Racereport Yukon Quest (Andy)
Meet the mushers night
On Wednesday afternoon, all mushers met at the Wedgwood Resort in Fairbanks to sign 240 posters and complete other administrative things.
Afterwards, there was something to eat and the population could be in contact with the mushers - this meant more autographs, some smalltalk and some photos.
I enjoyed it to answer their questions.
Musher-meeting
On thursday 13:00 h the musher-meeting took place. I was almost too late, because we needed longer than planned for feeding Judys dogs - that would have cost me $ 500 penalty. During the musher-meeting we got through the main rules, the trailbreakers informed us about the trail conditions and we had the opportunity to ask questions. In the evening we met all for the startbanquet. The two founders of the YukonQuest, Roger Williams and LeRoy Shank led through the evening - they told some stories of the old times and a good buffet was served.
And then it was time - the drawing of the start numbers. I drew number 14 out of the bunnyboot and had even a short speech.
The start
My team: Tang - Herring, Ibex - Libby, Eagle - Casper, Suhmo - Leroy, Buckley - Hobo, Kritter - Lucky, Eagle (M) - Free.
At -35°C and sunshine, we arrived at 8:30 h at the parking area downtown Fairbanks. There was not much to do, because I had already packed my sled in Paxson, so we feeded the dogs and waited. At 11 o'clock, we started to get the dogs ready, at 11:30 h, we were picked up by a Skidoo and led to the Chena River. The way to the start line was already filled with people. And so we passed at 11:39 h by the cordon of people the starting line. It was a great atmosphere - the people waved and applauded and a little later I even got a sandwich. The trail followed the Chena River to North Pole. In North Pole, I went through without having to stop, because I already took straw with me from the start.
The trail now led through woody grounds and after a total of about 4:30 hours on the trail, I guided my team to a side track for a rest. The feeding was rapidly done, as I already carried water with me form the start and so hadn't to melt snow.
The thermometer dropped to -48°C, and so it took me a little longer than planned to get the dogs ready for the next run (bootie them, check the dog blankets), but after a 4 hours break, we were back on the trail.
Good 2 hours later we lost the trail, together with Frank Turner, and need several attempts to find the right trail. Probably, we somewhere had overlooked a trailmarker (or it was not even there), and so we misinterpreted the markers when we crossed the right trail. Frank had lost his glasses and could, therefore, not see the markers that good, and my dog followed his team, as they were shortly before us. After we lost the trail a short time later for a brief moment the rest went without any further problems, and the sky offered us some northern lights.
On the arrival at the checkpoint Chena Hot Springs I had again some problems with the trail - there were too many confusing markers and too many barriers run over. But finally we arrived and my team was checked by a veterinarian - only Free was a little too thin, but otherwise, I garnered praise.
After 2 hours, I checked out again and we loaded the dogs in the truck, as the stretch from Chena Hot Springs to Mile 101 was not driven by dogteam this year. Good 5 miles on the ridge of Rosebud Summit had no snow and also there was a herd of 40.000 caribous on the trail, which wouldn't go off the trail. As the road to Mile 101 wasn't yet open because of drifting snow, all the teams got an additional break of 13 hours.
Shortly before 19 h, I left Mile 101 - the wind had abated and Brent Sass reported from a trainingsrun last week good snow conditions on the downhill from Eagle Summit - so I was confident that I would conquer Eagle Summit. Already on the first miles I met two teams which were heading back and said that there dogs wouldn't go up the montain.
A short time later, we came to a big spot of glare ice and I had trouble to put the team on the right way. We slided from one tangle to the next passing the glare ice.
The trail was mostly blow away, but thanks to the good trailmarker he was still easy to find. As it went up the wind blew us right in the face and because of the snow raised I sometimes only could see my last 6 dogs. Then we became stuck in a large snowdrift, my lead dogs turned around and I had a huge tangle. Several attempts to persuade the dogs to climb the mountain against the wind were unfortunately unsuccessful, and so I decided to go back to Mile 101. I couldn't see my own trail, which I run about a half hour before, he already was covered by snow drifts.
When we returned to the glare ice, the Eagles neckline broke and he run beside the sled. Unfortunately, the sled skidded just at that moment in his direction directly into shrubbery. I tried to absorb the impact with my body, then quickly removed the tuglines to make sure the other dogs wouldn't pull to much. After I had liberated Eagle, I controlled him, and was happy to notice that he wasn't injured. After 3 hours, we were back in the checkpoint, I bedded my dogs on straw and got to bed until the next mornng.
The whole night I heard the wind howling around the cabin, and so in the morning I decided to scratch, although there was no reason from Sabs scratch list (broken bones, sick dogs) - but I had the feeling that I couldn´t make it.
Andreas
