Miniature in scale, massive in fun.

That's essentially all Jon Lucas wanted to see offered to local mushers.

This was four years ago, when he started the Yukon Brewing Copper Haul Twister League.

"It was a learning race: make mistakes, and then, a month later, you could try something new and see if you can improve those mistakes. Yes, it's a competition, but it doesn't really matter.”

Lucas organized his last race, Oscar's Electric, on Sunday, when the temperature plunged to -33 C.

In the beginning, the practice races were received with "incredulity.”

"(Incredulity) about the number of dogs, the mixing of skijorers with sleds, having head-on passing, because they were all generally new ideas.”

Turns out, that mix of new ideas helped produce some good mushing.

"Towards the end of last season, I remember finishing a race and saying to one of our long-time race marshals … ‘Everybody's getting fast,' and she said, ‘Well, that's because they've got these races to train in,'” Lucas said.

"And the passing was a lot better. If you go for a training run on your own, you're unlikely to meet another dog team, or anything else on the trail, and these races you don't have any choice, you've got 10 or more teams coming at you head-on one after the other.”

Now Lucas hopes to enjoy the races without the burden of wearing the organizers hat as well.

"For me, it's become less fun, it's become more like a job, which is unpaid.

"And that's when, this season, I thought, that's enough. When it's starting to be difficult and you don't enjoy it, stop doing it.”

But the show must go on.

The first race of 2011 will be on Jan. 16, when Claudia Wickert and Fabian Schmit will act as organizers, which should be made easier with a how-to checklist written by Lucas.

"It looks like it's going to continue, which is great – the only thing that's changed is me,” Lucas said.

"Icy Waters is still really keen to host it and sponsor it, all the sponsors are in place for the race days, Yukon Brewing is still keen, we've got all the prizes, the trail is repeatedly packed by the public … everything's here. It just needs someone back at the top just to move the things around to make sure it all comes together on the day.”

Lucas has gotten help over the past four years, true. But pulling together volunteers on race day to help pull it off has often been challenging, he added.

"There's always a struggle to find volunteers on the day, and if you're short volunteers on the day, you can't run the race, so that was always a little bit of a concern. You get people phoning up at sometimes nine o'clock in the morning saying, ‘Oh I can't make it.'”

"Other people have been stalwarts and have turned up every time and been solid, but there's that concern.

"There always has to be somebody, to my view, overall, and the responsibility ends with them.”

Now Lucas will focus on training for the Yukon Quest 300 on Feb. 5, which will mark his first sled race longer than 10 miles.

"I felt a bit like a change,” he said.

"Over the years you see the people come and go and stepping up (to enter longer races).

Perhaps I can do that. Perhaps I can't. We'll see,” he laughed.

"It's not to say that I won't come back in the future and try and organize as well, but just for now, four years was enough.”

Of his fondest memories of organizing, he added: "It's just great sometimes to see when in summer you get 40 teams competing or in winter when you get 25 turning up. That's not to say you don't have such a good time when five turn up. One day, we had like three weeks of -35 C to -40 C in November, and that night it warmed to -20 C, and five teams turned out … everyone thought it'd be too cold, and we had a great time.”