Editor’s note: This story was originally slated to run Tuesday. We apologize for any inconvenience you experienced waiting for this story.

CALUMET — The annual CopperDog sled dog races took place in Houghton and Keweenaw Counties this weekend. As the snow settles, organizers have a couple of weeks to reflect before a post-race meeting that begins the process of planning for next year.

“Copper Dog is a 10-month out of the year event, and I’m not sure that a lot of people appreciate that,” Board Member Jim Northey said in a phone interview Monday. “I think that this year was one of our better-run and better-organized races.”

While the CopperDog board is fairly small, much of the work is done by hundreds of volunteers that make the event possible, according to Volunteer Director Krissy Kovachich.

“We couldn’t do this race without all of the people that come out every year,” Kovachich said in a phone interview Monday.

In fact, some of the volunteers are so generous that it makes it difficult to communicate how many people were actually involved. Early reports said that there were over 600 volunteers, but Kovachich said that that was a miscommunication.

“There were over 600 individual volunteer positions that needed to be filled and about 500 individual volunteers filling those positions,” said Kovachich. “Some volunteers take as many as three shifts in different positions.”

The passion of those volunteers did not just drive them to sign up for multiple positions, it also drove many of them to sign up months in advance – something that had not happened in previous years.

“This year, we had volunteers sign up and fill positions earlier than ever before,” said Kovachich. “I don’t know what it was, but we had people signing up weeks in advance so we weren’t struggling to fill positions like we had been in some years.”

Volunteers coming together were not the only thing that made the event such a success this year. Northey commented that expanded social media efforts and more live video sharing of the event were improvements this year over previous years and that the weather also played a factor.

“The weather really cooperated,” said Northey. “It was a bit warm and sunny on Sunday so some of the dogs were running a bit slower, but almost everybody finished.”

While event coordinators like Kovachich and Northey will have their minds on the dogs again in just a few months, potential volunteers will have to wait until November to find ways to get involved in next year’s race.

“The Volunteer system opens up in November, so keep an eye on the website,” said Kovachich. Kovachich will also be sending emails out to this year’s volunteers to make them aware of opportunities to support the event next time around.

In the meantime, potential volunteers for next year’s event can find more information at copperdog150.com/site/volunteer.