Yukon Quest news

Notebook: Griffin takes early lead

ANGEL CREEK—The warm temperatures that greeted the 22 mushers in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race did not slow them down on the first leg.

Kelley Griffin of Wasilla led the field into the first checkpoint at 8:22 p.m. Saturday night, just two minutes ahead of defending champion Lance Mackey. The duo covered the 82 miles of trail from Fairbanks in about nine hours.

“The trail was beautiful,” Griffin said as she fueled up on pasta at the Angel Creek Lodge. “These are the nicest conditions I’ve seen all year.”

Griffin’s dogs were hot, but they ran strong on the Chena River and on the Winter Trail into a moonlit night.

“They were bothered by (the heat) a couple of times,” Griffin said. “I have a thermometer and we were pushing 50 degrees. But this run today was awesome.”

Mackey reported good times on the trail, too.

“It was a good, good run,” Mackey said. “I think somebody was trying to slow me down with food. There were people on the trail offering me hamburgers wherever I went. But it was neat to see so many people out there.”

Mackey noticed some effects of the warm weather.

“The trail was definitely softer, so I just stopped for a while and let the dogs run around and cool off,” he said.

Like in much of the race last year, Skagway musher Hugh Neff was right behind Mackey and came into Angel Creek third at 8:33 p.m.

“I put my oldest dog in the sled just because I wanted to slow them down,” Neff said.

“In this kind of warm weather, you don’t want to just let them fly. You want to make sure to take a lot of stops and give them some rest.”

There is a two-hour mandatory layover at Angel Creek. Teams then climb Rosebud Summit on the way to the 101 Mile Steese Highway dog drop. By tonight, teams will be in and out of Central.

Quest 300

The Yukon Quest 300, a training race that many mushers complete as a test-run for the full 1,000-mile Quest, launched its largest field of 15 mushers Saturday evening.

“It’s really a remarkable turnout,” said Julie Fougeron, Alaska Quest director. “There’s some good local mushers and some from far away. A lot of folks chose it because it’s a Fairbanks start. Mushers view this as a good chance to test themselves and their teams, and to qualify for longer races.”

Finishing the 300 brings mushers one step closer to qualifying for the Quest and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It provides mushers the opportunity to test their distance racing skills while traveling along pieces of the normal Quest trail.

This year, the race will go 25 miles beyond Circle on the Yukon River, then sweep back around and finish in Circle.

Nearly all of the 15 entrants are from Alaska. A notable exception is Matthias Blum, a German musher who won the inaugural 300 last year in the Yukon. He was originally committed to compete in the 1,000-mile Quest, but a difficult training season forced him to do the 300 instead.

Yukoners Roland Waldispuehl, Martin Jahr and Didier Moggia are the only other non-Alaskans.

The rest of the field includes Randy Chappel and Jodi Rozmyn of Two Rivers, Fairbanksans Tammi Rego, Alyssa Quiale, Brent Sass and Becca Ross, Bob McAlpin of North Pole, Dave King of Evansville, Rockey Demer of Healy, Chester Witczak of Ester and Salcha’s Michael King.

GPS

The Quest is offering mushers a Global Positioning System tracking device they can use to determine their exact location at all times.

Some like the idea more than others.

“I have a GPS,” William Kleedehn said. “It’s only for people who don’t have a clue about where they are on the trail. I know where all the cabins are.”

Still, mushers always enjoy new gadgets.

“It’s entertainment,” Kleedehn said. “It’s not all about racing out here, but they mean nothing as far as the competition goes.”

Help from friends

When Quest defending champion Lance Mackey ran into some problems earlier this week, he got by with a little help from his friends.

Mackey had his dogs and family camped out at the Jeff Studdert Racegrounds for a couple of days leading up to the start of the race, until it was discovered he hadn’t paid any overnight camping fees.

Defending champ or not, he got the boot.

Barb Moore from the Broken Runner Kennel in North Pole stepped up and provided the Mackey’s with a place to camp their rig next to her home, and she also gave Mackey the use of her dog trailer because the hitch on Mackey’s trailer broke off.

“He had his trailer rigged with two 2-by-6s and a cord,” Moore said. “He’s like the MacGyver of mushing.”