McAlpin was the last of 23 mushers to scratch from the Copper Basin 300 Sled Dog Race. By the time he ran out of dogs fit to continue the race, big-name mushers such as four-time Iditarod champ Martin Buser of Big Lake and three-time Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Trail winner Hans Gatt of Atlin, British Columbia, had already gone home.

Unlike McAlpin, they didn't need to finish the middle-distance race to qualify for the big show. And so they decided early on that running this year's race wasn't worth the chance of a dog spraining an ankle or twisting a knee on what everyone agreed was an unusually bad trail.

"The trail was the most challenging I've ever run,'' said musher Debbie Moderow of Anchorage. "It was sort of, to me, like extreme mushing.''

Moderow, another rookie entrant in this year's Iditarod, is a far more experienced musher than that might make her appear. She is a veteran of several mid-distance races and in her first try at the Iditarod in 2003, made it to Shaktoolik on the Bering Sea coast just south of Nome before her dogs decided they just weren't having fun anymore and quit.

She scratched. Officially, that meant she remained an Iditarod rookie, and like McAlpin, thus had to complete a couple middle-distance races this year to qualify for the Iditarod.

"I had to do this,'' she said of the Copper Basin, though she admitted to early thoughts about bailing out. This time, her dog team pulled her through.

"The only reason I completed the race was because my dog team actually seemed to thrive on this,'' she said. "The trail was the most challenging trail I've ever run. It was real close on hurting myself.

"It was the first leg, with icy conditions, that was really kind of scary. Every leg got better after that.''

Trail that seemed to be improving as the race went on, an eager dog team and helpful volunteers at checkpoints eventually pulled her around the trail that loops north from Glennallen through the Copper River Basin and then back to the Tolsona Resort along the Glenn Highway just east of Lake Louise.

"The individual people, every single person I was in contact with, was wonderful,'' Moderow said.

She didn't, however, have much to say about race organizers. Other mushers have roundly criticized them for reducing the size of the race purse without telling any of the competitors until they arrived at the race start and failing to put in an adequate trail in the months before the race. Trail breakers on snowmobile were reported to be just hours ahead of the race leaders at times over the weekend.

Snowmobiles traveling through deep snow in such conditions knock it down, but the individual flakes of snow don't have a chance to consolidate into a firm surface. That usually takes at least 12 to 24 hours.

In this case, dog teams expecting to find a trail firm enough to permit them to trot or lope instead found themselves wallowing through sugar snow. And such conditions are actually in some ways worse than the danger of injuries for Iditarod contenders using the Copper Basin for training.

Iditarod contenders want trail conditions that help the dogs condition themselves to running at the 10 to 15 mph pace required to win the Iditarod. Doing 5 mph in soft snow might be a good cardiovascular workout but it also trains the dogs to a slower than desired pace.

Because of that, and the danger of sprains and strains to dogs on ice-slippery trail, about half the field of 40 starters dropped out near halfway, and by the end there were a total of 23 scratches including McLean, who hung on as long as possible.

Seventeen mushers finished, but that number would likley would have been lower if not for Iditarod rookies needing to meet qualifying standards. Four of the last six, including last place finisher Sandy McKee from Fairbanks, were Iditarod rookies needing to finish.

Victory in the race went to Allen Moore from Fairbanks, who finished Monday. His team completed the challenging 300-mile loop in a time of 2 days, 4 hours and 32 minutes.

The mushers who finished behind him:

2.) Matt Hayashida, Anchorage; 3.) Ray Redington Jr., Two Rivers; 4.) Zack Steer, Sheep Mountain; 5.) Lance Mackey, Kasilof; 6.) David Dalton, Fairbanks; 7.) Sebastian Schnuelle, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada; 8.) Robert Bundtzen, Anchorage; 9.) Roland Waldispuehl, Obernau, Switzerland; 10.) Hugh Neff, Skagway; 11.) Jason Young, Kasilof; 12.) Thomas Knolmayer, Eagle River; 13.) Debbie Moderow, Anchorage; 14.) Saul Turner, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada; 15.) Phil Morgan, Anchorage; 16.) Micah Stossmeister, Fairbanks; 17.) Sandy McKee, Fairbanks.

Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.