From white to brown.

From winter to fall.

From rugged to brutal.

Last week when the Iron Dog snowmachine racers traveled about 75 miles across the Burn, they encountered snow-starved sections of brown mud, brown tussocks and brown stumps from a controlled burn in 1984. Most racers stopped repeatedly to prevent their engines from overheating and, where possible, scoop up a handful of snow to pack on the heat exchangers.

"Boy, the Iditarodders are going to have a hard time getting across the Farewell Burn," said Doug Dixon, a member of the second-place Iron Dog team. "There's no snow on the Burn.

"The beauty part is that they're traveling at a slower speed, and they'll have time to prepare. Plus, dogs can run across tundra and don't overheat like a machine."

Some veteran mushers shrugged off reports of bare trail as unavoidable -- or at least not as bad as years such as 2003, when the Iditarod restart had to be moved to Fairbanks.

The trail sounds "doable," said three-time defending champion Lance Mackey.

"That's a rough ride and, you know, could be a sled breaker. I've had my sled break in there," Mackey said. "I've had one runner for 200 miles."

Willow musher DeeDee Jonrowe said it was almost a relief to hear the race marshal's trail report at a mandatory musher meeting in Anchorage on Thursday. The trail didn't sound as bad as reports mushers heard from the Iron Dog.

"Most of the trail sounds fast, and it sounds well defined," Jonrowe said.

This isn't the first year Iditarod mushers have encountered a snow-starved Burn. Nor will it be the last. In fact, it may barely slow them.

"Dogs love running on dirt," race marshal Mark Nordman said Wednesday. "It's like playing out in the yard for them. Dogs have no problem with it.

"The fastest mushers will run the Burn faster than the Iron Dog racers."

Icy trails and low snow, combined with predictions for warm weather, translate to a fast race, said Denali Park musher Jeff King, a four-time champion.

Hugh Neff, of Tok, who was third in last month's Yukon Quest, expects to see a little of everything.

"Warm in the beginning. It's going to be windy in the end," he said. "Definitely a race where you want to have a lot of experienced, veteran dogs that know what they're doing and where they're going."

Only about 13 miles of the 80-mile run from Rohn to Nikolai across the Farewell Burn are snowless, said Nordman, who raced the Iditarod five times before taking over coordinating its logistics.

Winter cyclist Pete Basinger, who captured the 350-mile Iditarod Invitational for human-powered athletes from Knik to McGrath late Wednesday, echoed Nordman.

"There's a section probably not much more than 10 miles that's completely dry and really tussocky," Basinger said from McGrath on Thursday. "For snowmachiners, it's brutal. But for bikers, it's not too bad a deal, and that may hold true for mushers too."

Though there's not a lot of snow past Rohn, ushers weren't expecting major problems beyond the Burn.

"Most of the trail is hard and fast," race marshal Nordman said. "You'll want to keep it slow to begin with, and that can be difficult because the dogs will want to run."

Dixon, the Iron Dog racer, called the stretch between Nikolai and McGrath "super fast," an assessment Basinger confirmed. And there's even more snow from McGrath to Ruby, where the race's northern route, which Iditarod mushers take this year, meets the Yukon River.

"The river is in great shape, just a highway," Dixon said.

When mushers leave the river in Kaltag, snow is thin once again, a narrow white ribbon from the river to the Norton Sound coast at Unalakleet.

"Everything to the left and right is brown," Dixon said.

Ice and thin snow holds sway on the last stretch to Nome.

Last year's Iditarod runner-up, Sebastian Schnuelle of Whitehorse, Yukon, said there's no point in worrying about trail conditions now.

"What I see out there is what I'm going to get. So much could happen between today and tomorrow and Monday. It's going to all change anyways," he said.

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Follow updates throughout the race on our Sled Blog: adn.com/sledblog. Twitter updates: twitter.com/iditarodlive. Call Mike Campbell at 257-4329 or e-mail mcampbell@adn.com. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334 or e-mail khopkins@adn.com.