U.P. 200 Sled Dog Race

I thought everyone here might enjoy this as it is a little different!

Every year - around the middle of February - Marquette, MI hosts the U.P. 200 sled dog race. We have mushers from all over the country complete in a 200+ mile race that starts on a Friday evening and ends on the following Sunday morning. This race is one of the qualifiers for the famed Iditarod Sled Dog Race held in Alaska.

I thought it would be nice to share a couple of pictures of this year’s winner - Ed Stielstra of Nature's Kennel, McMillan, MI. My wife, Colleen and I hiked over to the old railroad track (abandoned years ago) and waited for the dog sled teams as they passed our house on the way to the finish line in Marquette, MI.



I am not affliated with the U.P. 200 Sled Dog Race in any way - For more information – check out the U.P. 200 web site: http://www.up200.org/

Great pics, Steve. Compared to SoCal, you Yoopers sure live in a whole other world with all that snow.

Maine has a few sled dog races a year as well. I have been a participant by default in some of them just because of my snowmobile affiliation. That is they use the snowmobile trails around here and thus I have driven through the trails as they were having their races

Saturday I was cutting wood alongside the snowmobile trail that cuts through our property when I saw a sled dog team come sliding through. I even told my Brother that was with me "Man I wish I had my camera," totally forgetting that I brought it with me and that it was in my pocket. Anyway this dog sled team comes through at least once a weekend which is pretty cool.

What is getting really big here is Skijouring...that is where there is one dog that pulls a cross country skier on skis. Oh its huge...I suspect since taking care of one dog 24/7/365 is easier then taking care of a whole slew of dogs.

Overall, us snowmobilers enjoy sharing our trails. We pay for them, we pack them down, we groom them and we keep them cut back and marked, still the more people that use them...like dog sled teams, cross-country skiers and even snowshoers...the better chance we have of keeping the trails we got open.