No Snow Needed For These Winter Games At Northern Elementary
Northern Lincoln Elementary School was transformed into a stop on the Alaskan Iditarod from Feb. 14 to 16, by students and teachers enthusiastic about reading week, which they aptly named IditaREAD.The library, complete with straw and fluffy fake snow, became a checkpoint, and snowflakes made in art class hung in…
Mansfield Native, Ohio State Grad Failor Leads Sled Dogs In Alaska Race
Beginning Sunday and continuing for the next 10 days or so, Matt Failor and his team will experience a life of sub-zero temperatures, white-out conditions, deep snow drifts, glare ice, open water, charging moose and plenty of barren, windblown stretches of trail.No, this is not Ohio, especially this winter.Read more…
Iditarod To Begin Saturday Despite Record Snowfall
Despite a year of record snowfalls across Alaska, the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race has no plans to delay its start on Saturday, March 3.The “Last Great Race on Earth,” as it is often called, will begin in Anchorage, Alaska, and will span 975 miles across a northern route to…
Planning A Record Sled-Dog Run Up Mount Washington
A team of sled dogs and mushers from Muddy Paw Sled Dog Kennel of Jefferson, N.H., will attempt a history-making ascent on Mount Washington, which at 6,288 feet is the highest peak in the Northeast, March 7, 8 or 9, depending on weather conditions. The run will not just be…
Canadian Challenge History – No Teams Scratch
For the first time in the history of the Canadian Challenge Dog Sled Race all 20 teams finished. No team had to scratch in any of the four categories of the Race. Elliott Clarke, of Air Ronge, had his first win taking the Canadian Challenge Junior Dog Sled Race on…
Iditarod Sled Race Can Teach Business Lessons
At age 18, Dallas Seavey was the youngest musher to finish what has been called the last great race on earth – the grueling, 1,150-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which starts Saturday in Anchorage. Now 24, Seavey has many more impressive finishes under his belt. In 2011, he became…
Sled Dogs + Snowboards = Dogboarding
The following video comes courtesy of Michael “Skeeter” Stitt in Willow.Even as the Iditarod approaches, the 17-year-old musher has traded his sled for a snowboard. Behold, “Dogboarding.””After being on the back of a dogsled for hours on end, you get a little bored,” Stitt wrote in an email. “As I’m…
Normand Casavant Takes First Place in River Runner 100
Normand Casavant had a secret weapon in this year’s River Runner 100 Dog Sled and Skijoring Race.The duck dance.Casavant, who won the race with a time of 9 hours and 38 minutes, employed the traditional dance along on the Takhini River when temperatures dropped well below minus 30 Celsius.Read more…
Winterfest Returns This Weekend
Postponed from its original date of Jan. 14 and 15 due to lack of snow, the Kalkaska Winterfest returns for its 47th year this weekend.While the status of the Midwest International Sled Dog Race remains uncertain, Winterfest Organizer Jim Collins said the outlook is positive for the race to take…
Family Has Plenty of Pull
If you think this was a bad year for snowmobilers, consider how trying this season was for those who dig dog sledding.Ian MacKenzie, his wife Nancy, and daughter, Aurora, live on a 160-acre property on Rock Lake in Plummer Additional Township, east of Sault Ste. Marie, and are the owners…