(Photo Supplied: Christina Traverse/MushMcMurray).
A team from Fort McMurray is heading to the 2015 Canadian Challenge Sled Dog Trail. Musher Christina Traverse has 35 days left to train for the 500 km race from St. Albert to La Ronge.
“I was starting to get worried because we had a few hiccups along the way, but we went out over the weekend and had some longer runs and the dogs came back looking great,” Traverse said in an interview last week.
The region’s recent balmy temperatures aren’t the most ideal conditions for the 12-dog MushMcMurray team’s training, but Traverse is familiar with what’s to come in the race to the so-called “gates to the north.”
“I did it as a qualifier for the Yukon Quest, so I didn’t really race it as a race. It was more so I was being tested on my skills as a musher and on my survival skills in the winter,” she said.
The public can help the team make it’s way to the competition. This season it launched the Dog Booster campaign to sponsor the dogs. The race starts Feb 24, 2015.
