Column: Up all night with the Quest
PELLY CROSSING, Yukon—If you catch William Kleedehn at just the right time and in just the right mood, he’ll tell you what he really thinks.
The time not to catch him is just after he has mushed over 210 miles of the worst terrain the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race has to offer.
The Black Hills. The 4,002-foot King Solomon’s Dome. A constant up and down ride that challenges even a Quest-hardened dog mushing veteran like Kleedehn.
When he arrived in Pelly Crossing early Monday morning, two minutes after Hans Gatt, Kleedehn spoke with the media while he ate. He was delirious.
Three times during the interview with the media horde (called a “scrum” by the professionals), Kleedehn collapsed into outright cackling, just laughing like a fool.
Gatt, to his left, started laughing, too. But then Gatt says, “Stop laughing, William. This isn’t funny.”
This was not the time to ask Kleedehn anything and expect an honest answer. Don’t, for example, ask the question, “Is mushing fun?”
Kleedehn laughed.
“If I would say that to work yourself into the ground for 24 hours is fun, then I would really be full of it,” he said.
We’re talking about three-time Quest champion Gatt, the coldly efficient and ruthlessly methodical musher from Atlin, British Columbia, and Kleedehn, a race veteran 10 times over and two-time runner-up.
Kleedehn came up just 8 minutes shy of Mackey in last year’s Quest, thrilling race fans and the mushing world with a fabulous last-day charge from Angel Creek into Fairbanks.
But this year Kleedehn is in his own backyard. Kleedehn trained his team on nothing but hill courses this year, and not many Quest mushers know the Yukon side of the trail better than Kleedehn, whose kennel is in Carcross, outside of Whitehorse.
Kleedehn gets over the giggles a few hours later. While the rest of the checkpoint sleeps early Monday morning, Kleedehn and Gatt gear up to go chase Mackey to Dawson City. Now he’s in the mood to say what he thinks.
Ask him about Hugh Neff, for example, whose scratch at Dawson brings the field of 2006 Quest mushers to 12.
“Sad,” said Kleedehn. “But maybe some of it has to do with the Eagle Summit affair. You can’t blame the race for the conditions.”
But didn’t I hear you say earlier that the Quest could fix its problems, if the race bureaucracy would allow it?
“There’s too many sheeps,” Kleedehn said. “Too many levels of government within the Quest. If there’s one way of complicating something, they’ll find it.”
Is the solution to increasing the number of mushers as simples as raising the purse?
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that,” Kleedehn said.
“That is a no-brainer,” said Gatt, who was adjusting his gear nearby.
Gatt doesn’t seem to like me that much.
“More mushers need an opportunity to make some money back,” Kleedehn said. “Mushers need to have something to take home with them so they can say to their families, ‘How can I go again?’”
Kleedehn does not argue with the race itself, the dogs and the competition and the event that bridges Alaska, Canada and a wide international audience.
“I love the Quest, oh yes. The Quest is the head of a nice product,” Kleedehn said. “I love this race and everything about it. I always have.”
But it could be so much better.
“There is overwhelming interest in Europe,” Kleedehn said. “Mostly Germany and France. Even though they get sparse information on the Yukon Quest, it is all they can talk about.”
“It sounds adventuresome to them,” Gatt added.
“Yet the Quest in unable to tap into that,” Kleedehn said. “That should be a no-brainer.”
How many more years can the Quest survive?
“Their competition is the Iditarod. In the Iditarod, they raised the purse in one year by as much as the entire purse of the Yukon Quest,” Kleedehn said. “There’s one of your clocks for you.”
And with that, Kleedehn and Gatt were geared up and ready to face the dark night and their pursuit of Mackey. A fresh snow had fallen while they slept and there was an actual chill in the air.
I couldn’t resist. Are you gonna catch that Mackey guy?
Kleedehn smiled. His eyes lit up with a mischievous glow. His smile said that the wily veteran has got at least one more charge left.
“If he lets me,” he said.
Eric Goold is a News-Miner sports writer chasing his second Quest down the trail.