1st sled dog race a hit in Sherman Local, Canadian teams compete

SHERMAN – It would be hard to say who was making more noise Saturday, the hundreds of Katahdin High School fans yelling, screaming and shouting support for their basketball team in the state Eastern Maine Class D championship game in Bangor or the hundreds of huskies barking, howling and yipping to get into the Katahdin Sled Dog Races.

“There are a lot of dogs,” said Steve Nissley of Sherman, president of the Katahdin Valley Sled Dog Association, which sponsored the first-of-its-kind event in the region. “A husky lives for this.”

The idea for the race started two years ago and was seen as a way to bring people into this area, which has been hit hard in recent years by mill closures and reductions, and the decline of agriculture.

Initially, Nissley said, it didn’t get much support. Last spring, however, some businessmen approached him and others and asked them to give it another try. Support grew over the summer as people and businesses along the Route 11 corridor from Sherman to Mount Chase joined in to help.

“I’m really impressed,” said Rena Cloutier, a volunteer from Stacyville who was serving as an interpreter for French-speaking racers who came down from Quebec and New Brunswick.

“All the local people from Patten, Stacyville and Sherman are working together, she said. “There’s been so much cooperation. People have put a lot of effort into this and a lot of time.”

Since last August, Nissley said, about $25,000 was raised, $20,000 of which went to the overall purse.

The two-day event featured several classes of sprint races from the Skijor, in which a racer is pulled by one or two dogs, to the longer open class with eight or more dogs pulling a sled.

The middistance race, a 100-mile two-day event, took 13 mushers and their teams on a 50-mile leg from the village of Sherman to Bowlin Camps in Township 5 Range 8. After a mandatory 10-hour layover, they completed the final 50-mile leg on Sunday, finishing in Patten.

Boyd Wilson of Marmora, Ontario, was the winner of that race.

Race organizers promoted the middistance race as featuring some of the best scenery in northern Maine, including breathtaking views of Mount Katahdin.

That was one of the reasons Peter Johnson of Webster, N.H., decided to give it a try.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the mountain, and the views,” he said, readying his sled about two hours before the start of the race.

A musher for 15 years, Johnson said he was unable to participate in next weekend’s 250-mile CanAm race in Fort Kent, so he went for the shorter Katahdin race.

“This was the longest race I could find this year,” he said.

While mushers and handlers faced a bitter cold wind that ripped across the open fields near PD Road in Sherman, the dogs seemed oblivious to it.

As each class of sprint race was announced, mushers would wait until just a minute or two before they were to run to hook their dogs into their harnesses. Once tethered, the team barked and yowled and jumped into the air in anticipation of what was to come.

Scores of other dogs, sensing the building excitement, barked and yipped with them to the point where the ruckus could be heard a quarter-mile away.

All in all, Nissley said, he was pleased with the race and was looking forward to next year.

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” he said. “You’ve got to go with it. You can’t steer a car that’s not moving.”