Husky News

They’re mushing down from Canada this week, up from Oregon, over from Washington and from Idaho, too.

By day, they’re microbiologists and insurance agents and engineers and heavy equipment operators. One’s a veterinarian, another a retired postal worker. A fourth-grade teacher, a geologist, a mechanic, a forester.

Some are the grizzled men you’d expect, but not a few are women, and no matter who they are they all come howling and barking and baying at the waning moon, greeting the first of the year with Montana’s first dog-sled race of the year, held for the first time in Olney.

This year, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the tiny town west of Whitefish plays host to the inaugural Sled Dog Days, a long weekend of 50- and 100-mile races through the winter-white Stillwater State Forest.

They’ll run from the Del Rey Trailhead at the top of Whitefish Lake, “Haw!” to the left of the Whitefish Range, “Gee!” to the right of Lazy Creek, up and down and winding around these foothills mile after mile after snow-silent mile.

“There’s lots of Montana teams,” said race organizer Katie Davis, “but not so many Montana events.” And very few early season Montana events, which is something she reckons to remedy.

“We wanted to give something back to all the people who love the sport,” Davis said. “We wanted to give everyone a place to come run.”

And run they will, taking to the trail at two-minute intervals, 28 teams in all.

Some, she said, are hobbyists. Some are pros. Three have completed the 1,180-mile Iditarod, and six are headed to Alaska’s greatest race again this year.

“I’ve been pretty surprised,” Davis said. “We have a lot of very good teams coming in.”

The 12-dog teams head out at 8 a.m., both Saturday and Sunday, on the 100-mile trail. The six-dog teams snap the gangline taut at 8:45 for the 50-miler.

But by 4 on Sunday, they’ll all be back at the Great Northern Bar in Whitefish for dinner, drinks and awards.

“It’s really exciting,” Davis said, “all the support we’ve had. Now we just have to pull off the details.”

Charlotte Mooney will be there with her team from Lincoln, veterans of the Seeley 200. Wendy Arrotta will be there, too, from down in Condon.

Laura Daugereau is coming from Sand Coulee, as is Rick Larson, who keeps 42 Alaskan huskies in that small Montana town.

Butch Parr, with his 30 dogs and two Race to the Sky victories, won’t have far to travel from Whitefish, and neither will Olney local Scott Donaldson, whose team of Amber, T.J., Pink I and Gypsy ran to first place last year at the Polebridge Root Beer Classic.

Longtime musher Steve Riggs is caravanning up from Condon with Arrotta, and Kirk Barnum – the forester who keeps a circus of 47 dogs – will travel north from Seeley Lake.

The rest, Davis said, are coming from Washington, Minnesota, Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, “all over the place. The turnout is amazing for our first year.”

Davis herself keeps 16 dogs. Her two co-organizers share 30 more.

All three, she said, are relatively new to the area, drawn by “lots of snow and room to run. That’s why we’re here, and that’s why everyone is coming to race. It’s going to be great.”

Source:The Missoulian