Can Am Crown Sled Dog Race Lack of snow forces cancellation

Can-Am Crown Sled Dog Race: Lack of snow forces cancellation

Jonathan Hayes woke up at 5 a.m. Monday morning in rural Maine to feed his 20 or so dogs and his heart sank when he learned that the sled race they had been training for since the fall was 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, organizers said.

The news was a blow to mushers who had trained for hours to prepare for the event, scheduled to take place March 1-5 in Fort Kent, Maine, on the border with Canada.

Mr. Hayes, a high school biology teacher, had been training his dogs for hours after his family went to bed. “I have been pushing my training and conditioning for the last six months for something that was just canceled,” Mr. Hayes said. “It is difficult.”

The decision to cancel was a question of safety, said Dennis Cyr, president of Can-Am. Since there isn't as much snow this year, there will be plenty of vegetation, brush, rocks and gravel on the trails.

“It would not be safe to let the dogs run or the volunteers to be out at the remote checkpoints,” Mr Cyr said. “We don’t want to subject our mushers to this or ruin our reputation with a sloppy race this year.”

About 58 inches of snow fell in Fort Kent during the fall and winter, compared to the 72 inches that typically falls in the area, said Timothy Duda, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Caribou, Maine.

Scientists say it is difficult to attribute a single anomalous weather event to climate change. But winters in the United States have become milder in recent years and winters are warming faster than summers.

Mushing has a long tradition in northern Maine, Mr. Cyr said. By the early 20th century, dog sledding, or mushing, was a common form of travel in many northern parts of the United States and Canada during the winter months and eventually developed into a form of recreation.

The Can-Am race has gained the respect of 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 were scheduled to compete in three races – a 30-mile race, a 100-mile race and a 250-mile race, which attract about 5,000 to 10,000 spectators each year, Mr. Cyr said. Many of the mushers traveled from the Midwest and Quebec, and one from France even planned to attend.

Normally, all those spectators and competitors also provide 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 grocery stores are typically full this weekend.”

Organizers begin planning a year in advance to attract sponsors, plan fundraising banquets, set up trails and contact logging companies to find out where they will harvest timber and reroute the route around those areas.

This is the first year that organizers have decided to cancel. There were two years when they were slightly rerouted due to trail problems. During the Covid pandemic, they hosted a “virtual race” where they told mushers to keep track of their trail systems using GPS and complete a specific number of miles in a specific time frame.

They hope not to have to cancel again so soon.

“We look forward to welcoming you back in 2025,” the organizers wrote on social media, “under more favorable conditions to celebrate the spirit of sled dog racing together.”