Dog race falls victim to lack of volunteers

By Sarah Schofield

What would have been Eldorado’s 16th annual dog sled race normally held in January was cancelled due to a lack of volunteers.

Sandra Hannah, the race’s chairwoman for the past 15 years, knows all too well that running the race is not possible without volunteers.

“We didn’t have volunteers to step up to some of the positions that needed to be filled. One in particular was the trail boss. That person has to go out and make sure the trail is maintained and in good running condition. We didn’t have that person. We need that person to have a race.”

Hannah said she had gotten to the point where she could not accept any more jobs on top of her other responsibilities.

“I don’t mind doing it and organizing the race and so forth. Our basic concept was for volunteers to step up and taking up some of the positions. Whether we will proceed for next year depends on if we have people contact me and say, ‘I’ll take the responsibility.’ I have no problem organizing it and getting the race back up on its feet.”

Ken Golton of L’Amable, who has raced for the past 16 years as a musher and passed on his skills to his sons Eli and Jake, said he was disappointed with the announcement that this year’s race had been cancelled.

“I’ve been in the race since the second year it started. I have two boys who have also raced in it and they were shocked to hear it was cancelled. Most of the mushers feel shocked that it was cancelled. We knew there was some trouble with the volunteers but thought that everything was going to be sorted out. We understand it takes a lot to run a race.”

Another factor was the age of some of the volunteers. With a lot of them getting older, the physically demanding tasks weren’t as easy for them to fulfill.

“We need younger people and people with lots of energy to be able to volunteer for these positions,” said Hannah.

Hannah said she also noticed that spectatorship was dropping each year as the number of local mushers declined.

“Years ago, when we started this up we had maybe five or seven local people in the area that were the big attraction for them. Now we draw a lot of mushers from the United States and Quebec but nobody locally,” said Hannah.

“The snow has been going down each year too which doesn’t help,” Golton said.

Hannah said she tried various ways to get volunteers from the community.

“I went through media, the Intelligencer, EMC; did posters. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. The volunteers just weren’t there. We’ll see what happens next year and hope someone steps up to help us with the trails.”