Alaska 2016

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4 days until the start of the Yukon Quest 1000 Mile International Sled Dog Race, the Toughest Race on Earth. Also, the Yukon Quest 300 which is the first 300 miles and a qualifying race for the 1000 miler. Thursday night is the Start and Draw Banquet where the mushers draw their numbers for the starting line. Since I am going to that, I'll be leaving for the checkpoint on Friday morning. I have to work today but then am taking off to go do the shopping for the checkpoint. I'm getting pretty excited.

https://img1.etsystatic.com/058/0/78...77563_3y7m.jpg

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I accidentally posted a link to a coffee pot instead of a video I was trying to post hahhaha.

[crashdive123]

Have fun and good luck in your new role.

[Pennsylvania Mike]

Have fun on the sled dog races, keep warm or just stay close to the big coffee pot, it will keep you both awake and warm.

[walks.in2.trees]

My poor daughter (14) was down in Anchorage for her very first away game (roller derby). She was on the 3rd floor of the hotel when it hit. She had to cry a bit when she was telling me about it. I could tell she really wanted her mamma right then. They won the bout though so that was exciting.

You remember my friends Wayne and Scarlett that live out of Eagle, AK where I go visit every year? I just found some awesome videos that someone had made of them. Watch them on full screen. So awesome.

FYI: Gee means right and haw means left.

You following Cory Williams on YouTube (DudeLikeHella)?

Sent from my SGP561 using Tapatalk

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That name isn't familiar Walkn but I'll look him up.

Here are the mushers this year. Number 1.

https://youtu.be/-TlHkte9lws

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Number 2.https://youtu.be/zkLKM8Uxiu8

[crashdive123]

I accidentally posted a link to a coffee pot instead of a video I was trying to post hahhaha.

Yeah, but its a heck of a coffee pot.

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I'm still recovering so just going to copy and paste a bit here.

We are all home now. I've slept a full night (and half of the morning!) and my voice is coming back. I think I talked more in the last week then I have in the last month! I am so proud of the team we had this year. We always have a good group of people volunteering at the checkpoint but that is because Peter knew how to do that. I freely admit that having this great group of people was mostly good luck on my part. However it came about, I feel greatfull for all their hard work and dedication.
I really learned a lot. Thankfully of all the things I learned, none of them were painful lessons. I have big shoes to fill. Peter Kamper ran this checkpoint from back when it was a dog drop run with a ham radio operator and brought it into the age of telephones and internet and checkpoint status with mushers' drop bags. 20 years is a long time but I am thankful for the things he taught me.
Next year will be a bit easier because I will know how much coffee to bring and how many plates we'll need but I think gathering such a good crew will always be a challenge. I knew with in hours that I wanted these people back, working by my side, taking care of mushers, dogs, and each other.
I also want to thank Alex Olesen, Ryan Hughes, and Josh Mason our amazing logistics crew and the race judges who were happy to answer all my questions. I was afraid that I would miss something.
Figuring out and giving the mushers their differentials was exciting. That's never been done here before. When Doug first told me I would be doing it, I thought to myself, "He wants me to do math at 5 in the morning after no sleep?" Lol there were a few times I had someone check my math just to be sure I had gotten in correct.
All in all this was my most satisfying year yet. I am thankful for all the help I received and all the fun we had. I didn't have wifi through out the race so I couldn't upload photos as I unusually did. But other then that, I was an exciting, happy time. Thank you all for following along.

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MILE 101 CHECKPOINT — Running a long-distance wilderness sled dog race like the Yukon Quest depends on temporary outposts like this one, which starts as little more than a roadside pullout on the Steese Highway.

Like the Two Rivers checkpoint earlier in the race, this normally desolate locale has played host to the Quest’s traveling circus of mushers, sled dogs, handlers, race officials, veterinarians, volunteers, reporters, photographers and other onlookers. Stops like these require more setup than even the smallest of towns along the 1,000-mile trail, with volunteers creating the necessary support out of nearly nothing, in the right places at the right time for cold and weary mushers taking a break from the trail.

At the Two Rivers checkpoint Saturday night, volunteers hauled sleds full of firewood to fill burn barrels around which others huddled under a clear, star-filled sky. The checkpoint is at a simple, snowy gravel pit more than 50 miles down Chena Hot Springs Road and consists of two Summit Logistics ATCO units powered by generators, an expedition-size tent from Horst Expediting and Remote Operations for mushers needing a nap, and a fenced-off dog yard to park the teams near drop bags, warm water and bales of straw.

Outside one of the units, race watchers kept a close eye on the standings on a whiteboard updated every 15 minutes or so by Naomi Hagelund and her fellow volunteers. Inside, crockpots kept chili hot next to other foodstuffs waiting for mushers.

Tasked with managing the dog yard, volunteer Thom Walker said it was his third or fourth year at the Two Rivers checkpoint after managing other checkpoints.

“We pull it off every year, when we have absolutely no facilities here,” Walker said. “We’re creating the facility.”

About 40 miles down the trail, mushers reached Mile 101, a possible layover stop where the bacon, eggs and halibut donated by Goldstream restaurant Ivory Jack’s are legendary.

Inside one of the small shacks at Mile 101 early Sunday, volunteers Dallas Dixon and Amanda Savage said they had been busy cooking for the previous 24 hours straight. They offered food and coffee to anyone who came in, and neither showed any sign of fatigue or slowing down.

Grabbing another handful of bacon to toss in the sizzling cast-iron skillet, Dixon said they were halfway through a 60-pound box.

“It’s a big deal,” Savage said. “They like their bacon.”

Norwegian musher Tore Albrigtsen, a Yukon Quest rookie, sat in the corner enjoying a plate full of eggs and bacon, talking and laughing with his friend and fellow Quest musher Torsten Kohnert, from Sweden.

“It’s a good breakfast,” Albrigtsen said in between bites.

Checkpoint manager Georganne Hampton — a longtime volunteer at Mile 101 who has taken the reins for her first year — credited its previous manager, Peter Kamper, with building up the location over the 20 years he ran it as a dog drop and then a checkpoint.

“It’s a little intimidating, because those are some pretty big shoes to fill,” Hampton said. “When your nice quiet little camp all of a sudden has 100-plus people in it, you just have to know in a few days it’ll be your nice quiet little camp again.”

Supplies and equipment did not start arriving until a few days before the race started. That included the requisite generators, and also propane tanks and firewood, among other things.

Planning began long before, though, when Hampton got a call in Sept. 12 letting her know she would be in charge of the checkpoint this year. She remembers the exact date, because it was the fourth anniversary of her husband’s death from cancer.

“I planned to mope around that day, and I got a call that morning, and it really helped turn that day around, because I was very happy to hear it,” Hampton said.

Hampton said Mile 101 holds a special place in her heart.

“The first time I came through as a handler, I fell in love with it,” she said. “It’s still my remote love.”

Plus, there’s the pride of being known for their great breakfasts.

“Definitely, this is the bacon stop,” she said. “When you’re cold tired and hungry, bacon is your answer.”

http://www.newsminer.com/mushing/yuk...ba89d704f.html

[hunter63]

Very cool....Thanks for bring us along....
Get rested up yet?

[crashdive123]

Outstanding!!!!!!!!!!

[Rick]

Oh, man. I didn't get past the bacon. Hmmmmmm.

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Got a bit of rest but my voice is still pretty much gone. Oh well. Here's a nice news clip of us.

http://www.ktuu.com/news/news/yukon-...-2716/37885244

[hunter63]

Says Error, file not found.....

[crashdive123]

The KTUU News vid came up for me.

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Dawson is the half way point and mushers have a 36 hour mandatory layover. It is the only point on the race that the handlers can help with the dogs. Each musher will have his/her own camp site in the city's camp park right out of town. This is where the handlers will take care of the dogs; feeding, massaging, and walking them, while the musher gets some much needed rest in the hotel.

This year they had to change the trail route a bit because of jumble ice on the Yukon River. They rerouted it to the Top of the World Highway. And by highway, we mean dirt road that is only open in the summer.

https://youtu.be/n3UWkfF73fQ

Don't worry, he'll be fine after some rest. He's probably only slept 3 hours in the last 36. His dogs looked good coming in.

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Photo by Marcel Vander Wier

ENTERING THE KLONDIKE – Yukon Quest musher Yuka Honda climbs the riverbank into Dawson City on Thursday. She arrived in eighth place.
Moose attack, blizzard cause havoc for mushers
The toughest sled dog race in the world is certainly living up to its billing this year.

By Marcel Vander Wier on February 12, 2016

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DAWSON CITY – The toughest sled dog race in the world is certainly living up to its billing this year.

Yukon Quest musher Thorsten Kohnert entered the race halfway point in Dawson City on Thursday, describing a brush with an angry bull moose along the trail.

The 44-year-old Swede and his 13 dogs entered the checkpoint at 5:44 a.m., holding down sixth place in the 1,600-kilometre sled dog race.

A massive bull moose provided Kohnert with a massive adrenaline rush near FortyMile, between Eagle, Alaska, and Dawson.

“A big bull charged right for the dogs, went by the whole team,” he recalled. “I could just have reached and touched him.

“I yelled at him and then he came towards me and by just a foot passed by the sled. … It was a pretty good wakeup call.”

Kohnert finished eighth in last yearʼs Yukon Quest. He trails fifth-place musher Ed Hopkins by more than 10 hours, and he acknowledged he may have lost his chance at cracking into the top five.

“Iʼm not sure if I can come in any striking distance to the top five, but weʼll see,” he said.

Kohnertʼs incident wasnʼt the only one causing a stir at the Dawson City checkpoint.

This morning, Red Lantern favourite Hank DeBruin scratched from the odyssey after being forced to turn back from American Summit due to blizzard-like conditions.

It wasnʼt the first incident the Haliburton, Ont., musher endured on the trail. Earlier, he dropped his eight-year-old lead dog, Charlie, after she came close to losing her life just outside Central, Alaska.

Despite using his SPOT tracker to request assistance, DeBruin was allowed to continue racing thanks to a special allowance granted to him by veteran race marshal Doug Grilliot.

Early this morning, the 53-year-old DeBruin turned back from American Summit after being forced to don his snowshoes to break trail ahead of his team.

“Basically they got to the top of American Summit around 4 a.m. and he said it was so bad, he couldnʼt see where he was going,” DeBruinʼs wife, Tanya McCready-DeBruin, told reporters in Dawson this morning.

“There was two feet of snow and he was breaking trail in front of the dogs for two miles and it just kept getting worse.

“He said: ʻThis is stupid. We have 80 miles to go.ʼ

“It was a blizzard,” said McCready-DeBruin. “He said it was snowing like a bugger and blowing hard. He said he couldnʼt see anything and it didnʼt make sense to keep going.”

DeBruin returned to the small fly-in community of Eagle in hopes of making another attempt after a rest, but ultimately decided to scratch due to gnarly trail conditions.

“Heʼs never scratched in 10 years of racing,” McCready-DeBruin said, noting her vote was that her husband withdraw. “Our teamʼs has had a lot of challenges.”

DeBruin is the second musher to scratch following a scratch, earlier in the race by J. Jay Levi of Durham, N.C.

Grilliot acknowledged racing at the back of the Yukon Quest is a difficult task.

“When youʼre back there by yourself without anybody going ahead of you … the trail can get blown in in 30 minutes,” he said.

“We canʼt have machines leaving in front of every team. Yeah, it makes life more difficult when youʼre travelling by yourself back there.”

Yukon musher Yuka Honda acknowledged tough conditions between Eagle and Dawson City after entering the Klondike in eighth place. The 43-year-old is the second-ranked Canadian behind Hopkins.

She said the fresh snow, combined with drifted-in trail, slowed her team of 10 dogs.

“Me and (Fox, Alaska musher) Mike Ellis broke trail with snow up to here,” Honda said, pointing to her knees. “Some parts were OK, but most parts … oh boy.”

Added race rookie Seth Barnes, currently ranked ninth: “Thatʼs what the Yukon Quest is about though, right? Some people might not like it, but I like it cause thereʼs snow. Itʼs not ice and rock and dirt.”

The 35-year-old Alaskan is mushing a young team for Iditarod legend Mitch Seavey.

Since race leader Brent Sass arrived at the race halfway point early Wednesday afternoon, mushers have continued to trickle into Dawson City.

Fairbanks musher Tony Angelo, 56, is now in the Red Lantern position, and remains a ways out of the Gold Rush town.

DAWSON CITY, Yukon — Middle-of-the-pack Yukon Quest mushers and their sled dogs battled blizzards and slogged through deep, fresh snow on their way here Thursday and Friday, testing teams and forcing another musher to scratch.

Add a moose that charged Torsten Kohnert’s team, and the 150 miles from Eagle to the 1,000-mile race’s halfway point have been the toughest so far.

RELATED:
Led by Sass, well-rested Yukon Quest leaders pull out of Dawson
The frontrunners missed the worst of the recent snowstorms. Defending champ and race leader Brent Sass of Eureka pulled out of Dawson City at 11:23 p.m. AST Thursday after a mandatory 36-hour layover. Two Rivers musher Allen Moore, the Quest’s winner in 2013 and 2014, left about two hours later, and Tok musher Hugh Neff, the 2012 champ, departed about 30 minutes after Moore, at 1:55 a.m. AST.

Rounding out the top five out of Dawson on Friday were Matt Hall, another Two Rivers musher originally from Eagle, and Ed Hopkins, the top Canadian.

There’s a gap of 10 hours between Hopkins and sixth-place Kohnert, who left Dawson at 4:44 p.m. AST Friday.

Kohnert, a Quest veteran from Sweden, avoided catastrophe and an angry moose near the Fortymile River.

“A big bull charged right for the dogs, went by the whole team, I could just have reached and touched him,” Kohnert told reporters after arriving in Dawson early Thursday morning. “I yelled at him and then he came towards me and by just a foot passed by the sled, so it was a pretty good wake up call.”

Veteran Ontario musher Hank DeBruin called it quits after leaving Eagle the day before and mushing up 3,420-foot American Summit, where he encountered snowdrifts, two feet of powder and blowing snow that robbed him of visibility, said his wife, Tanya McCready. DeBruin eventually turned his team around and headed back to Eagle.

“He said it was so bad, he couldn’t see where he was going,” McCready said. “He was breaking trail in front of the dogs for two miles, and he said it just kept getting worse.”

Healy musher Andrew Pace, a Quest rookie, spent hours hunkering down in a blizzard and struggling to find a capable lead dog in his team. Pace’s wife and kennel partner, Quest veteran Kristin Knight Pace, said he had already dropped their two main leaders — Norton at the Mile 101 checkpoint, and Solo in Eagle.

“He said he tried every single dog in lead,” she said. “It was pretty apparent that nobody was willing to continue into a whiteout without some leader that was going to drive them through it. So he just hung out and waited for the next person.”

That person turned out to be 19-year-old rookie Laura Neese of Michigan.

“He woke up and saw a light in the distance,” Kristin said. “She came up, and he said, ‘Hey, I have a bunch of really young dogs, and it’d be really nice if we could try following you into town. And she said, ‘No problem.’ He said she was super nice, didn’t make a big deal out of it and was really professional.”

She said Pace described Neese, the youngest musher in the race, as his “savior.”

Hours later, Rob Cooke and his team of Siberians arrived in Dawson. The Quest veteran, who lives in Whitehorse, also had difficulty finding a dog willing to lead his team.

“It’s been a long night. (I’m) a bit emotional,” Cooke said, fighting back tears. “The dogs have done really well. They’ve had a hard race.”

Cooke got choked up describing how he tried for hours to find a good leader combination and how he had to walk in front of them to keep moving.

“It was a pretty intense night, and it’s not one I want to go through again,” he said.

Cooke’s dogs appeared to have benefited from the breaks he was forced to take along the way to Dawson. When Cooke arrived, his wheel dog lurched forward and, with the others, pulled the sled a couple of feet from where it had been initially parked before Cooke reset his snow hook.

“You know, you can’t go through here, you’ve got to stay your 36 (hours),” race marshal Doug Grilliot joked. “Man they look good.”

But the exhausted musher was not sure if he would even continue from Dawson.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s going to be a second half of the race,” he said. “I’ll see how I feel once I’ve had some sleep. This next section, to Pelly (Crossing) through the Black Hills, I know from last year that can be a quite difficult section.”

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Joe May was one of the first mushers to run this race over 30 years ago.

Joe May
15 hrs
A piece of little known Quest history and an often asked question - why Iditarod has a 24 hr. mandatory lay-over and the Quest has 36:
In Quest beginnings, the mandatory rest stop was 24 hours, just as is Iditarod. Then in 1986 the first half of the race was brutally cold, never warmer than -35 and often -50 or -55 at night. As harbinger of things to come, Bill Cotter and I crawled part way up Eagle Summit, on hands and knees, ahead of our dogs in a howling ground blizzard. The rest of the race, so to speak, was downhill from there. A last minute re-route from Central to Circle Hot Springs was hacked out hours ahead of the first team. The trail was a nightmare of 90 and 120 degree corners around and over stumps and down trees. An ice jam at Circle necessitated a 7 mile detour through a nearly impenetrable snarl of black spruce growth that Bruce Johnson christened “The Enchanted Forest. H. Sutherland stuck his sled between two trees so tight he had to chop it out with an ax. A dog cold-cocked itself in a head-on with a tree and was thought dead, got carried on a sled for miles, and when magically coming back to life...went back to work in the team. Miles of trail was completely gone, blown in, necessitating taking turns on snowshoes ahead of the dogs. The rule, as it was then, was that the trail would only be broken once...and that, a week prior to the race. We slept cold on the river...no firewood, no fire...at 40 and 50 below. The last night of a two day slog from Eagle to Dawson was in the midst of a storm of wind and snow and deadly wind chill. Out on the exposed river, having exhausted both human and dog food by the second night, unable to see the length of the team, afraid to stop and nearly unable to go, there was a very real fear for life. When eventually the leading convoy of 13 teams did reach Dawson, many mushers had incurred serious frostbite - five scratched immediately - others nursed frosted hands and feet for 24 hours in an effort to recover sufficiently to continue on.
After the race, at the post-race drivers meeting, I spoke and suggested a longer mandatory stop in Dawson, 36 hours, for the mutual benefit of dogs and mushers. Facetiously, I added that 24 hours wasn't long enough to “party” get some sleep, and sober up again to get out of town. It's somehow easier to laugh about misery when it's shared. Mine wasn't an exclusive sentiment. The vote, as I remember, was unanimous for future lay-overs to be 36 hours...

I pulled up to a campfire in Old Woman Pass beside Emmitt Peters, 700 miles into an early Iditarod, and tipped my sled on it's side (I'd thrown the snow hook away 500 miles back).
Ever competitive, Emmitt looked over at my sled and asked, “what you carrying besides mandatory” (that would have been snowshoes, axe, and a sleeping bag).
Being a smart-*** I replied, “a pair of socks”. He hesitated not a second and said, “ better get that trash out of the sled if you want to be competitive”....

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Still 6 mushers out on the trail. Keep watching till the end, some really good footage of Eagle Summit ascent and decent. I know more then one musher who has gone done it just that way..

I know it's a Facebook video, but more people are using FB then Youtube any more for these types of things. You should be able to watch it even if you don't have a FB account.

https://www.facebook.com/eualani/vid...4578912169676/

[1stimestar]

Just a good shot that shows how steep it is.

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You know my friends Wayne and Scarlett who I go visit on the Yukon River every year? I also handled for Wayne in 2009, the last time he ran the Quest. Now his son ran it for the second time this year. Last time he won Rookie of the Year (first rookie to cross the finish line). Anyways, here is a story about Matt from this year's Quest.

Now that the last musher is enroute to the finish line and the 2016 Yukon Quest is coming to an end, we've had some time to reflect on some of the events that unfolded while Matt was on the trail. There are many epic stories from this years Quest, but one is especially memorable.

As Matt travelled down the Yukon River heading towards his hometown checkpoint of Eagle, he passed his family's homestead. With both Wayne & Scarlett being at the checkpoint to greet Matt, he didn't expect to see any activity on the hillside where he grew up. But little did he know that an old family friend and current guide for Bush Alaska Expeditions Dog Sled Tours, Matt Emslie, had just settled in for the night. As he was turning off the lamps to get some sleep right before dawn, he saw Hall's headlamp come around the bend on the river. So Emslie went out on the porch and whistled as loud as he could. Emslie said Hall's headlamp turned in his direction looking up on the ridge at the homestead and then Hall put his headlamp on strobe. So, Emslie ran inside, turned off the lights, ran back outside and put his headlamp on strobe as well. And then he lead all the dogs of Bush Alaska into a group song, with their howls echoing down to the river and welcoming Hall back home. There were 68 of them up there that morning.

Julie Emslie shared this story with Amanda a couple days later.

https://youtu.be/bWPIkB80YC4

Oh by the way, he won 4th place which is GREAT! 23 mushers started. 3 scratched, 1 was withdrawn, and 1 is still out on the trail.