Canadian Challenge Dog Sled Race
Situated roughly 140 kilometres north of Saskatoon on the banks of the North Saskatchewan, the city of Prince Albert is known as the gateway to Saskatchewan's North and in early February is home to the Prince Albert Winter Festival, one of Western Canada's largest festivals.
It takes many, many miles to truly make a dog team
Beginning in the 1920s as a three-day event, it featured horse racing on ice and dog racing until the festival's demise in '29 and subsequent resurrection in 1965. This year's festival will mark Prince Albert's 40th Winter Festival and combines uniquely northern events such as the King Trapper competition and the Ol' Tyme Fiddler's Showdown with newer attractions like the country music concert, children's carnival and on-site fish fry.
Sound like something that tickles your fancy? Well, you can take part in a number of ways. Enter the annual beard-growing contest, use your carving skills in the ice sculpting contest or get man's best friend off the couch and enter him in the festival's Mutt Pull; everyone's welcome to enter.
The handler is the second part of the equation, and is equally as important.
Then, of course, there's the festival's main attraction since its inception - the races. Dog teams were always an essential ingredient in winter transportation for First Nations, the North-West Mounted Police and trappers. Next to the weather, the most popular topic was who had the fastest dogs; and things are no different today at the Prince Albert Winter Festival. However, over the years, the initial 20 kilometre "sprint races" were replaced with a new race. Officially named the Northern Lights Canadian Challenge Sled Dog Race, the race has become known simply as "The Challenge", Canada's longest dog race.
Attracting dog mushers from the United States, Belgium, Germany and Serbia, the Challenge is a four-day race that parallels the earliest known transportation corridor in the central part of Saskatchewan, known as the "Freight Trails". The destination is La Ronge, a northern town rich in fur trading history, before turning around and heading back to Prince Albert, a total distance of approximately 600 kilometres.
These dogs are born to run.
The ceremonial start of the Canadian Challenge begins in downtown Prince Albert on Central Avenue where the 12-dog teams, harnessed and attached to their sleds,wait to be sent on their waywith special passengers.
The previous night, short trips with the teams are auctioned off with all proceeds going to the Challenge's official charity, The Children's Wish Foundation. Final checks are completed while close to 200 powerful sled dogs bark and howl to be released...the canine cacophony is deafening! As each team catapults off the starting line the crowd cheers and the Challenge begins...well, sort of.
The dog box: A sled dog's home away from home.
Although they call it the ceremonial start, it's really more ceremony than start. This is the time for media and other folks to have a chance to meet the mushers. Like the 1,018-mile Yukon Quest, the actual start of the race is the next day, at a quieter spot down the road. Starting in two-minute intervals, the dog teams begin their journey northward to Land of the Loon Resort, the first of five checkpoints on the way to La Ronge. A mid-distance dog team can average between 13 km/h (8 m.p.h.) and 22 km/k (14 m.p.h.), and the rule of thumb is to rest as much as the team runs. For example, teams run for 4 hours then rest for 4 hours with a checkpoint being a designated place where the dogs can feed and rest. Even with a handler's help, the days are long and arduous, and sleep is a rare commodity for a dog musher in the Canadian Challenge. Some teams rest at the checkpoints while others prefer to continue into the forest for a quieter rest period away from the media and spectators.
As the saying goes "Unless you're the lead dog - the view never changes!"
It's roughly a 4-hour run to Land of the Loon checkpoint and for some the next leg begins after a 4-hour rest and for others it begins sooner. There is close to $10,000 for the team that finishes first so teams are keen to run. The next 80 kilometres take the dog teams north through the night, into the wilds of Northern Saskatchewan's boreal forest and across two bare windswept lakes before reaching the Montreal Lake checkpoint, where teams find a large canvas tent filled with hay for beds and a wooden shack offering hot stew and coffee. After 50 miles of wilderness travel through wolf and moose country, this is an oasis.
Me? Excited? Whatever gave you that idea?
During the Canadian Challenge, a sled dog will burn about 11,000 calories a day, and ensuring they eat well is directly proportional to how well they will as a team. Mealtime may consist of the choicest cuts of liver, beef and chicken or various types of broths. The responsibility of ensuring the dogs eat and rest falls on the shoulders of the handler. This is the person who drives the dog truck throughout the north to meet up with the dog team, feed the dogs, put the team to bed, then harness and put 'booties" (felt dog socks that protect the dogs' feet) on the dogs and sends the team and the musher on their way, only to repeat the cycle again and again at each checkpoint. Like a mother that ensures a household runs smoothly, a handler's job can be thankless, but critical to the outcome of the race.
Harnessed, hugged and ready to go
By Montreal Lake, the teams have usually spread out and as one team signs in at the checkpoint, another signs out to begin the run down the lake to the small community of Weyakwin, 56 kilometres to the north. Sleep is a wonderful thing if you can get it on this race, and it's common in Weyakwin and other checkpoints to see mushers and handlers sleeping in trucks or on the ground - anywhere a bit of sleep can be found. Many stories abound about sleep deprivation and hallucinations. Sid Robinson and Ed Jenkins, both highly experienced and respected mushers, remember traveling together in a past Challenge. One night Sid said" I'm sure I'm hallucinating. I can see basketball nets in the trees."
Ed quickly replied, "It's only a hallucination if someone passes you the ball!"
The 100-kilometre run from Weyakwin to the halfway point of La Ronge is the hardest and longest of this leg of the Canadian Challenge. It begins shortly after crossing the Weyakwin River and follows a 30-kilometre trail that weaves and undulates through the Thunder Hills before dissipating into the muskeg flats of the Two Forks River, with the sound of 48 feet hitting the trail and the occasional yip being the team's sole emissary. Another 70 kilometres and the dog teams reach La Ronge and a mandatory eight-hour rest period that allows the Challenge team of volunteer veterinarians and assistants to give each dog a thorough physical examination. And they do. Heart rates, physical condition, paw check and temperatures are just a few of the items to check on these athletes.
Dog booties prevent ice balls from forming in a dog's feet and also protects against cuts and abrasions.
A trained sled dog is probably the finest endurance athlete in the world. Measured endurance in a laboratory setting is called V02 max. A typical Olympic-calibre marathon runner would score about 70 to 80 (millimitres of oxygen in the blood) while a thoroughbred horse would peak around 150.
An average sled dog scores 240.
After their physicals, the dogs get to enjoy a well-deserved meal and rest, before hitting the course for the return trip.
By the time the Canadian Challenge is over, some teams are celebrating a successful finish of the 600-kilometre round trip, while others lament that the race proved beyond their limits. The desire to run dog teams through a boreal forest at night, under the blaze of the Northern Lights and at temperatures of -30 C may seem primordial to some and downright crazy to others. Yet, as you watch the teams trot along the last section of trail to the finish line, you realize this is a great celebration of Northern Saskatchewan's colourful history and way of life.
Dog coats keep short-haired sled dogs warm on cold winter days.
Robinson, a musher who also happens to be a provincial court judge, has raced in six of the seven Canadian Challenge races and sums things up nicely:
"If you took away the prize money, the trophy and the adulation of winning, we would still be running our dog teams in the Canadian Challenge because this is a great adventure...Canadian style."
