75th Annual Anchorage Fur Rendezvous 2010

Friday Feb. 26 was the kick off of the 2010 Fur Rondy. For those of you wondering what in the heck the Fur Rondy is (as I did) here is a description. I summarized this from the rondy history description in the official rondy guide (http://www.furrondy.net/)

In the mid 1930's when Anchorage's population was about 3,000 people, Vern Johnson (the father of the Fur Rendezvous) and his friends decided to establish a 3 day festival to coincide with the time the miners and trappers came to town with their winter's yield. The first festival was held Feb. 15-17, 1935 and was more of a 3 day sports tournament including: skiing, hockey, basketball, boxing and children's sled dog race down 4th Ave. It is also a good way of getting people out of their homes durning the long cold winter.

The Fur Rondy fur Auction has been a staple of the Festival since the beginning and the Festival was named in honor of the economic importance of the Alaskan fur trade. The fur trade was Alaska's third most valuable industry in those days, so incorporating the industry into the celebration was a logical idea.

We of course could not pass up this opportunity to participate in the long standing traditional event, so here is a little bit about what we did.

We started Saturday morning off by getting downtown about 8:30AM and finding a good parking place. Our first stop was at the Pioneer Pancake Breakfast which is a fundraiser for scholarships for descendants of Alaska's early pioneers. Our next stop was just outside the door of the Pioneer hall to watch the 5k Frostbite Race and Costume Fun Run.

While watching we purchased an official Fur Rondy pin and button set to keep ourselves out of the Keystone Jail.

Next we made our way across the next block to a perfect viewing spot for the Rondy Grand Parade. We enjoyed watching all the military representatives, old cars and tractors, the Rondy Royalty and local businesses and radio stations.

After the parade we went back to the car to warm up with a little coffee and watch the start of the Rondy World Championship sled Dog Race. The mushers participate for 3 heats of 25 miles each over the course of 3 days.

Mid-afternoon we enjoyed watching the Outhouse Races. There were 37 teams that built outhouses, attached ski's to the bottom and raced in pairs down 4th Avenue. The outhouse has to have a sitter and 4 pushers/pullers for each heat.

Later we watched the fireworks from our parking place on the fifth level of the C St. garage.

In between these major events we also took a stroll around the snow sculptures,

watched a blanket toss (a Native Alaskan past time) and the Big Air Demo.

 

On Sunday we went back downtown for a hysterical event called Running with the Reindeer! Participants pay $25 (goes to Toys for Tots) and where costumes and run down 4th Avenue with a herd of reindeer.

This weekend is the start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race so we plan to go back downtown for that.