Famed Iditarod musher Lance Mackey is in the clear.

A warrant for his arrest was quashed Tuesday while he was in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada celebrating a second-place finish in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race. Canadian authorities weren't about to arrest Mackey on a misdemeanor warrant from Alaska, but the cancer-beating musher would have had big problems at the Alaska-Canada border.

The U.S. Border Patrol said its standard operating procedure is to detain anyone with a warrant outstanding and hold them for the proper authorities, which would, in this case, be Alaska State Troopers. Troopers were given the directive to bring Mackey in after he failed to appear for a Feb. 12 hearing in an Anchorage District Court.

Mackey has a problem with an expired certificate for medical marijuana, which he has been using for years to treat continuing pain related to an old battle with throat cancer. To beat the cancer, Mackey underwent surgery and extensive radiation treatment, which destroyed his saliva glands and left him with nerve damage. The nerve damage was so severe one of his pointer fingers became little more than a stick jutting out from his hand. Eventually, he decided to have that finger amputated.

Getting it out of the way, he said, made it easier to bootie sled dogs, which is something he has to often in his profession. The three-time and defending champion of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Mackey is also a four-time Quest champion. He barely lost out in the Quest this year to Hans Gatt from Atlin, British Columbia, Canada, who became the race's only other four-time winner.

In an affidavit filed in an Anchorage court Tuesday, prosecutors admitted to being earlier unaware Mackey had gone missing because he was racing the Quest.

"I have spoken to his counsel, Mr. Michael Kramer from Fairbanks, and was advised that Mr. Mackey is currently racing in the Yukon Quest dog sledding event in Canada,'' assistant district attorney Sharon Marshall wrote. "Mr. Mackey is not expected back in Fairbanks until Feb. 23, 2010 ... the state has no information that Mr. Mackey is deliberately attempting to avoid legal proceedings; therefore the request to quash the warrant is appropriate to allow Mr. Mackey to return to the state of Alaska.''

Marshall added that she and Mackey's attorney had agreed to shift the musher's arraignment date to Feb. 26 and allow him to plead telephonically from Fairbanks. Mackey's Comeback Kennel is on the outskirts of the Interior city.

The 39-year-old Mackey first got into trouble with the law at the Anchorage airport on Jan. 13. A copy of the complaint issued there appears to show airport police sympathetic to the predicament in which the musher found himself after being caught by Transportation Safety Administration screeners with a small bag of the proverbial "green, leafy substance" in his pocket. Mackey was, at the time, on his way through security to catch a flight to Bethel for the start of the Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race.

TSA stopped him and called police. Police interviewed Mackey, who told them the green, leafy substance was dope, but added that he had a certificate for medical marijuana -- albeit expired -- in his checked baggage along with some Marinol, a pill form of THC, the active drug in marijuana. Police did not bother to get Mackey's bags off the plane to check those claims.

Instead, a patrolman's report said, the small bag of marijuana found in Mackey's pocket was seized, and "I issued Mackey a uniform summons and complaint and released him to catch his flight.'' The green, leafy substance weighed in at 7.8 grams. It was tested and found, as Mackey said, to be marijuana. The street value is estimated to be somewhere around $100.

Mackey starts his Iditarod defense March 6 in Anchorage.