Mainstreet Radio’s Amy Radil profiles Duluth musher John Stetson, who ran the 1999 Beargrease mid-distance race of 150 miles. He says he loves to race because it's the ultimate test for a musher and his or her dogs.
Minnesota's burgeoning 1999 season of sled dog races includes the Beargrease, the Grand Portage Passage, and the Great Trail Race in Hinckley. Together the three races offer $130,000 in prize money…enough to draw mushers from Alaska and the Northwest.
AMY RADIL: John Stetson and his wife Shelly live about 15 miles from Duluth and share their place with 60 sled dogs. In front of their cabin, a local trapper has dropped off a pile of beaver carcasses and what may once have been a deer.
JOHN STETSON: OK. Go to truck. Go to truck.
AMY RADIL: Days before the start of the race, Stetson plans to take his team to run the last leg of the trail so the dogs will be on familiar ground the next time they see the finish line. He frees them from their tethers. And they go bounding toward the kennels on his truck. Almost half of Stetson's animals are expedition dogs with huge thick coats, while the racing dogs are smaller and more sleek. He compares racing and expedition dog to taking a Mack truck in the Indianapolis 500.
JOHN STETSON: He's half Eskimo dog, that one.
AMY RADIL: Stetson says he was already a passionate outdoorsman when explorer Will Steger asked for his help training dogs for a polar expedition. During Steger's trip across Antarctica, Stetson flew in with supplies, ran the radio, and took photographs.
JOHN STETSON: And then when I started with Will, he really showed me an unbelievable amount of places dogs could go that you had-- you would really have no idea they could go.
AMY RADIL: Stetson runs his own business, taking people on sled dog expeditions. But he's still relatively new to the racing world. He says the hardest part about racing is feeling his team's energy flag.
JOHN STETSON: There's times when the dogs have-- when you have to drive the dogs a little bit harder to get them beyond-- to get them to their second wind, or when you can see their motivational levels drop off. And you have to then pick them up with your own techniques as a dog driver. But that's hard.
AMY RADIL: In the last few days before the race begins, Stetson says his main concern is double-checking his equipment. Last year, he lost his headlight and thought he might not finish the race.
JOHN STETSON: But luckily, right behind me, Stacy Hazen, who was just a few minutes behind me in the race, she had a spare light. And so she gave me one of her lights. And so it allowed me to continue in the race, although she did catch up and pass me, which was not that great.
AMY RADIL: Stetson works as a carpenter during the week and builds his own racing sleds. He estimates between food and veterinary bills, it costs about $2,000 a month to care for his dogs.
Finally, it's Beargrease race day. The dogs strain at their harnesses as, one by one, the sleds approach the starting line on the Duluth Lakewalk.
[CROWD CHEERING]
SPEAKER: Second team on the trail of the Beargrease 150.
AMY RADIL: Stetson says his heart is in expedition mushing. But he's becoming a more serious racer as well. Of his 60 dogs, 20 are pups. When they're grown, he says he'll be ready to take on the big one, Alaska's Iditarod, the year after next. In Duluth, I'm Amy Radil, Minnesota Public Radio.
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