The eyes had it in 1996.

The yellow peepers of an Alaskan husky dominated a frozen sled-dog landscape in Alan Snell's official poster for that winter's Race to the Sky.

Snell, a Helena artist, created four of the 17 framed posters on display this month at Bernice's Bakery in Missoula in conjunction with the 21st running of Montana's oldest long-distance dog sled race.

The 1996 "eyes" print was so unique, so popular, it's all but unavailable these days.

Even as Snell worked on it, Karen Williams Williams had a similar vision in Livingston. She designed the T-shirt logo for the '96 race.

"Virtually the same concept -- two eyes and just enough details to suggest the face," said Tracy O'Reilly of Missoula, a board member of Race to the Sky.

Williams' husky eyes filled an outline of Montana, with a silhouette of a sled team veering out of Canada into the Yaak Valley.

"Karen said she was startled when she saw (Snell's) work. They don't work together, they hadn't talked at all," O'Reilly said. "So we have a T-shirt from the same year that's just got a face, coming out of the mist. It sort of gives you the shivers."

So too can the effect of the display at Bernice's, where coffee-drinking patrons visit and sip under the prints of Montana winter backcountry scenes, majestic mountains, frozen creek beds and dogs, dogs, dogs.

The limited edition prints teem with stories, said O'Reilly, who'll be working the race checkpoint at the White Tail Ranch near Ovando this week.

The race, first launched in 1986, has captured the imagination of artists throughout the years.

"It is a spectacular collection that deserves to be seen, and it's very exciting for me to see it all up together in one place," O'Reilly said. "I was overwhelmed, in fact, to go in the day after we hung it and look at it."

Snell and Williams each have four prints on the wall. Mike Simpson of Colorado, who runs sled dogs himself, was selected to produce posters for three straight races starting in 2002.

Posters for 2005 and 2006 came from the brush of Lincoln musher/artist Judy Johnson, although the race was scrapped in 2005 for lack of snow. Steve Oiestad of Great Falls produced back-to-back prints in 1994 and 1995.

Johnson's 20th anniversary poster for 2005 depicts the history of the race, with the Camp Rimini start at the top and the finish line arch in Lincoln at the bottom.

The oldest print is from the 1990 race. Jerry Inman, a former Great Falls art teacher who now lives in Billings, depicted a distant sled team scampering across a frozen Holland Lake. The peaks of the Swan Range are in the background. Above them, husky heads swirl in the clouds.

Inman's poster sold out quickly after it was displayed on the weather segment of NBC's "Today Show."

For the first time, the poster for this year's race is not a painting. Veteran Iditarod photographer Jeff Schultz captured the image of three onrushing and distinctive sled dogs, tongue dancing from each mouth. All three bear countenances of unmistakable joy.

O'Reilly said submissions are solicited a year in advance from artists interested in creating either the official poster or the official logo for Race to the Sky.

The deadline for 2008 is June 1. The chosen entries are worth $500 for print art and $300 for merchandise art.

Past winners have invariably captured the allure of dog sled racing that snags non-mushers like O'Reilly in its lair.

"I'm one of those people who always saw the beautiful colored pictures of the dogs and the snow and the start and the teams and the sleds taking off up into the hills -- and missed the race one more time," she said.

She finally answered the annual call for volunteers to work the 1996 Race to the Sky.

Helena, the traditional sendoff point, has long embraced the race, O'Reilly said. While large segments of the trail wind through northeastern Missoula County, the city of Missoula is off the beaten path.

But that hasn't kept it out of the loop.

"We used to think we could finish into Washington-Grizzly Stadium," O'Reilly said. "We had talked with the university, we had good snow, everybody was real excited about it, and we could have done it one year. But the next year the snow conditions were so bad there was no way you could get anywhere near there."

The race did conclude at Gold Creek and Johnsrud Park in the lower Blackfoot in the late 1990s.

Missoula often hosts a symposium, rendezvous and trade show in September, hosted by Montana Sled Dog Inc. Mushers from many states bring their families for a two-day event that includes a training camp for Race to the Sky newcomers.

O'Reilly reserved the display space at Bernice's to pay tribute to such local contributions.

"It's the race's way of saying thank you to Missoulians for their interest and support," she said.

For the dogs

Seewww.racetothesky.org for information and race updates.