Sunday, February 27, 2011

Fur Rondy

Long before Alaska became a pathetic red state, even back before Alaska became a state, things would get kinda slow around this time of year, and with the longer daylight hours early residents of Anchorage began to sense that winter could not possibly last to much longer. Well not much past April anyway..


This years Rondy Collector Button

In 1935 Anchorage resident Vern Johnson organized a three-day sports tournament, called the Winter Sports Carnival, timed to coincide with the rendezvous of the fur trappers coming to town to sell their winter cache of old hides, and resupply for the season to come. With trapping being the second largest industry at the time the Fur Rondy grew into a respectable winter celebration.
Fur Rondy was not celebrated during the war years but resumed in 1946. Rondy is still celebrated in the 21 century in spite of the endless war. We almost lost Fur Rondy in 2004 as no one wears Fur much anymore but tying  the end of Rondy to the start of the Idiarod Sled Dog Race, and having reindeer chase humans down 4't ave seems to have kept the old festival alive. The Rondy World Champion Sprint Dog races are a world class event that is a blast to watch.  What other city closes off the downtown for two weekends, Has the Government Snow Plows, that  just last week cleared the streets of snow, haul in truckloads of the stuff and make 4th avenue and Cordova street the start of the  of The 25 mile course.

4th Avenue start of the Fur Rondy World Champion Sled Dog Race & Next Weekend the Ceremonial Start of The Idiarod Sled Dog Race

This years two day race was won by Egil Ellis out of Willow Alaska. Here is a link to the Daily News story  Ellis-wins-world-championship
Having been under the weather for the last week and half, I didn't get to participate in much of the Rondy, but I did enter three photos in the Rondy Juried Photo Contest, and I am happy to say that all three were selected for the show and this one...
Anchorage
Won third place in the Adult Creative Division. I know, I have already been harassed about being called a Adult.

2 comments:

  1. Nice photo! And I had never heard of the Fur Rondy, so I learned something from your post, too. Cool.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you. Glad you liked the photo!

    ReplyDelete