'It's about dog safety': No Beargrease means altered plans for organizers, mushers

DULUTH — Musher Erin Altemus was on to the backup plan even before John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon officials announced that the annual race would be cancelled this year.

She and her husband, Matthew-Karl Schmidt, were both entered in the 300-mile race that starts in Duluth, winds up the North Shore and ends just short of the Canadian border in Grand Portage, Minn. It was to be a tryout — a way to determine which 16 dogs from the Sawtooth Mountain Racing kennel would travel with Altemus to Alaska for her rookie run of the Iditarod in March.

Without the Beargrease, Schmidt and nearly two dozen dogs will leave early for Alaska to get the team running on snow — which has been an impossibility this season in Grand Marais, Minn., where they are based.

"We need the dogs getting longer runs on sleds," said Altemus, who has had her dogs hitched to ATVs longer than normal this season — a dry ground training technique mushers use when the shorter runs start in the summer. Typically she has switched to using a sled by November, she said.

Officials cited a lack of snow in northern Minnesota when they announced the rare cancellation of the races that were scheduled to start Jan. 28. A make-up date in early March would conflict with the Iditarod — affecting a handful of kennels signed up for both the Beargrease and the nearly 1,000-mile race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.

The 40th running of the Beargrease is now scheduled for Jan. 26, 2025.

"The big picture is that it's about dog safety — they just come first," board president Mike Keyport said from his home in Grand Portage, where just an inch of snow covered the ground and it hasn't been cold enough to freeze lakes and swamps along the route.

"Even though it's heartbreaking, I do believe we made the right decision," added Keyport, the great-grandson of the race's namesake, John Beargrease.

The cancellation gives race directors time to raise additional money for next year's milestone event. They want a $40,000 purse for the 40th year, Keyport said. Events that don't require 12 inches of packed snow will go on, including an art show at the Great Lakes Aquarium that opens Jan. 15 and the Cutest Puppy Contest, with details still to be announced.

Brian Larson had never watched the Beargrease until he bought Billy's Bar — a spot on the outskirts of town where upward of 1,000 spectators line up to watch the mushers glide across the starting line and disappear into the route alongside Tischer Road.

The cancellation means the loss of the bar's biggest day, he said — one that has come to include heated tents, a breakfast buffet and so many fans.

"I told them last year, pencil us in," Larson said. "We'll be your partners forever."

Altemus described the Beargrease as the biggest race you can do in the Lower 48 — one made trickier because of the abundance of hills. She favors it because it's on her home turf. It's also a race she has used twice to qualify for the Iditarod.

Mushers who likely started training for the winter season this past summer could seek out other races in Alaska, Montana and Idaho.

With the cancellation of the Beargrease, Altemus said she hopes mushers are looking for other races.

"It's so much work to train your dogs for a big race like this," she said.

There are Beargrease competitors in the lineup for the UP200, another mid-distance race that serves as a qualifier for the Iditarod — and there is room for more, according to president Darlene Walch.

"We have enough snow that I can't see the grass," she said.