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Adam Johnson / Brockit Inc.
Topping the CopperDog
Bruce Magnusson and his team run the trail during the 2014 CopperDog 150 in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula.
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Adam Johnson / Brockit Inc.
Topping the CopperDog
Dogs get excited before the race. “These animals give 150 percent every time they are on the trail,” says racer Monica Magnusson, “and they love what they do.”
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Adam Johnson / Brockit Inc.
Topping the CopperDog
Bruce and Monica Magnusson find that working with the dogs balances their lives. Their “day job” is as owners of Lincoln Forge, a forging manufacturing facility near Cheboygan, Michigan.
It was February 2014 and Bruce Magnusson was prepared to defend his 2013 win of the CopperDog 150. At the race’s Friday night kickoff, his and 49 other sled dog teams rocketed out of the starting chute, racing through downtown Calumet, Michigan, as thousands of spectators cheered them on. Within minutes Bruce and his team, headed by lead dogs SikSik and Spike, disappeared into the winter night.
Fifty miles later, he arrived in Eagle Harbor, finishing the first stage in sixth place. It was going to be a tough race.
* * *
When snowflakes drift through the north woods, most people head indoors to settle down in front of the fireplace with a good book. But for mushers, or sled dog racers, snowflakes are the call of the wild – literally. It’s time to harness their dogs and hit the trail.
Where there are mushers, there are sled dog races. More than 50 races take place in North America each winter and the Lake Superior region hosts several major ones.
Bruce, a Cheboygan, Michigan, musher, has run most of these races, as well as others in Canada and out West, but he’s particularly fond of what he considers his “local” race, the CopperDog 150 in the Keweenaw Peninsula. The event features two races: a 150-mile, three-stage race for 10-dog teams over three days and a one-night, 40-mile sprint for six-dog teams. Both are the first weekend in March.
“When the CopperDog started up in 2009, we really wanted to support it,” says Bruce. “It was exciting to have a new stage race start up and have it be a local race – heck, for us, anything within 600 miles counts as a local race!”
Bruce and his wife, Monica, own Magnusson Racing, a sled dog kennel that’s home to 59 dogs. Both Bruce and Monica race with the teams. “Monica has more wins than I do,” Bruce admits.
The Magnussons fell into sled dog racing almost by accident. As Bruce tells it, “My dad trains black labs, and to keep them in shape he has them pull sleds. Well, he met Lloyd Gilbertson (a fellow musher) and Lloyd got him into racing sled dogs. Next thing we knew, he was entering races and winning. So we decided we had to go check out what my crazy old man was doing.”
Attending a race, the couple was smitten. “There were hundreds of dogs, with sleds and mushers everywhere,” Monica says. “It was really exciting, and we just had to try it.”
The first time Bruce ever got on a sled was for a race in 2002. He managed to take second place; his dad took first. From then on, the Magnussons were hooked. They raced with Bruce’s dad until 2005 when he announced suddenly that he planned to quit racing. He gave Bruce and Monica two weeks to take his dogs or he’d sell them.
“We live in Novi, but had land 300 miles north of our home, in Cheboygan,” says Bruce, “and while we’d always planned to build there, we suddenly found ourselves building a kennel operation in two weeks and that was it. We were real mushers, with a kennel.”
The dogs have become Bruce’s and Monica’s lives. They acclimate them to the house, but find they prefer the company of their mates outside. “We spend countless hours with our dogs, more than any house pet. All our puppies are hiking with us at six weeks, and they continue this into adulthood. … We free run all the dogs so they can play and socialize with each other,” says Monica.”
Once they started sled dog racing, Bruce and Monica discovered they favored races run in stages over several days rather than one-day sprints. In 2006, they tried their first stage race, the Wyoming Stage Stop, which they have run nine years in a row. The Wyoming Stage Stop starts in Jackson Hole and is run over eight days in eight stages. Their first time out, they flipped their sleds, had runaway teams, and Bruce was injured. “I decided I didn’t really want to run that race,” says Monica, “and Bruce ran it with two broken ribs.”
Yet that was the beginning of their love of longer races. “We’re really addicted to stage races,” says Monica. “We love them because we build relationships. We’re all out there together for several days, and we’re sharing information and helping each other out. There’s just a great sense of camaraderie and friendship in the stage races.”
It also cemented their full partnership in sled dog racing – with Bruce usually running the dogs and Monica providing full support for the team. “We look at all the races as to what’s best for the race strategy,” says Monica, “and, with stages, it’s usually best for me to be the one handling the dogs.”
The Magnussons have competed in numerous stage races in the Lake Superior region. The 2009 inaugural CopperDog 150, however, tested the endurance of Bruce and the dogs.
“Temps were in the 40s and the trail was falling apart. You can’t control the weather, and they couldn’t have been dealt a worse hand.”
By the third stage, several mushers, including the Magnussons, felt the race should be stopped in the best interest of the dogs because of the deteriorated conditions. The first-year race organizers opted to continue, but the Magnussons and some others dropped out.
“Our lives revolve around these animals,” Monica explains. “When you are out on the trail, they are depending on you and you are depending on them; there is no greater bond you can have with an animal. You are working together to achieve something.”
“As a first-year race, we learned a lot,” Doug Harrer, chairman of the CopperDog board, says of the inaugural race.
“The mushers and dogs are the rock stars of our event. They’re why CopperDog exists, and we listen to them,” Doug says. “As a board, we have to decide what’s best for this race, but we listen to our mushers even when there are 25 different opinions. We listen to all their suggestions, then take those suggestions and turn CopperDog into a great race.”
The evolution has been good, Monica says, adding that the organization “has embraced the mushers, welcomed their opinions and made them feel a part of the CopperDog team. They seek out our opinions, they professionally handle our criticisms and they share the accolades.”
The proof of the change? Bruce, who vowed in 2009 never to race in another CopperDog, has raced in all five. In 2013, he won the longer 150-mile race.
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Ending in sixth place after the first stage of the 2014 CopperDog 150 wasn’t Bruce’s hoped-for result.
Still, at the time, Bruce was optimistic about catching up. “The trail was in great shape. And I could tell that changes mushers had suggested from last year had been implemented, but my leaders didn’t like the road crossings. … They’re dogs. It happens.”
At the end of the second 50-mile stage, which ran the next day from Eagle Harbor to Copper Harbor, Bruce’s team had moved up to third place. “The later start at 10 a.m. was really nice, and everybody was more relaxed,” Bruce said at the end of that day. “The trail was still in great shape, my team ran really well, and there were less crossings to bother them. So we were able to pull ahead in the standings.”
The third and final stage was still ahead. On Sunday morning, Bruce took off from Copper Harbor to make the final 50-mile run back to the Calumet finish line. Heading out hopeful, Bruce set his sights on overtaking a Canadian musher. Bruce didn’t know he’d need to remove one of his dogs to let it ride on the sled.
“I always knew it would be close with Aaron Peck, and when I had to bag a dog for 8 miles, that gave him a window of opportunity – and he took it.”
Aaron, though, came in third and Bruce in fourth. The first and second place finishers would end up in an end-of-the-race duel, with Canadian Jake Golton edging out Josh Compton of Two Harbors, Minnesota.
“I got to see the second-place person overtake the first,” Bruce says. “It was exciting and everyone was cheering him on!”
Bruce was philosophical immediately after the 2014 race. “It doesn’t always work out the way you hope and plan, but that’s dog racing.”
For the Magnussons, there’s more to this race than winning. It’s about knowing other mushers and the community. “You see the CopperDog people everywhere,” says Monica. “I can’t think of another race that does that. And the community support is incredible. The communities want us here, and they want us back. You really do develop relationships here in the Keweenaw.”
Ultimately, though, it comes down to the four-footed family, Monica quips.
“If it were not for the dogs; why would anyone do it? The dogs have given us so much joy.”
Lesley DuTemple lives in Eagle River, Michigan, the finish line of the CopperDog 40. She is a former board member for the races.