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Annual Sled Dog Race Underway

Sixteen sled dog teams are racing 350 miles this week across western Wyoming and neighboring states. After a rest day Monday, teams will resume racing Tuesday with a 50-mile leg from Lander. 

The 19th annual International Pedigree Stage Stop Sled Dog Race kicked off Friday with a ceremonial start in Jackson. This year's route will take teams through Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Utah, making it the first sled dog race to span four states. Similar to the Tour de France, racers stop in a different town each night. The format gives the dogs a rest, and mushers a chance to share their sport with local communities.

Bruce Magnusson, of Michigan, is racing for a ninth straight year. He says that the Kemmerer stage, which will be Friday, is often the toughest.

“Last year, we had what we call a 60-mile-an-hour ground blizzard. We couldn't even see teams in front of us and the snow at places, in sections was three and four feet deep,” says Magnusson.  

The race finishes Saturday in Evanston. Fans can follow the race online at wyomingstagestop.org.

A multi-media journalist, Rebecca Huntington is a regular contributor to Wyoming Public Radio. She has reported on a variety of topics ranging from the National Parks, wildlife, environment, health care, education and business. She recently co-wrote the one-hour, high-definition documentary, The Stagecoach Bar: An American Crossroads, which premiered in 2012. She also works at another hub for community interactions, the Teton County Library where she is a Communications and Digital Media Specialist. She reported for daily and weekly newspapers in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Wyoming for more than a decade before becoming a multi-media journalist. She completed a Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado in 2002. She has written and produced video news stories for the PBS series This American Land (thisamericanland.org) and for Assignment Earth, broadcast on Yahoo! News and NBC affiliates. In 2009, she traveled to Guatemala to produce a series of videos on sustainable agriculture, tourism and forestry and to Peru to report on the impacts of extractive industries on local communities.
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