#soft snow

The Labrathon — a signature event of the Labrador Winter Games — has been cancelled.

The board of directors for the Games said Thursday morning in a statement that "unprecedented" weather compromised their ability to safely hold the event.

The Labrathon is the Games's premier event, in which participants in showshoes and seal skin boots compete on a frozen basin, affectionately known as "Maxville" after one of the event's founders, Max Winters.

Winters and Ebert Broomfield, the namesake of Happy Valley-Goose Bay's arena, created the event to honour the traditional lifestyle of the Labrador trapper.

Competitors tow implements for survival on a small sled and move through a series of events, much like a decathlon.

The event includes drilling a hole through ice by hand, lighting a fire, boiling a kettle, shooting targets, cutting through large logs with a buck saw and setting a trap.

Unusually warm weather in the lead-up to the games ruined snow conditions, and unusually heavy rain over the month of March created runways of ice.

John Andersen, a member of the Labrador Winter Games board, told CBC News the committee had searched for other venues but weren't able to find suitable ice in the region to host the competition.

"Every place that they looked the snow was not the kind of soft snow that we needed. We need 15, 20 inches of snow to use at the first tilt," Andersen said.

"In the Labrathon you need the snow to put in your kettle to boil it and you also need snow on the fire to put it out when you're done."

While athletes had called on the board to put on a modified version of the Labrathon, board vice-chair Pauline Russell said a modified version of the event could have led to an unfair advantage or disadvantage for athletes and impact the majesty of the event.

"The consensus in the room was that if we did a modified version of the Labrathon, then it wasn't the Labrathon," Russell said.

"If we modify it, what events do you take out? And what do you leave in to be fair to each one of the competitors? One competitor might be really good at the fire, and there could be another competitor whose really good at chopping the hole."