Getting dirty: No snow means messy training for dog sled mushers
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Erin Altemus is an emergency room nurse living near Grand Marais. She’s also been a sled dog racer for the last 12 years.
This season’s utter lack of snow is making for some tricky — and muddy — training for her, her husband and their 30 dogs. The same unwintry weather has led to organizers postponing next weekend’s Gunflint Mail Run Sled Dog Race. The John Beargrease Marathon may also get pushed back. And cross-country skiers are facing tough trails and thin ice is beaching would-be anglers.
“I have always kind of boasted that we live in the place where we’re always the first people... on sleds,” Altemus told MPR News. “This year is quite a bit different.”
Altemus and her husband Matt Schmidt first learned to run dogs at the nearby YMCA Camp Menogyn before getting their own team. Last year, Altemus won Gunflint’s eight-dog race; Schmidt won the 12-dog. The couple is hoping to race in their first Iditarod in Alaska in March — a dream they put on hold when their now six-year-old daughter Sylvia was born.
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To get the dogs conditioned without snow on the ground and constantly cycling freeze-thaw conditions, they use ATVs instead of sleds. That’s how the pair normally train the dogs in the fall until the first big snow around the end of November, but their inability to transition is frustrating.
“Last year, we had kind of record snowfall up here anyway,” she said. “We were dealing with grooming trails, just constantly pushing snow around all the time. And then here this year, we have the opposite problem.”
If there’s no snow soon, Altemus and Schmidt plan to head north for the Canada Yukon Quest at the end of January to train, then arrive in Alaska in early February, giving them a month to prepare for the Iditarod.
It’s not just the weather that’s a challenge for mushers. Altemus says the price of expenses like dog food has gone up while race purses have decreased dramatically. But the dream of the Iditarod and the relationship with her dogs is keeping her going.
“All you have to do is be out there in the dog yard with the dogs, whether it's snowing or it's muddy, and they bring you back to why you’re doing it.”
