Yukon Quest Part V: Eagle to Dawson City

"Helloooo, sexy girlfriend!"

Sam greeted me as he entered the hotel room. In reality, he greeted my bunny boots, which were sticking off the edge of the bed. I didn't know what he was saying (I have never seen "Sixteen Candles"), but was in no shape to care. Had I cared, I was in no shape to conjure words in the proper order to ask him about it. Upon further inspection, I found myself face-first on the mattress and sweating because I hadn't bothered to remove my coveralls, boots or hat before falling asleep for ... well, how long was I out?

I looked at the alarm clock. 9:07 a.m. Five minutes, maybe six. Oy.

Sam said something about taking pictures on American Summit, the steep climb that mushers face after leaving Eagle, and he left. He might have said something about throwing dwarves into glass-bottomed boats, too. That's my recollection, anyway.

I tried to sleep, but the critically unhealthy amount of caffeine I had consumed during the past 24 hours was not allowing that. So I slung the Marantz over my neck and headed back to the dog yard. I needed to get some recordings in case we missed the leaders getting into Dawson City, or if they arrived too late.

At the old schoolhouse, I chatted with Mike Ellis for a bit -- without turning on the microphone. He and his wife, Sue, had recently moved up to Two Rivers to pursue dog mushing as full-time as possible. They're from New Hampshire and take pride in their kennel of purebred Siberian huskies. They're the picturesque sled dogs, with thick fur coats and pointy ears that are most people's preconceived notion of the animals. In truth, most sled dogs today are bred for speed and mixed with short-haired animals like hounds. They're all-around cool people and very friendly to the media and folks who no nothing about mushing.

I finally did turn on the mic, and whoa! Ellis has a baritone voice that sends the Marantz levels into the red "unusable" zone quite easily. I got some quotes out of it for the paper, but I kept one finger on the volume button while transcribing so my ears would not catch a sonic boom.

On the way back, I passed Annalee, who was brimming with perk after her first shower in two days. She had already filed more stories than the Star could handle, so she was free. I was going to nap, but then a thought struck me: "Who gets to see Eagle in the wintertime?" So bollocks to sleep when there's life to be had.

Annalee and I decided to have a beer or two on the bank of the Yukon River. She knew a nice spot where she and Sam had camped out to take pictures the day before. I went to the market to grab a six pack.

No such luck. No booze in Eagle. I got a questionable glare from the storeowner when I asked, but luckily I've long since gotten over any shame of my alcoholism. She smiled when I told her my master plan about a beer on the banks of the Yukon. "You'll just have to wait until you get to Dawson," she said. Oh yeah, I guess I'll be on the Yukon banks for a while, huh?

I reported the snag to Annalee, and she quickly remedied the situation with leftover wine from Circle. We were a little worried about carrying it around town, so we transported it in plastic bottles along with some Doritos. We left a trail of chip crumbs to a perch on the northwest side of town, a few feet back from a steep dropoff to the river. We plunked down in the snow and sipped the wine, enjoying this view:

OK, so maybe I gulped the wine, which did not make breaking trail to and from our picnic area very easy when a bathroom break was necessary. I finished my bottle before Annalee could drink a quarter of hers. At this point, I did feel a little ashamed of my alcoholism, especially when I ended up stealing a few swigs from her bottle.

An hour flew by as we talked about nearly every getting-to-know-you topic. Our families, countries, childhoods, politics, you name it. It amazed me how comfortable we'd gotten with each other in a short time. Four days earlier, we were answering the other's questions with one word or dodgy phrases; that day, it seemed like we were long-lost friends catching up.

Well, 12:30 rolls around and we figure we'd better find Sam since our flight leaves in 90 minutes and I hadn't seen him since he barreled into the hotel room that morning. We hoof it back to the hotel and wait, watching a cartoon on rabbit-eared television. Annalee knows what it is; I don't. Is it a Canadian-American divide, or am I just out of touch with the latest Nicktoons? Never mind. There's a little more wine.

With about half an hour to go, we start getting antsy. No sign of Sam, though his gear's in the hotel room, and it takes about 10 minutes to get to the airport. We walk to the checkpoint, where they tell us Sam has just left to got to the hotel room. Uh oh, now we're the one's who will be missing the flight.

Annalee hitches a ride on a snowmachine and I break into a run, but stop when I hear someone yell, "Hey, I'll give you a ride." Yeah, I like Eagle.

I slid into the backseat of a pickup and tossed them $10 as I exited. They tried to refuse but I insisted. Sam was there, wondering where the heck we were. Funny, I was thinking the same thing not too long ago. We pile into a van; literally, Annalee and I wedged between luggage in the seatless back. We beat the pilot to the runway.

The flight to Dawson City was fun. The pilot told some dirty jokes, and the view was breathtaking. Did you know there's a bulldozed line through the trees along the Alaska-Yukon border? Weird.

Sam rides up front and I sit in the back with Annalee and about 100 pounds of gear on each of our laps. Our arms are pinned down, and I elbow her a few times. Wait, am I flirting? And if so, what am I, 12 years old?

We land in Dawson, and if there was any sort of customs procedure, I don't recall it. I showed my passport to a smiling lady behind a counter, and that was it. I guess there's no point of smuggling anything into Canada, anyway. I'm pretty sure the illegal contraband supply chain flows the other way.

From a few folks in the airport (which is slightly smaller than my house) and a taxi driver, we learn that the buzz around town is: Either the first musher to Dawson will be here in a few hours, or he got here 15 minutes ago. The odds are on our side, but I'm anxious to get to the checkpoint. We go straight there, luggage and all.

The Dawson City checkpoint is the visitors information center on Front Street, which runs alongside the Yukon. When we get there, Annalee and I dart to the nearest race official. No, no one has arrived. Phew. We go back to the taxi and unload our tons of stuff. We were joined by Jason, a Whitehorse Star reporter/photographer who would be joining us the rest of the way.

Since no one has an idea when the first musher will be in, we stow our tons of gear in the visitors center and grab something to eat. The checkpoint has a snack counter run by a local mushing organization. It's staffed by a gaggle of young females, so I found it easy to pass time by the snack counter. Free coffee and a delicious assortment of homemade baked goods didn't hurt, either.

A couple of hours go by without a musher in sight. By dusk, everyone is certain that Hans Gatt will be coming in first, but no one knows when. There's a few hundred people milling about, all with their own unsubstantiated rumor about the race.

The coffee wore off at 5 p.m., and I found a nice park bench outside the visitors center. I slouched and decided to doze, confident that if the commotion of the crowd didn't wake me, Sam would. The first person to Dawson is a big deal. It's like winning a 500-mile race, and the prize is 4 ounces of Klondike placer gold, which is quite a nice investment these days. For a reporter to attempt a nap while awaiting the finisher was risky, but my wits were slipping, so I had to do something.

At the point when my eyelids seemed too heavy to lift, a hand tapped me on the shoulder. It was Izumi, the Japanese film crew's interpreter. They wanted to interview me. Wow, they must be bored, I thought. So I stumble through five minutes of chatter, offering opinions supported by three whole days of sled dog racing experience. The crew was very attentive, even though Izumi was the only one with any idea what I was saying.

Jason got a picture of the scene, including a wonderful symbol of my cluelessness:

A few minutes after my star treatment ended, a siren sounded from the bluff overlooking the city. Gatt was here! We all rushed to the riverside. I huddled behind a crowd and listened to their chatter, takingg notes to add as possible color to the story. We were all waiting. And we waited. And waited.

Twenty minutes later, Gatt arrived, soaked in overflow with a face that looked like it would never smile again. Annalee and I get our recorders out, and he took off before we could get a question in.

Oh crap. Now what the hell can I write? The Yukon Quest media flacks were saying he would likely return to the visitors center, but that likelihood isn't good enough. Maybe I could ....

Sam grabs me by the sleeve. "You're going to that dog yard," he said. "If you don't, we're screwed." Good plan. Where's the dog yard. "Just follow him along the river, the trail is marked." Noted. So I set off across the Yukon River and up into the hill on the opposite bank. Gatt was in my sight until here crossed through some trees, but Sam was right, the orange-and-black trail sticks were easy to find.

Well, they were easy to find -- until I got to the point where Gatt disappeared into the trees. A road cut through the trail, but there was no marker in plain view in any of the three possible directions. Hmmm. Take a left on the road, and it dead ends in a group of houses with no apparent dog yard. Take a right on the road, and it leads to a hillside highway connected to an ice bridge. I had seen large trucks barreling down that slope, so I don't think they'd send a dog team there. That left forward, up the hill on the trail, as the most plausible option.

I found a positive sign a few feet up the trail -- dog poop and tracks. Good. But after about a half-mile, the trail didn't have any apparent paw marks and I hadn't seen any form of excrement either (the first time I'd ever been disappointed of that there was no poop or pee on the ground). But why would they make the dog teams run on a highway? I continued forward. Another steep half-mile later, I reached a fork in the trail. No markers either way. I had messed up, big-time.

I loped down the hill, carefully choosing my steps in the last glimmer of the day. My coveralls were a sauna, and the Marantz recorder was swinging wildly from my neck. Why would they send a dog team across a highway? Because there's a dog yard on the other side. By the time I found Gatt's spot, he was gone for the night.

All right, all right, Josh. keep it together, I told myself. I might have said it aloud; I really don't know. The important thing was to get back to the finish line to interview the next mushers and pick up the pieces from there.

I got to the entrance of the dog yard, and the siren sounded again. Dang. It was at least a 15 minute walk to the finish line, and I was moving slower than usual. The best way to catch the No. 2 musher was to wait at the dog yard.

About a half-hour later, no dog teams were in sight down the river, and I had get back to the checkpoint to make deadline. I went into the vet's tent to see if I could bum a ride. They couldn't offer one, but Peter Fleck's dad and handler did. I must have looked like an escaped mental patient at that point. Luckily, everyone was being uber-patient with me.

When I got to the checkpoint, I learned that the siren was a false alarm. Phew, so there's still a chance my story wouldn't be entirely horrible. Lance Mackey took second and Hugh Neff was in third. They are both well-known to be media-friendly, and each talked for about five minutes apiece while soaked in overflow at 0 degrees. It turns out there was a huge patch of water about a half-mile from the finish line that was unmarked. No wonder Gatt looked ticked.

When I arrived at the checkpoint, and morosely, angrily and deliriously wrote three stories in 90 minutes. I calmed down while sharing a few Lead Dog Ales with Sam at The Pit.

Then I had the best four hours of sleep in my lifetime. I woke at 7 to call Dan for the radio spot. I didn't mean to fall asleep again, but the next thing I knew, it was 11 a.m. and I had a race leader to find.