A dog team leaving Mile 101, en route to Eagle Summit.
Photo by Annalee Grant/Whitehorse Star
Editor's note: Yeah, yeah. I said I would post all the way to Dawson City. So sue me. I keep remembering things and overwriting, which means I either have to post huge chunks like this or take a second day to pare it down. Circle to Dawson City will be up tomorrow morning.
Also, I've been mooching from Whitehorse Star reporter Annalee Grant's pictures since she posted them on Facebook. Muchos gracias to her for permission to put them here. I couldn't download News-Miner photographer Sam Harrel's pictures and he's out of town at the moment. You can see his work at http://kuac.org/about-us/events/yukon-quest.html and http://newsminer.com/pages/sports_yukon_quest.
Man, the lights on that truck were horrible. I was swerving toward the White Mountains with about 30 feet of visibility and about 50 percent of a functional brain. Maybe a wink or two of sleep would have been a good idea. Oh well, I couldn't change any of that, so we barreled forth.
Sam was riding shotgun, half-dozing and half-accompanying me with conversation. There were a few times that I woke him while he was drifting off because I needed the chatter to keep me conscious. Annalee was in the back either sleeping, ignoring us or being to conked out to make a sound. Up. Down. Right. Right. Hard left. Right. Is that a turn or a hiking path? Oh, It's a turn; hard left!
Mile 101 wasn't hard to spot. The road was lined with trucks and the sole beacon in the dark morning was the checkpoint. I still passed it up, though, and had to make an embarrassing five-point turn. We parked and got out to a stiff breeze in still-surprisingly warm weather. It was above zero anyway.
At the checkpoint, we schmoozed with the handlers and German folks who were running the hospitality house. The house had two small rooms: a kitchen in the front and bunks in the back. The checkpoint managers fried up some eggs, bacon and toast for anyone who wanted it. Mushers could sleep in the bunks, but there was only a thin sheet between rooms, so I'm not sure anybody actually nodded off back there.
There was a wood stove in the hospitality house, and between that and the kitchen, it got blazing hot. People were walking into the 5-degree air outside in just T-shirts to cool down. I stepped in and out of the house about 122 times for the eight hours I was there.
We were told that the dogyard would be off limits with certain exceptions, but Sam, Annalee and I had no problem just walking up to the mushers and chatting. Annalee and Sam snapped away with their cameras while I basically just kicked back and observed. I was waiting for the slower racers to arrive because I would see the fast ones later that day.
Around 10 a.m., Sam and Annalee took the truck to Eagle Summit, the most infamous spot on the trail, to shoot some photos. Half of the mushers who scratch from the Quest do so immediately before or after mounting Eagle Summit. The steep side of the 3,500-plus-foot slope is on the north end. It's a sharp climb from Whitehorse and a steep drop from Fairbanks. If a musher loses control on the way down, they could damage their sled and see half of their equipment spilled across the mountainside.
Here's Annalee's view walking the three-mile trip up the summit:
Photo by Annalee Grant/Whitehorse Star
And here's one of the three mushers they saw passing by:
Photo by Annalee Grant/Whitehorse Star
Meanwhile, I waited at Mile 101, snacked on bacon and toast and talked to some of the more inexperienced mushers. They had some hard times on the trail between Two Rivers and Mile 101. Dries Jacobs came into the hospitality hous and immediately stripped down to his snowpants and undershirt, hanging a closet full of clothes above the wood stove. He had never seen overflow like that.
Well, since most of y'all are from Florida, let's review my notes on overflow. You see, when a river doesn't freeze to the bottom, there's always a current of water running underneath. When that current hits a corner or stopping point, pressure builds and the water cracks the ice and seeps through to the surface. Voila, oveflow. It's the bane of competitive mushers everywhere, as it soaks them and their dogs and the water quickly freezes.
Dries, a young Belgian running dogs owned by prominent musher Mitch Seavy, sat down next to me with a plate full of grub. He was simultaneously exhilarated, tired and cold. He obliterated a fried egg and toast with a spoon -- the only utensil available -- as he half-complained, half-bragged about how he sank to his thighs in overflow and had to untangle his dogs from trees. He was having the time of his life and struggling every minute of it.
It turns out that while Eagle Summit gets all the attention, the peak before it, Rosebud Summit, was causing all the grief. Eagle Summit had a smooth trail that made for some easy up-going and a pile of powdery snow for a relatively simple descent. Rosebud Summit, on the other hand, had patches of snow-free, rocky trail and overflow that got deeper with each sled that passed over it.
The rest of the rookies had similar horror stories of their overnight romp on Rosebud Summit. I was jotting them down for a story when a middle-aged guy arrives at the checkpoint dragging a sled full of supplies.
Photo by Annalee Grant/Whitehorse Star
His name was Joachim, and he was walking the Quest trail because -- actually, I'm not really sure why. He likes walking, and his wife got him a ticket to Fairbanks for his 50th birthday so he could make the five-week journey. Luckily, the checkpoint was run by Germans, because he couldn't speak a lick of English and I had to interview him with a translator. The translator, a burly fellow who should have starred in Das Boot, kindly took a few minutes from frying eggs and stirring halibut chowder to help me get the story.
Sam and Annalee got back from Eagle Summit while I was talking to Joachim, and we were off to Central shortly afterward. Away from the wind of Mile 101, it was practically summertime. All right, it was about 20 degrees, but that's hot here.
Central is one of the favorite spots along the trail because the local roadhouse, Crabb's Corner, is the first full-service stop. The fact that they give a free steak to all the mushers doesn't hurt, either.
The HAM radio operators who track the dog teams were set up in a little shack outside:
It was extra packed that day because there was another little sporting event going on that day, Sunday, Feb. 7. I got some radio clips done and settled down in the restaurant with a cheeseburger (paid for by my expense account), a beer (not so much) and a decent view of the TV. Here's what a Super Bowl party looks like in Central, Alaska:
But with three stories to write, I didn't watch much of the game. I just kept track of the score and hammered out the articles in a laundry room. The table I set my laptop on was bouncing around as the dryer next to it jostled wildly. Normand Casavant was drying his shoes. A few hours and another beer later, I was done. The Super Bowl was long over, and I didn't hear about Peyton Manning's infamous pick until the next morning.
I met Sam at the bar, and we discussed the mushers' paces to decide when we wanted to arrive in Circle, the next checkpoint. Annalee was chasing two Whitehorse mushers in the front of the field, so she had already hitched a ride there with a dog handler. At 10 p.m., we decided the most prudent thing to do was catch the leaders as the came into Circle around midnight.
I had to keep checking my e-mail in case the copy desk had questions, so Sam napped in the truck and I killed time with Cindy Barrand's dog handler, Darryl, discussing the viability of dog mushing as a major U.S. sport. He thinks it can be done; I say no way.
At 11, Sam and I headed up the slick, swerving highway to Circle, our ever-cruddy headlights leading the way 30 feet at a time.
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