Tahoe turns to mush

A mini Iditarod takes off Saturday in the Tahoe National Forest when mushers compete at the Foresthill Sled Dog Classic in a variety of sprints -- an eight-mile route for an eight-dog team, a six-mile route for a six-dog team and so on, down to four- and three-mile courses -- as well as a 14-mile distance route. Teams come from as far away as Arizona, where dogs train by pulling wheeled sleds over dirt roads. Those who ditch the sleds face off in skijoring, an event in which mushers strap on cross-country skis and are pulled by two-dog teams. All of the 20 to 30 contestants who compete are amateurs -- only a handful of mushers make enough money to do it full time -- and half are locals. “People don’t think of California as a mushing mecca, but our local club publishes one of the bibles on how to dog-sled,” says Charlene LaBelle, a race official with the Sierra Nevada Dog Drivers. Spectators, who have numbered in the thousands in prior years, can expect noisy dogs, snow games for kids and the opportunity to take their photo with a sled from the Disney movie “Snow Dogs.” But don’t feed the animals: Most dogs are on strict training diets. Conditions on the 5,000-foot-level race course are thin despite all the recent snow at higher elevations, LaBelle says. The Saturday and Sunday snow-a-thon carries an overall $2,500 purse -- far less than the $72,000 that goes to the winner of the Iditarod, which also starts Saturday. Go to www.sndd.org/index.shtml or www.itidarod.com.

-- Charles Duhigg