With the elite competitors at the front of the pack, a field of more than 260 athletes leave the start line at Dewey Mountain on Feb. 25, 2017, to begin their 8-kilometer run in the 2017 Snowshoe World Championships. (Enterprise photo — Lou Reuter)

SARANAC LAKE — The North Country Sports Council has won bids to put on the World and U.S. snowshoe championships in March.

Now, they just need to finish finding funding and secure a venue. Organizers are eyeing the Saranac Lake area as a potential location to hold them, though there several hurdles to clear if this is to happen. The council is also considering other locations in the region and in other states to hold the competition.

NCSC Executive Director Matt Dougherty, a Saranac Lake native, would ideally love to hold the events in his hometown, but he’s uncertain if that will work. The council’s first priority is to make sure the sport’s governing bodies get the event they were promised in the contract.

Saranac Lake hosted the 2017 World Snowshoe Championships at the Dewey Mountain Recreation Center, which brought in 262 athletes to compete on trails that volunteers had filled with snow after a warm spell.

World Snowshoe Federation Director David Robinson was at these games as a federation board member and said, weather aside, the event went well here. So when Dougherty reached out to make an offer on the competition, he was eager to do it in northern New York again, with hope for more snow.

Dougherty said the council also won the bid for the U.S. Snowshoe Championships and plans to merge the two bids into a three-day competition series on the first weekend of March to bring an estimated combined 400 athletes from all over the nation and world.

Dougherty said Paul Smith’s College and the town of Harrietstown put in joint proposal to hold the competition at the college’s Visitor Interpretive Center and Dewey Mountain, which is owned by the town and managed by Jason Smith of Adirondack Lakes and Trails Outfitters.

Dougherty said there are a lot of sporting events that fit this area, and these championships are a sampling of what’s out there.

“It fits the culture of the Adirondacks and we have these great venues,” Dougherty said.

But with funding and location difficulties up in the air, he said the championships could be held somewhere else in New York or in another state. Several other locations have reached out and said they’re interested in hosting, he said.

The Harrietstown Town Council discussed this on Thursday, as councilors began their budget discussions. Town Supervisor Jordanna Mallach said they could maybe find the money in the budget to pitch in, but she was worried about a larger-than-expected funding gap and the potential that the town, since it owns the venue, would have to pay the bill to fill that gap.

Dougherty told the Enterprise on Friday that the council would not do this to the town.

Mallach said the town is facing a tight budget this year.

Town councilors were hesitant to agree to have Dewey host. They’re not sure if the venue is big or developed enough. As the town formulates its budget in the coming weeks, Mallach said they’ll have to figure out if this is a priority they want to put in the budget.

The timing schedules of some state grants did not work for this event, Dougherty said, and this is creating a heavier financial load for local governments than they wanted.

The council is seeking bed tax money from Franklin and Essex counties, has made a $10,000 ask of both the village of Saranac Lake and town of Harrietstown and is seeking grants and donations from local agencies and organizations.

Dougherty estimated it may cost around $200,000 to pull off the event. The 2017 championships cost around $150,000, with the state putting in $75,000 and the village putting in a lot of staff hours.

He said the NCSC is putting up around half of the investment itself. Dougherty said they have spent $250,000 spent on community so far through all NCSC efforts.

He’s in talks with venues now and hopes to lock one down in the near future.

“It feels late so soon,” he said.

This is expected to be a community-centered event with youth activities and a citizens race.

“There will be athletes all over, but the community can jump in,” he said.

Robinson said the event typically draws 300 to 400 people from 10 to 15 countries. He thanked snowshoer Mark Elmore, whom he called a “guru of the sport,” for his help with organizing.

The championship is centered around a 10K race, with a recreational 5K and a 1K for the kids.

The 10K race has a $5,000 prize for the men’s and women’s categories. This cash prize is something Robinson said he’s introduced recently to attract more top athletes.

Robinson said they are a small organization and there was not a formal bidding process set up for the championship yet when Dougherty approached them.

Dougherty also remembers the 2017 championship. He said it was great despite harsh weather conditions. The volunteers shoveling snow onto the course to make it work showed the spirit of Saranac Lake, he said.

Earlier this month, he told the Saranac Lake village board it is hard to gauge the impact the championship had on local hotel occupancy, because back then, the Hotel Saranac and Saranac Waterfront Lodge — now, Voco Saranac Lake — were not open yet.

The 2017 championship was the first time the championships were ever held in the U.S., with the 262 athletes the most ever for the international championship at the time.

Saranac Lake hadn’t hosted a world championship in any sport since 1909 when the International Amateur Outdoor Skating Championships were held on Lake Flower as part of Winter Carnival.

In 2015, the village, along with the Saranac Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism and Paul Smith’s College bid on the 2017 World Snowshoe Championships and won, beating out the only other community that bid: Syracuse, New York.

The championship hasn’t been back in North America since then, so this would be a return of the sport to this continent.

Robinson said the championship has been held since 2006.

Robinson said snowshoeing is a more casual sport than others like cross-country skiing, though it attracts trail runners and ultramarathoners who love sprinting in the woods in the winter.

Running with snowshoes is good cross-training Robinson said, like baseball players swinging a bat with a weighted doughnut ring in warm-ups.

It’s also extremely aerobic. He compared it to running on a sandy beach, saying the ground resistance adds around 10 minutes to the average 10k finish time.

If the championships are held at Dewey Mountain, Harrietstown Councilor Jeremy Evans said there are scheduling plans to keep it from interfering with the third annual Saranac Lake 3P race (“Pole, Pedal, Paddle”), which is scheduled for March 2.

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(Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct cost of the 2017 championships and that the village of Saranac Lake donated a lot of staff hours.)