dog food and volunteers to man the checkpoints.

This year, however, Niggemyer calls it the "Idita-detour." The route has changed and changed again, creating dozens if not hundreds of new twists, turns and details for everyone involved.

But if anything, said trail committee executive director Stan Hooley, the Iditarod spirit has been sparked anew.

"I think there's been this rallying of Alaska spirit that says, 'Let's do what we can to make sure this (race) happens,' " he said.

Among the myriad challenges was finding enough snow to allow the Idita-Rider program. Race fans bid as much as $7,000 to ride from the starting line downtown with the likes of reigning champion Martin Buser or five-time winner Rick Swenson. The program is a moneymaker for the race committee, but organizers feared they wouldn't have enough snow to ensure a long enough ride to please patrons.

But city crews have hauled snow and the Nordic Ski Association of Anchorage has provided trail grooming equipment that will allow the 64 dog teams to reach Campbell Airstrip, 11 miles from downtown.

"If it weren't for the efforts of the municipality and the ski association," Hooley said, "we'd be turning the corner at Cordova and calling it a day at Mulcahy Stadium."

Because of poor trail conditions on both sides of the Alaska Range, the restart was moved to Fairbanks and the route through Cripple, Ophir and Iditarod was dropped.

"It was 400 miles of bad trail, not just one spot," Niggemyer said. "We were forced to do it."

The decision meant abandoning a dozen familiar checkpoints and a trained set of volunteers, he said, but gaining an energetic group of new Iditarod enthusiasts.

"Almost before I could call them they were calling me," Niggemyer said. Almost overnight, he said, new platoons of volunteers were recruited to mark and break trails, establish checkpoints and feed Iditarod volunteers.

As organizers devised the new route, food bags delivered to now-abandoned checkpoints had to be flown elsewhere. Some mushers' carefully planned shipments might end up scrambled, but Mark Nordmann, the Iditarod's checkpoint coordinator, said most mushers have been understanding about the potential for mix-ups.

"Once they find out what we've done," and where each of their food bags ended up, "I think they'll be all right."

In communities that have never seen the Iditarod before, excitement is building.

"Everybody's pretty excited about it around here," said Tanana musher Lester Erhart. People are preparing to feed the expected hordes, bed down tired dogs and otherwise welcome the Last Great Race.

And who knows, Erhart said, there may be dancing and fiddle music for visitors.

"The people here are pretty good at spur-of-the-moment things," he said.

Down the Yukon in Ruby, townspeople normally only see the race in even-numbered years, when the northern route is run.

"We're going to have it three years in a row, so people are really looking forward to that," Bill Honea said.

Though the winter has been unseasonably odd throughout Western Alaska, the Yukon River ice is thick and hard and last week was covered by a foot or more of snow.

Longtime Ruby musher Emmitt Peters, known to Iditarod fans as the "Yukon Fox," said he expects teams will find easy traveling as they head down the river from Fairbanks.

"They're gonna have real good going," said Peters, the 1975 Iditarod champion, "just like the Kentucky Derby."

From Ruby the teams continue down the Yukon to Eagle Island, where the first musher in gets the $3,000 in gold nuggets.

A seven-course dinner and $3,500 prize that traditionally goes to the first musher to reach the Yukon this year will go to the first racer off the river, awarded when the leader reaches Kaltag on the return voyage.

The Iditarod is always a lot of work, Hooley said, but 2003 is unique.

"We've said from the very beginning that there is no challenge we're not up to. But frankly, I don't think we ever expected this many challenges in one year."

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Reporter Joel Gay can be reached at 907-257-4310 or jgay@adn.com.