Well I'll tell ya, Michigan has just about everything during the Winter months. I'd love to come up north and see one of these dog sled races.
Sled-dog races go from dream to reality; three new events in Michigan for 2010By Howard Meyerson, The Grand Rapids Press, found at MLive.com
December 13, 2009The dream of launching a 150-mile sled-dog race to the most frigid and northernmost tip of Michigan was born over dinner two years ago, according to Brian Tiura, one of the organizers of Michigan’s newest long-distance mushing event, the Copper Dog 150.
Gena Dewey, of Cadillac, runs with her team of
Alaskan Huskies at the Lost Lake Boy Scout Camp
in Farwell. (Courtesy Photo)The Calumet contractor and sled-dog racer said he and a mushing buddy, Truman Obermeyer, were comparing notes over chow when the idea came to them. They decided to get serious, approached local business leaders and voila, a race was born.
The Copper Dog is scheduled for March 12-14. It is one of three new mushing events on the 2009-10 race season calendar for Michigan.
"It’s a late-season race, said Tiura, owner of Team Upland Racing, a 14-dog kennel of Alaskan huskies. "We are sitting up here at that time of year with the best snow of the season and the snowmobiling activity has slowed down."
The race will begin at night in downtown Calumet, a spectacle for tourists and enthusiasts alike, according to Tiura. The start was fashioned after the U.P. 200, which will start at midnight from downtown Marquette on Feb. 19.
The Copper Dog is a 10-dog race with a $3,500 first-place prize on the 150-mile course and $800 first prize on the 30-mile course.
Long-course mushers run from Calumet to the coastal town of Gay, where they will have a mandatory layover before heading to Copper Harbor. Once there, they are required to stay put for 24 hours before the leg back to Calumet.
“I plan to do that one. I want to run in the inaugural race,” said Joe Gutowski, 54, a musher from Hadley who aspires to run the Iditarod in 2012.
Gutowski attempted the U.P. 200 earlier this year, one of the qualifying events for Iditarod. He was disqualified when one of his seven-dog team grew too tired, leaving him with six remaining dogs, one short of the requirement.
His team ran the last segment of the trail in a blizzard that dropped 32 inches of snow in five hours.
The U.P. 200 opened Gutowski’s eyes to the rigors of the long-distance runs and the training and conditioning necessary. He began mushing five years ago.
“It’s one thing to hook your dogs up and run them,” Gutowski said. “It’s another to train them the way you race.”
For Gutowski, who commutes to the Upper Peninsula to train each weekend, it means camping with the dogs and spending time with them on the trail. He has enlisted the aid of other mushers and trainers and plans to race the U.P. 200 again this coming year along with the new Seney 400, also an official Iditarod qualifying race.
Ohio musher Jim Wellert cooks up some chow for his dog team at the Fox River
checkpoint during the 2009 Seney 300. (Courtesy Photo)The Seney 400 is the 420-mile, longer version of the Seney 300 which was started in 2001, according to Al Hardman the race founder. Until this season, Iditarod mushers were required to have run 500 miles in sanctioned qualifying events before coming to Alaska. That was changed to 750 miles, Hardman said.
“They upped the ante because of problems the rookies were having,” said Hardman, of Ludington, who has run the Iditarod four times. “We decided to make the race (the Seney 400) so people know what they are getting into.
“Most qualifying races have only one check point where the mushers have to do for themselves. At other races, they have handlers or other people helping them.
“We thought a better program to get them ready for the Iditarod is to have them do all this stuff themselves so they learn how to camp with the dogs (without a tent).
The Seney 400 is scheduled from Jan. 3-8 and starts in Seney at 8 a.m. Hardman said he expects between 10 and 12 participants.
A good turnout is expected as well at the Thunder Bay Classic on Feb. 13-14 in Alpena, a new race event for the recreational mushing crowd, sponsored by the Mid-Union Sled Haulers (MUSH).
MUSH events are largely family events with sprint races and ski-joring events that appeal to novice and experienced mushers. MUSH formed in 1980 to give amateurs a place to gather.
“It’s the proverbial (mushing) workhorse for the state,” said Tim Dewey, its publicity director. “It’s a hundred or so families who are there because of their love of dogs and sled dog racing.”
Dewey said the organization added the new race to provide a new location, part of an ongoing effort to spread out its races. It also offers race events on Drummond Island, in Farwell, Atlanta, Alabaster and the Fort Custer State Recreation Area in Augusta.
The Thunder Bay Classic takes place at the Alpena Sportsmen’s Club. It has 3-mile, three-dog junior events and 7-mile, seven-dog events for adults, among other events.
For a complete list of mushing events and organizations across the state check out sleddogcentral.com
E-mail Howard Meyerson at hmeyerson@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/HMeyersonhttp://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2009/12/sled-dog_races_go_from_dream_t.html