The Scots sled dogs race with no snow
From mush to slush SPECIAL REPORT
BY MARTIN WILLIAMS
IT began in 1984 as a dog-sledding contest inspired by the BBC children’s show Blue Peter. And Aviemore was picked as the location as the Highlands were thought to guarantee winter snow. The first year of the Aviemore Sled Dog Rally attracted just 12 entries and had plenty of snow. This weekend, though, while competitor numbers are booming, global warming means snow is far from guaranteed.
Penny Evans is the 61-year-old founder of the rally. She settled on the place as the ideal spot, having helped choose it for Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan and his production team to train with dogs and sleds for a adventure to Alaska for the long-running kids’ show.
However, with climate change meaning that snow can no longer be depend- ed upon, innovation has been required. So rather than racing sleds, competitors are now using an adaptation of training sleds, a giant version of a child’s tricycle, without a seat, with dogs hitched to the front and the driver, the musher, steering from a platform at the back.
Buckinghamshire-based Evans, secretary of the Siberian Husky Club of Great Britain and a frequent holidaymaker to the Aviemore, had been convinced it was a safe bet for snow having assisted the BBC when Blue Peter wanted to film a competition winner whose dream was to race a team of dogs in Alaska.
“The Blue Peter presenters asked us if we would help teach them how to run a team of sled dogs,” Evans recalls. “We trained them at Aviemore to go to Alaska.
“The rally event came from that training session because we thought it was a great place to have the race.”
But there have been only a couple of occasions in the last 20 years that the race has been held using traditional sleds in the milieu that they were designed for – snow.
The lack of it on the lower slopes even forced the event to move to the colder, more snow-clad climes further up Glenmore and away from the forest trails they raced on. But now that they have re-fashioned the sleds they have reverted back to the old tracks.
“We have stuck with it now,” she said. “But, yes, we wanted Aviemore because we thought it was snow-sure.”
Evans admits she is “amazed” that the early foray has now resulted in some 1,000 dogs and 150 mushers gathering over this weekend on forest trails around beautiful Loch Morlich, Huskies will be among the dogs competing in the Highlands next weekend in the shadow of the Cairngorms. Evans, an office secretary from Milton Keynes, claims the event now generates £450,000 for the Aviemore economy with 2,000-3,000 spectators expected to watch on each of the two days.
As Evans puts it: “It has just grown and grown.”
The rally has been cancelled only once due, surprisingly, to ice, which is deemed dangerous to the dogs, the mushers and spectators.
It now features teams of between two and eight dogs pulling their musher on a sled around a four to seven-mile trail.
The oldest musher is 78-year-old Walt Howarth from Gainsborough and the youngest is just eight.
Around one in three of the mushers is from Scotland.
Along with the Siberian huskies, race dogs include Alaskan malamutes, samoyeds, Greenland dogs and Canadian eskimo dogs – the pedigree breeds first bred to pull sleds in Arctic conditions hundreds of years ago.
Judy Wakker from Dunblane, who helps organise the race, will be taking part with two of the oldest dogs in the event – Mac and Nakki, both over 10 years old.
“Huskies are generally very fit dogs,” she said. “You do still have to train them right, and feed them right, look after them and give them love.
“They are like any working dog, they have massive, massive energy ... but they need a lot of exercise. So unfortunately we get a lot that go to rescue.”