Lack of snow leads to cancellation of the longest sled dog race in the eastern US
Jonathan Hayes woke up at 5 a.m. Monday morning in rural Maine to feed his 20 dogs, and his heart sank when he heard that the sled race they had been training for since the fall had been canceled.
The Can-Am Crown International Sled Dog Race, the longest sled dog race in the eastern United States, will be canceled for the first time since the race’s inception more than three decades ago due to a lack of snow, event organizers said .
The news came as a blow to the mushers who trained long hours to prepare for the event, which was scheduled to take place March 1 to 5 at Fort Kent, Maine, on the border with Canada.
Mr. Hayes, a high school biology teacher, had been training with his dogs for hours after his family had gone to bed. “I’ve been training and conditioning myself hard for the last six months for something that just got canceled,” Mr. Hayes said. “It is difficult.”
The decision to cancel was a matter of safety, said Can-Am president Dennis Cyr. Since there isn’t as much snow this year, there will be an abundance of vegetation, brush, rocks and gravel on the trails.
“It wouldn’t be safe for the dogs to run, or the volunteers to be at the remote checkpoints,” Mr Cyr said. “We don’t want to expose our mushers to that or ruin our reputation by running a sloppy race this year.”
For the fall and winter, Fort Kent had about 58 inches of snowfall, compared to the 72 inches that the area normally receives, said Timothy Duda, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Caribou, Maine.
Scientists say it is difficult to attribute a single abnormal weather event to climate change. But winters in the United States have become milder in recent yearsand winters are too warm up faster than summers.
Mushing has a deep legacy in Northern Maine, Mr. Cyr said. In the early 20th century, dog sledding, or mushing, was a common mode of travel during the winter months in many northern parts of the United States and Canada and eventually evolved into a form of recreation.
The Can-Am race has gained respect from mushers over the years and is even a qualifier for the Iditarod, a famous annual long-distance sled dog race held in Alaska.
Sixty-four teams would participate in three races: a 30-mile race, a 100-mile race and a 250-mile race, drawing about 5,000 to 10,000 spectators annually, Mr. Cyr said. Many of the mushers came from midwestern Quebec and one in France even planned to attend.
Normally, all those spectators and competitors also give a nice boost to Fort Kent’s economy, Mr. Cyr said.
“You can never book a motel room within a year of Cam-Am weekend,” Mr. Cyr said. “Local restaurants, gas stations and convenience stores are normally full this weekend.”
Organizers start planning sponsorships a year in advance, scheduling fundraising banquets, setting up routes and contacting logging companies to find out where they will harvest wood and reroute to those parts.
This is the first year that the organizers decided to cancel. There were two years where they were slightly diverted due to track problems. During the Covid pandemic, they held a “virtual race” in which they told mushers to track their route systems using GPS and complete a certain number of miles in a certain time frame.
They hope not to have to cancel again anytime soon.
“We look forward to welcoming you again in 2025,” event organizers say wrote on social media“under more favorable circumstances, to celebrate the spirit of sled dog racing together.”