Sled Dog Races & Winter Fun

Sled Dog Races & Winter Fun

World-championship races are run in mid-February, with three consecutive 25-mi heats through downtown Anchorage, out into the foothills, and back. People line the route with cups of coffee in hand to cheer on their favorite mushers. The three-day races are part of the annual Fur Rendezvous one of the largest winter festivals in the United States. Other attractions include a snow-sculpture competition, car races, Eskimo blanket toss (a holdover from earlier days when dozens of people would team up to grasp a round walrus hide blanket and launch a hunter high into the air, trampoline-style, in an effort to spot distant seals, walrus, and whales), dog weight-pulling contests (where canines of all breeds and sizes compete to see which can pull the most weight piled on a sled), a carnival, and even snowshoe softball. Fur Rondy events take place from late February to the start of the Iditarod in early March. The Fur Rondy office (400 D St., No. 200, Downtown, 99501. 907/274-1270. www.furrondy.net) has a guide to the festival's events. In March, mushers and their dogs compete in the 1,100-mi Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race (907/376-5155; 800/545-6874 Iditarod Trail Headquarters. www.iditarod.com). The race commemorates the delivery of serum to Nome by dog mushers during the diphtheria epidemic of 1925. The serum run was the inspiration for the animated family film Balto. Dog teams leave downtown Anchorage and wind through the Alaska Range, across the Interior, out to the Bering Sea coast, and on to Nome. Depending on weather and trail conditions, winners can complete the race in nine days.