Mushing through Morrisville

Mike Green, a local veteran of the dog-racing circuit, has helped organize the event. While some may remember mushers and their teams racing along frozen Lake Elmore, Green said it’s been a while since the pros have come to the county.

“It’s been well over 20 years since Lake Elmore,” Green said. “Not too many of the teams (competing) are from around here.”

The roughly 10-mile course starts on the rail trail behind 10 Railroad Street, a short walk from the Oxbow Riverfront Park. It runs east along the trail, flanked by Route 15 on the left and the Lamoille River on the right, to Corley Road in Wolcott. The teams then turn around and head back to the finish line.

Green said organizers lined up a respectable group of sponsors, enough for a four-figure prize purse to be divvied up among the top teams.

The Vermont Association of Snow Travelers, which oversees the rail trail, has agreed to keep snowmobiles off the trail this weekend. And Morristown officials, in particular Tricia Follert, the town’s community development coordinator, have been enthusiastic.

“She’s my girl Friday,” Green said.

Since the rail trail is fairly narrow, the teams will race the clock as much as each other. hey’ll leave at two-minute staggered starts. But the trail is still wide enough for teams to pass if they close the gap.

“It’s not the place for a mass start, although I did one of those once, and it was quite the hoot,” Green said.

Along the course are plenty of spots to watch, although Green recommends spending some time at the start/finish area and some time at the turnaround on Corley Road. Since the rail trail is mostly a straight shot, the dogs should be running particularly fast. It may be a little warm for the dogs — weather forecasts call for sunny skies and highs in the upper 30s — but the fans should have no complaints.

“This race, more than any of the others, should be very spectator-friendly,” Green said. “I wish this trail was here when I was racing.”

Years of racing

Green, 75, lives in Wolcott — he’s from there originally — with his wife and granddaughter. A 30-year employee of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, he was the state lands forester for the Mount Mansfield area, and worked around Lamoille County.

His interest in sled dog racing came when he was given a Siberian husky nearly half a century ago, launching a 40-year racing career. The apogee of that career was a decade spanning 1996 and 2005, when he and his family moved to Alaska, the epicenter of racing and home to the most famous race of all, the thousand-mile Iditarod.

Nowadays, Green is a one-dog man.

“Just a house dog. A shepherd/golden mix,” he said.

Green has tons of tales to tell about his dog-racing heyday, particularly in the 1970s and ‘80s, like that time when he ran a team of 16 dogs, a train so long he had to rely wholly on his lead dog’s leadership to get him through the course.

Green’s favorite lead dog was Calla. “I named her after that figure skater gal,” he said, referring to American skater Calla Urbanski.

One year one of Green’s dogs injured her paw, so he swapped in Calla, a relative newcomer. She blew through 17 road crossings without even looking.

Calla once led Green’s 16-dog team in Laconia, N.H., the big hotspot for New England sled dog racing. At one point, she went around a curve, and he couldn’t see her. All of a sudden, his sled overturned, and he was being dragged along with it, with the choice to either let go and lose his team, or get dragged into something and maybe lose life or limb.

He chose to let go. But Calla didn’t.

Said Green, “All of a sudden, the two dogs must’ve said, ‘Where’s Mike?’ They turned around and came right back and we finished the race. Didn’t win it, but we finished it.”