Reporter Eric Goold and photographer Eric Engman will provide daily coverage of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race from start to finish. This is Goold's second trip down the trail after his rookie run in 2005. Engman made his first run in 1999 and this will be his third race. Send the News-Miner trail crew questions and comments.
Published February 15, 2006.
By TIM MOWRY
Staff Writer
A 30-hour ordeal did not end until Tuesday morning for a trio of Yukon Quest 300 mushers who ended up stalled on the 35-mile trail between Angel Creek Lodge and Mile 101 due to heavy snow and blizzard-like conditions.
The group included the youngest musher in the field, who was airlifted to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.
While their troubles were overshadowed farther up the trail by the Monday night rescue of six mushers who were plucked off Eagle Summit by an Alaska Air National Guard helicopter, they too suffered a long, cold, miserable night that could have turned out much worse than it did but for the efforts of volunteers who broke trail on snowmachine from Angel Creek Lodge.
Alyssa Quaile, a 17-year-old Fairbanks musher, was medivaced off the top of Boulder Creek Summit on Tuesday morning by the 68th Medical Air Ambulance from Fort Wainwright with minor frostbite and a sprained wrist. The only one of seven airlifted mushers actually flown back to Fairbanks from the trail, she was treated and released from Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Tuesday afternoon.
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Published February 15, 2006.
CIRCLE—The Yukon Quest 300 was won by a musher competing in his very first race.
The Goldstream Valley was done proud when Brent Sass, the first-time musher who was saved on Eagle Summit by a breathtaking dog named Silver, came off the Yukon River into Circle to win the 300 in convincing fashion at 2:01 p.m. Tuesday.
Silver and co-leader Madonna directed Sass and his team into the dog yard outside the Circle Firehouse, which once served as a one-room jailhouse in this original Yukon Gold Rush town.
“I’m pretty overwhelmed,” said Sass while he bedded down the team on piles of straw.
“I didn’t expect this at all. I knew that I had a decent dog team, and I was confident in myself as a musher. But I just wanted to finish.”
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Published February 15, 2006.
CIRCLE—William Kleedehn was clear about his priorities early Tuesday morning as the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race moved into its fourth day.
“There’s always somebody eager, some leader that wants to break trail,” Kleedehn said after a nap in the Circle firehouse checkpoint. “It’s my job to take care of my dogs.”
Nine teams, including Kleedehn’s, had left the dog drop at Slaven’s cabin on the Yukon River by 11 p.m. Tuesday night with 100 miles till the next checkpoint in Eagle.
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Published February 13, 2006.
CENTRAL—Lost in the rising tide of panic and then relief Monday at this Steese Highway checkpoint was the fact that the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race is still steaming ahead.
Only 14 teams remain in the 1,000-mile race to Whitehorse, Yukon. Five of the 22 teams that started the race were withdrawn by officials after being stranded Monday on Eagle Summit. And three others have scratched.
Like everything else Monday, the leaderboard offered a few surprises.
Whitehorse musher Sebastian Schnuelle was the first driver to reach the Circle and leave the Circle checkpoint, arriving at 1:49 p.m. Monday afternoon. After a rest of about 10 hours, he hit the Yukon River for the 159-mile run to Eagle at 10:04 p.m. with 12 dogs.
He was followed by three-time Quest champion Hans Gatt, who left at 10:36 with 14 dogs.
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Published February 13, 2006.
CENTRAL—Eagle Summit lived up to its reputation as one of the toughest obstacles in all of sled dog racing Monday.
When an early morning snowstorm descended upon the summit, conditions in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race changed by the minute. Getting off the mountain became a matter of life and death for a handful of teams competing in both the 1,000-mile race to Whitehorse, Yukon, and the 300-mile qualifying race that takes place simultaneously.
Regina Wycoff, a Healy rookie competing in the 1,000-mile race, teamed with Quest 300 mushers Brent Sass and Randy Chappel to make the descent from Eagle Summit. Wycoff and Sass related their harrowing ordeal when they were in the warm embrace of the checkpoint at the Steese Roadhouse hours later.
Like all good stories, there was a measure of peril, including the loss of a dog team in a dangerous situation. But it also had a happy ending.
“Me and Randy were having a great race,” said Sass, a Goldstream Valley musher in his first race.
“I didn’t know Randy was behind me until I got to the top. The wind was blowing up there, it was blowing real hard. We couldn’t see. You couldn’t face the wind because it would pelt you so bad.”
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Published February 13, 2006.
CENTRAL—After a tense day of anxiety and quiet fear as authorities in planes and helicopters searched Monday for several missing mushers and their dogs, Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race officials, volunteers and handlers greeted news that all were safe with a palpable sense of relief.
About a dozen dog teams competing in the 1,000-mile race and simultaneously in a 300-mile qualifying race were unaccounted for at one point Monday. Worried Quest officials called in the Alaska State Troopers and Alaska National Guard to conduct an air search after a ground search was forced back by whiteout conditions on Eagle Summit.
Race Marshal Mike McCowan said all mushers and dogs—including the team lost by Randy Chappel as he descended the summit—were safe and accounted for.
“There’s been so many lows, then highs,” said Frank Turner, a longtime Quest veteran whose son, Saul, was missing with the family dog team. “I just about cried when I heard. It’s been quite a ride.”
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Published February 13, 2006.
Searchers have found and evacuated the remaining five teams stranded on the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race, according to officials.
The mushers and their dogs were airlifted to the 101 Mile Steese Highway dog drop Monday evening, a posting at www.yukonquest.com said.
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Published February 13, 2006.
CENTRAL—An airplane spotted four dog mushers stranded Monday afternoon on Eagle Summit during the third day of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race, according to Race Marshal Mike McCowan. A dozen or more mushers were stranded or unaccounted for Monday as whiteout conditions wreaked havoc on both the 1,000- and 300-mile versions of the race.
Mushers Saul Turner and Jennifer Cochran and their dog teams were flown from the summit by helicopter to the 101 Mile Steese Highway dog drop at about 4 p.m. The two 1,000-mile competitors and their dogs seemed healthy, according to reports McCowan received.
The two other mushers found remained unidentified.
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Published February 13, 2006.
CENTRAL—As of noon Monday, there were five mushers in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and eight from the Yukon Quest 300 that were still unaccounted for and possibly stranded on Eagle Summit.
Also lost on the summit at this time is the dog team of 300 musher Randy Chappel.
Dramatic weather and unpredictable circumstances that change by the minute resulted in one of the most difficult nights at Eagle Summit in the history of the Quest, a 1,000-mile race from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, Yukon.
Trailbreakers on snowmachines were dispatched early Monday morning to look for mushers and the lost dog team.
“The trailbreakers we sent out from (Central) got as high as the treeline,” Race Marshal Mike McCowan said in a media briefing at the Steese Roadhouse around 11 a.m. Monday.
“There was so much blowing snow and such poor visibility that they had to come back. What we’re doing now is just waiting. Waiting for the weather to break, and then we’re really going to push it.”
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Published February 12, 2006.
101 MILE STEESE HIGWAY—For Gerry Willomitzer, Sunday was one of those days that made him wonder why he ever wanted to be a dog musher with a dream of winning the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.
“I had the worst crash I’ve ever had,” Willomitzer said as he ate granola bars inside the warm cabin at this windblown, icy mining camp that serves as a dog drop and convenient rest stop.
The second day of the Quest was brutal on all of the mushers, particularly in the 15-mile stretch from Rosebud Summit to 101.
“I was on a downhill-sidehill glacier combination,” said Willomitzer, who sported several abrasions and scratches on his face. “It was about 70 yards to the bottom. I fell and got sideways under the sled.”
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