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Great Slave Lake 200 Off & Running |
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Written by Theresa Daily
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Saturday, 15 December 2007 |
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A tiny town with a population of 748 residents, formerly called by the traditional
name of Zhahti Koe meaning "mission house".4 mushers and their 12 dog
teams took to the cold blowing winds with visibilty reported to be very
low. At least snow is not an issue for mushers in this race, "it's deep
and it's a good trails" says race timer, John St Louis "we've had
plenty of snow".
Temperatures are currently minus 16 degrees (C) . The first musher to
arrive at check point one, 40 miles into the race, was (1st) Warren
Palfrey arriving at 12:43 pm with a total elapsed time of 3 hours and
39 minutes, he dropped 1 dog,(2nd) Ken Anderson arrived at 1:01 with a total elapsed time of 3
hours and 59 minutes (3rd) Kate Palfrey arrived at 1:12 pm with a
total elapsed time of 4 hours and 12 minutes and in (4th) Cindy Berard
arrived at 1:23 with a total elapsed time of 4 hours and 17 minutes.
This race has a total of 12 hours in layovers with an expected finish
sometime around 9 pm Sunday.
The Great Slave 200 is the only distance dog mushing
race in the Northern Canada and is a qualifying race for the Iditarod
and the Yukon Quest. This is the third running of the race with a new route this year that follows along many of the local villages making it spectator friendly. There is a
maximum of 12 dogs, a minimum of 8 dogs and mushers must finish with a
minimum of 5 dogs in harness. Stay tuned for current updates and photos
straight from the trail.
Sponsors for this race include: Canadian Tire, Canadian
North Airlines, Discovery Mining, GNWT Enviroment & Natural
Resources, Snowshoe Inn located in Fort Providence, FirstMate Pet Foods
and Polar Tech.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 16 December 2007 )
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