The 2010 Mush for a Cure is in the books. Between pledges the participants raised and the monies raised in the Bald, Brave and Beautiful(?) competition, the MINIMUM we will be writing a check to the National Breast Cancer Foundation is…

$28,000!

We were a little conservative in our goal for this year with the state of the economy, but our mushers came through once again.

Jessica Berg-Collman of Grand Marais raised $10,000 on her own. She was running in honor of her log-rolling mentor, Jenny Atkinson (pictured above). 36-year-old, 8-time world champion log-roller and boom-runner,  Jenny was diagnosed with breast cancer in December.

Sue’s idea of the head shaving competition brought in $4600 on it’s own. Now we’re wondering how we can top that next year. I say Mark should be one of the ones whose hair is on the chopping block, but he says no way. C’mon folks I think we should shame him into it. We can start raising money now for next year!

On Thursday afternoon I went out on the trail with Bob Baker and Sue Prom and we decided that we couldn’t safely put 40 sled teams and 12 skijor teams on the small portion of the trail that still had some snow on it. Late Thursday afternoon we announced that all events would go on as planned except for the mushing. At our final planning meeting, we discussed things we could do to fill in the time and came up with an idea for a relay race through the campground at Gunflint Pines. When I walked into the lodge at the Pines on Friday morning, Bob Baker was standing at the front desk with the course with six stations “dog chore” stations all lined out: 1. Push a sled 2. Change straw in a dog house 3. Scoop poop 4. Weight training (for lifting heavy buckets 5. Fill a water bucket through a hole drilled in Gunflint Lake and 6. Run the bucket up the hill to the finish line where you had to water your dogs (your teammates). We didn’t know how it was going to be received but it went over so well that people want to do it again next year. We’ve already discussed that we’ll make it more “spectator” friendly by having it on the lake for all to watch.

What a weekend. Thank you to everyone for being such good sports and letting Mother Nature know that we weren’t going to let a lack of snow stop us from having fun and raising money for breast cancer. Thank you to our sponsors, volunteers and everyone who made this years event successful. Mark your calendars now for March 11 and 12th for the 2011 Mush for a Cure!