FORT KENT – The ninth Can Am Crown International Sled Dog Race is 10 days away, and a record number of mushers have signed up for the 250-mile classic which takes off down Main Street of this St. John Valley town on March 3.

Enthusiasm sweeps the committee that includes nearly 500 volunteers because big name mushers, those that have won or nearly won the event over the years, have yet to submit their applications for the most grueling sled dog race in the eastern United States.

“We expect that Don Hibbs [Millinocket], Andre Nadeau [Quebec], and Keith Ali [Minnesota] will be here,” Rita Cannan, chairman of the Can Am Crown committee, said Tuesday night at a press conference. “With mushers, the serious ones, it’s kind of a mind game, not wanting other mushers to know their plans until the final moments.”

“We already have 17 mushers signed up for the big race,” she said. “They are from Wisconsin, Wyoming, Minnesota, Ontario, New Hampshire, and Quebec.

“We also have three local people running the 250-mile race,” she said proudly of the local enthusiasm that has mushroomed in recent years. “We also have several local people who will be running the shorter races [30 and 60 miles].”

The first teams will head out of Fort Kent at 9 a.m., March 3. The winners usually come across the finish line during the early morning hours of Monday. The 30- and 60-mile races will start after all of the 250-mile racers have left.

Racers compete for a total purse of $37,000 in the three races. The purse is about half of the Can Am Crown budget of $73,000. While a lot of the money comes from large donors such as MBNA, Key Bank, and Pepsi Cola, many small area businesses contribute to the annual race, which has become a centerpiece of northern Maine’s winter tourism efforts.

The route of the 250-mile race has been changed this year to add a bit of mileage to the race, and to circumvent bad areas of trail found in previous races.

The start of the race, the first half-mile, is done on Fort Kent’s Main Street. Volunteers haul tons of snow onto the street the night before the race to create a kind of amphitheater for spectators. An estimated 7,000 people enjoyed the start and finish last year.

People line up sometimes 10 deep, along fences erected to keep the dogs on their mark, along Main Street. A short distance after passing the municipal building, mushers and dogs turn left and head out into the wilds of northern Maine forests.

“Our trails are in fantastic shape, hardened by the rain we received 10 days ago,” Dennis Cyr, the trailmaster said. “We had to do a lot of hard work this winter, but the trails are groomed and signed for the race.”

A huge part of the groomers’ work was in cutting trees and branches dropped across the trail by more than 50 mile per hour winds in December. Some trails were covered so heavily that trail workers sometimes lost their sense of where the trail was supposed to be.

Cyr, and one of his helpers, Stan Flagg, explained the harsh work of clearing trails.

“One day Stan and I worked four hours to clear a two-mile stretch,” Cyr said. “We, along with some 30 volunteers, including several Maine Game Wardens, have the trails in tip top shape.

“A lot of people are involved in this, including four or five people who custom-made drags hauled by snowmobiles to prepare the trails,” Cyr said. “It’s a lot of work, but we are ready.”

The longest leg of the new trail will be the first, 64 miles from Fort Kent to Portage. The new trail takes the sled dog teams to St. Francis before they head south and east to Crooked Tree Lodge at Portage Lake.

The second leg, 25 miles to the Roy Michaud Camps at Big Machias Lake, is the shortest run. It is expected that musher strategy will take over on this leg as mushers vie for the leg purses of $1,000. It may mean some mushers may stay in Portage overnight to make a fast run on the short route.

The third leg, to the Maibec lumber camp near the Maine-Quebec border is 48 miles. Then it’s a 43-mile run to Allagash.

The 54-mile run for the gold from Allagash to Fort Kent could see more changes. Cyr said they could easily add 15 miles to that run to bring the race to 248 miles. Again, this could change race strategy for mushers who usually did a fast run during the final leg.

Fort Kent’s 250-mile classic has been a qualifying race for the Iditarod, Alaska’s famed 1,150-mile race in March of each year, for several years, and this year’s race is also a qualifier for the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest race held in February.

Nadeau, a four-time winner at Fort Kent, ran the Yukon Quest three years ago. His second-place finish there surprised many veteran mushers who had never heard of the Quebec contractor.

Local mushers running the 250-mile race this year include Steve Kennedy, who became the first local musher last year to finish the 250-mile race; John Kaleta, one of the original organizers of the classic, who has yet to finish the race although he’s tried several times; and Shawn Graham, athletic director at the University of Maine-Fort Kent and a relative newcomer to mushing.

Other Fort Kent area mushers, who are running in the 30- or 60-mile races, include Lynn Cyr of Fort Kent and Mary and Michael Wolf, two teenagers from St. Francis, all first-timers in competitive mushing.