Finish Line Offers Relief, Sense of Accomplishment and Lots of Hugs

Gus Guenther finishes the 2012 Yukon Quest. Scott Chesney/Yukon Quest

There are still two teams out on the Yukon Quest trail and they aren’t expected in before the end of the weekend.  The purse has been evenly distributed among the rest of the finishers and mushers will attend a few more events before the race comes to an official close.

In the early hours of the morning , Trent Herbst came across the finish line. The 41 year old rookie from Big Lake, Alaska is a teacher by trade, but he decided to take some time this winter to drive a dog team.

“I don’t know if it’s a big accomplishment.  It’s just more part of running dogs,” Herbst says.  “There are only two thousand mile races, there are only two places where you can spend that much time on the trail so its more of the time with the dogs and time going down the trail than it is a   with your dogs so it’s more of  tick list of oh I accomplished this or that.”

Herbst finished in twelfth place a little over four hours ahead of Gus Guenther.

“That was insanity!” exclaims Guenther.  “That was so amazing!  Wow!  I hardly needed this thing!”

Guenther pulls his parka from his sled and waves it in the air.  Almost everyone along the race trail was  surprised by the unseasonably warm weather this year.

Paige Drobny's team finishes up their 1000 mile run. Scott Chesney/Yukon Quest

After he finished signing his name for the final mandatory gear check, Guenther pulled his team around to his dog truck, just in time for Two-Rivers Rookie, Paige Drobny to drive her team across the line in 14^th place.

“Boy what a nice trip huh?” says Drobny.  “Nice morning to end it off too!”  The race Marshall nods and shakes here hand.

Drobny smiled in the morning sun and took a deep breath as she signed the gear checklist for the final time.

Except for the first few teams, the Yukon Quest finish line doesn’t always draw a large crowd.  But there was one team that drew more than 100 fans.  Yuka Honda’s was the last team to finish in the money.

This was Honda’s 4^th attempt to finish the race.  In 2006, she was airlifted off Eagle Summit with her dog team during a snow storm.  In 2007 and 2009, she scratched from the race.

But even this finish didn’t come easy.  50 yards from the line, her team stopped in a tangle.  Honda grabbed the necklines of her leaders and ran them in herself.

This race was special for another reason.  A good friend and the mother of Honda’s handler – a woman named Shuko – passed away last summer.  She was one of Honda’s biggest supporters and she’d had always wanted to see her finish this race.  Honda carried a picture of Shuko in her pocket for all 1000 miles.  At the finish she pulled it out.

“I brought her picture with me always so, she was almost my mom so….  I did it!” Honda smiled and waved the photo in the air.

Yuka Honda has a reputation for having a positive attitude.  She is constantly smiling and often laughing.  It’s something Champion Hugh Neff has always noticed.  He was also on hand to greet Honda and to offer her a finish line beer.

“She’s my hero too, because she keeps positive,” says Neff.  “We see it all out there don’t we?” he asks as he gives her a hug.

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Fans and officials will continue to wait throughout the weekend for two teams still out on the trail.  Michael Telpin and Marcelle Fressinau are well behind the rest of the pack.  According to the official race rules, mushers must maintain a speed that keeps them within 60 hours of the first place team.  But this year, the Race Marshall decided that rule did not apply.  Sue Thomas is the Executive Director of the Yukon Quest in Canada.

“Well they’re not on their own devices,” she says. “They are being monitored with the spot trackers, their handlers are out there, the communities are watching for them as well.  but anybody can travel the Yukon Quest trail and this is what they are doing but they are still a part of the race and they are still eligible to be the res lantern winners. They have made they decision that given the circumstances they wish to carry on and that is their choice to do that.”

But a race judge and a veterinarian may not be on hand at every checkpoint as both teams arrive.

Telpin and Fressineau are expected to cross the finish line until early next week.  Mushers will attend the finishers banquet over the weekend.  Some of them will receive awards for sportsmanship, dog care and for emulating the Spirit of the North.

An Update on the Red Lantern

The final teams continue to make their way into Whitehorse, but there are still two at Pelly Crossing, more than 250 trail miles from the finish line.

After Chukotka musher Michael Telpin’s GPS location device stopped working Tuesday, Quest officials sent a snow machine team to find him on the trail.  They located him at the Stepping Stone hospitality stop this afternoon.  Officials say he and his team were in good spirits.   They have decided to allow the Russian rookie to continue his race. Sue Thomas is the Executive Director of the Yukon Quest in Whitehorse.

“It is a Race Marshall decision,” she says.  “Both Marcelle and Michael are aware that both services and checkpoints will be closed as they go through that we can’t guarantee that there will be people through,  we are trying to get times on each of them as they go through and  communities are trying to greet them.  Their handlers will be there to support them and they can arrive on their on time into Whitehorse.”

Michael Telpin is a renowned musher in Russia.  However, he runs dogs mainly along the coastline and on tundra.  He had reservations about running his dogs in the dark and was concerned that he might become disoriented running amongst trees at night.  Marcelle Fressineau is running right in front of Telpin.  The 57 year old French Canadian rookie has maintained her position since the beginning of the race.

According to the official rules, the first and last team must run within 60 hours of each other.  But Thomas says officials decided to allow the two to continue the race, unsupported from Dawson City due their experience.

“They are still part of the race and they are still eligible to be the red lantern winners, but they have made the decision that given the circumstances they wish to carry on  and that is their choice to do that,” says Thomas.

Race officials expect Fressineau and Telpin to finish the race sometime late Sunday or Monday.

Musher Thought Lost is Found

After more than two days, of silence, the team at the back of the pack has been found.  Michael Telpin and his nine fluffy Russian sled dogs were found at Stepping Stone Thursday morning.

Mushers are required to carry a GPS tracker with them at all times, but the race has had problems with the trackers this year.

Chukotka native, Michael Telpin started the Yukon Quest in Fairbanks at the back of the pack.  He has been running in the red lantern position ever since.  But two days ago, his spot tracker stopped updating his position.

Sue Thomas is the Executive Director of the Yukon Quest in Whitehorse. On Thursday morning, she made an official statement.

“So we have a team of snowmobilers that are on the trail and are seeking out his position,” she says.  “And until they find him, we don’t know what is happening and what is going on.  So we can’t speculate, but we can just say we are searching and until we find him, we don’t know.”

Telpin is a renowned musher in Russia.  However, he runs dogs mainly along the coastline.  He had reservations about running his team in the dark.  He was also concerned that he might become disoriented running amongst trees at night.  So, he has been running his team mostly during daylight hours.  Thomas says there is no reason to believe he is in trouble on the trail.

“He is an experienced outdoorsman, his team are not necessarily racing dogs, they are working outdoor dogs, so everything is in Michael’s favor, but accidents do happen, so we want to make sure he’s ok at the back of the pack where he is at,” says Thomas.

Telpin’s running scheduled has slowed his arrival into checkpoints along the trail.  According to the official rules, the first and last team must run within 60 hours of each other.  But officials decided to allow him to continue the race, unsupported from Dawson City due to his experience level.

Finish Line Reflections

Even though they aren’t at the front of the pack, three rookies have posted some impressive run times during this year’s Yukon Quest.  But not a single one of them signed up to run the Quest competitively.

Rookie musher Gus Guenther says he’s not racing at all.

“Does it seem like it? Does it?  I’m in a race!” He laughs. “I’m in a race, it doesn’t mean I’m racing I guess.  Yeah I’m not racing at all.  No!”

Guenther  says he didn’t even start the race with a plan.

“Everybody has these race strategies,” he says.  “If I even have one to begin with, it changes every hour, like I don’t even know what the trail is coming up.  I’m always asking Paige where are we going?”

Guenther is talking about fellow rookie, Paige Drobny.

“Gus and I kind of have the same attitude,” says Drobny.  “We’re just out here to have have a good time.  Trent and Gus and I talked about camping at the Takhini River bridge and all pulling the snow hooks at the same time and seeing what happens.”

Gunther and Drobny started running near another fellow rookie, Trent Herbst early on.  The three teams have been running close for nearly 800 miles, but Gunther says he was never interested in passing anyone.

“I just, I mean basically what i know how to do is getting a dog team from A to B.  I have no interest in running competitively,” says Gunther. “I don’t find it fun.”

For Drobny, signing up for the race was a way to find out how to become a better musher.

“I didn’t want to be inefficient,” she says. “I wanted to teach myself efficiency and I think that’s what those lead guys have.  If I allowed myself a lot of time in checkpoints, the I would end up walking in Circles.  One I got a routine, I was good about keeping things in line, and… doing things efficiently.”

Extra rest has benefitted Trent Herbst who headed for Whitehorse a few hours ahead of Guenther and Drobny.  He ran the fastest run time into the Braeburn Checkpoint by more than an hour.  But he’s also not in the Yukon Quest to race.

“There’s all these historical places,” says Herbst.  ” I’ve wanted to see and cabins I’ve wanted to go to.  stepping stone is one of the,m and then Cochrane’s cabin is another one so that broke up my run there.”

All three rookie mushers say they are pleased with how their dogs have run on the Quest trail.  They say the experience has been more than they had expected.  For Gus Guenther, it’s been twenty years in the making.

“Just putting your life on hold for an entire winter to do this, it’s a lot of financial obligations,” says Guenther.  “I almost guarantee within a month I’ll be like yeah I’ll do it again, I just don’t want to be out there the year it the year it’s like 50 below again.”

Paige Drobny says she’s not sure if the Quest is in the cards for her in the future.

“I’ve never run dogs to be a racer.  I think it’s gonna take a little time to process to see if I want to do it again.  So yeah, maybe I’ll be a one hit wonder or maybe I’ll do it again.  I dunno.”

Trent Herbst says he has only one regret.

“I dunno, I wish I could still be out there.  I just like the rhythm of being out on the trail and knowing the rhythm is gonna stop, I think the dogs notice it too,” Herbst says.

The three rookies say they don’t mind who finishes first or last in their group, or that they are two days behind the leaders.  And even though they have posted some faster times, they were in it for the camaraderie between each other and with their dogs.

The Races That Weren’t

The 2012 Yukon Quest is coming to a close as teams continue to cross the finish line this week.  And while the race to the finish was just that, there were other races that never were.

Third and fourth place finishers, Lance Mackey and Jake Berkowitz spoke loud and often about competing against each other in this year’s race.

But by the time Mackey had crossed the finish line, he said he had all but forgotten his closest competitor.

“It was nice and comforting to know that I didn’t have to keep looking over my shoulder all night for his headlight,” he says.  “But occasionally, I found myself looking anyway.”

And Berkowitz traded racing for dog care over the last 177 miles of trail.

“You just gotta do what’s right by the dogs.  I wasn’t willing to cut rest at Carmacks just to go chase Lance and it turned out to be a good thing because these were two long runs,” he says.  “You know the dogs are all on their feet, they’re all eating.  I don’t even know how far ahead  Lance finished from us.”

After finishing, Berkowitz said he wasn’t surprised he and Mackey ran such close races.

“In the last two years we’ve always finished back to back in any race we’ve been into,” he says.

Berkowitz held onto his fourth place standing for half the race.  He‘s not the only musher to maintain their place.  Brent Sass raced in 5^th place for nearly 600 miles.  But Sass says he’d have liked his race to turn out differently.

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“Well, of course I wanted to win.  We do this to win,” he says.  “But it’s absolutely amazing to come in here 5th place.  It’s nice to say I was in the top five and next year I’ll come into this race saying I’m gonna win it and the next year, I’ll say I’m gonna win it and one of these years I’m gonna win it.”

Sass says he set a goal to focus more on his dogs during this year’s race.  He ran with a complete team for half the race, but changing conditions forced him to drop dogs.

“This dog race throws all sorts of obstacles at you and some dogs just got tired and it would have been doing them harm to keep them in the team.  It was amazing coming into Dawson with 14 dogs and all the way to Pelly with 14 dogs but sometimes the dogs need to go and so they got dropped.”

Sixth and Seventh place finishers Sonny Lindner and Joar Leifseth Ulsom were also consistent in maintaining their places.  Ulsom, from Norway had never run his dogs more than about 400 miles before the Quest.  He hadn’t planned on racing as much as he had wanted to experience the trail.  But 200 miles in, he realized his team could be competitive.

“I guess when I got to Circle, I started to realize that I was moving pretty good compared to the guys in front of me and i just started running,” says Ulsom.

Ulsom overtook Lindner just outside the finish line to claim 6^th place.

“No it was a very good run and I caught up to Sonny and passed him on the river.  I asked him how he was and he was good.”

“The only time I saw him was under the bridge out here,” says Lindner “And then i just stopped because we were into all this side hill river stuff and I had to get here with each dog standing up in harness so I wasn’t… I mean I just stopped and let him go by.” 00:05

Lindner was down to six dogs after a few days of warmer than normal temperatures.  He decided not to race. He finished the race in 7^th place.

“It’s been a long day i was kind of on a minimum dog number run so you have to step up and do all the work yourself,” he laughs.

Ulsom says he wants to return to the Quest for another run.  Sonny Lindner has said this will be his last Quest, but he hasn’t made any permanent decisions to that end.  A handful of teams remain on the trail, some racing, some just in it for the experience.

It All Comes Down to 26 Seconds

Moore and Neff joke a day later about their dramatic finish. Schwing/KUAC

Allen Moore and Hugh Neff fought to the finish early this morning for the Yukon Quest title.  It was the closest finish in Yukon Quest history.  After 12 runs, Hugh Neff finally claimed victory.  Lance Mackey happily claimed third and Jake Berkowitz rounded out the top four as Rookie of the Year in this Year’s Yukon Quest..

Twenty miles from the Yukon Quest finish line, frontrunner Allen Moore caught sight of a light from behind.

“You know I glanced around and I saw his light and I said ‘Crap!  What is that?’” Moore recalls.

It was a team, with High Neff on the runners, kicking and hollering at his dogs to pick up the pace.

“I mean I was ski poling but not that intensely, but just steady,” he says.  “I went away from him just a little while and then I thought o myself ‘I don’t know if I can ski pole like this for three and a half hours.’”

“I mean he didn’t just exactly let me pass him either,” says Neff.  “He was in front for a good mile and a half.  he’s doing the double ski pole and I’m kicking and ski poling like you’d never believe, not at him but at the dogs like ‘come on, come on, come on!’.  He had like a war whop going on.  While we’re doing this, I’;m just laughing because it’s so comical.  but in a good way.  We gave it everything we had on the line.’”

Even a half mile from the finish, Neff says the race still wasn’t decided.

“There was some glare ice a little open water and the team veered up into the parking lot.  He was right 20 feet behind me,” says Neff.  “I was gonna bag the race right there.  but for some reason, his dogs followed my team and when that happened I didn’t even say anything i just went and grabbed the leaders, pulled ‘em back through the ice and he had to go and grab his team and I think that’s what gave me that final gap.”

Neff’s team bounding across the line 26 seconds before Allen Moore’s.  It’s the closest finish in Yukon Quest history.  Neff’s winning time is also the sixth fastest finish time for the race.

Moore will keep the gold he won when he came in first to Dawson.  After 12 Quests, and finally, a win, Neff says he’ll be taking next year off.

“I just knew that moments like this don’t happen that often and that I know I made a lot of people happy,” he smiles.

Nearly five and half hours later, with the wind blowing from all directions, Lance Mackey’s team crossed the line.

Mackey’s dogs started having trouble with unseasonably warm temperatures just over half way through the race. But when his dogs pulled into the finish chute, they didn’t seem any worse for the wear.

It’s Mackey’s slowest Quest finish, but he says he couldn’t be happier.

“The dogs are good, so I’m great I have zero complaints,” smiles Mackey.

Mackey says he’ll definitely be back for another Quest.  But one musher who isn’t sure if he’ll return is Rookie of the Year, Jake Berkowitz.  His team pulled across the finish line less than two hours after Mackey’s.  Throughout the race, Berkowitz was outspoken about the challenges of the Quest trail.

“The finish line kept getting further and further it seemed like,” he sighs.  “But we’re glad its here and the dogs are all happy and ready for a good rest.”

There are still 15 teams who’ve yet to finish, which means there is still plenty of racing to come.  Teams are spread out over the last 300 miles of trail.

*Video Credit:  The Yukon Quest.  Check out videos from the rest of the race here.

Braeburn: The Last Checkpoint on the Trail

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Race Comes Down to 42 Minutes

The front runners have checked into Braeburn.  It’s the last checkpoint on the Yukon Quest Trail.  Mushers will wait out a mandatory eight hour layover before they head for the finish line in Whitehorse.

 

Event though his was the first team to leave Carmacks, Hugh Neff got caught about an hour or so down trail.

“The worst thing for me would be to have a headlamp behind me for ten hours,” says Neff. “It would drive me nuts, and you can stress out another dog team, because those dogs are gonna be looking back behind them the whole time.”

So Neff stopped to snack his dogs, and the two competitors didn’t see each other again until they pulled into the Braeburn checkpoint as the sun was just starting to rise.  Allen Moore is wearing bib number one.

“Well, it’s worked so far.  Just keep the karma coming,” Moore smiles.

Moore has gotten very little sleep in the last four days.  He says the mandatory layover at Braeburn could be a major factor in determining the outcome of the race.

“Right now I’m feeling sub-par.  Hopefully, we can get four hours in this eight hour period and we should feel like Superman or something.  The dogs also.  They’ve gotten very little rest.  Like all these long runs, nine ten hour long runs they’ve only had two hours rest, so for them to get this much, hopefully they’ll be fired up.”

But Hugh Neff seems to think Moore’s is the team to beat.

“It’s gonna be hard obviously because he has such an experienced team and those guys really have those dogs trained up well.” 00:06

Neff’s dogs aren’t new to the trail.  There’s not a single one on his team that hasn’t run the Yukon Quest at least three times.

“Yeah but they soprt of cancel each other out,” says Neff.

Neff says because both teams are so strong, he may not be able to make up the time he’ll need to overtake Moore.

“So,if it was 10 or 15 minutes?  Pretty doable.  But 40 minutes?  Pretty tough!” admits Neff.

The trail ahead is notorious for overflow and temperatures are again warm.  There is no telling how the teams will react to each other should they meet up on their way to Whitehorse.

Carmacks is 177 Miles from the Finish

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Looking Over Their Shoulders

Leaders are constantly looking over their shoulders, as their dog teams approach the last checkpoint on the Yukon Quest Trail.   Warm weather continues to slow teams, and no one is sure of their position on the trail.  Teams are racing to stay ahead and concerns about who’s behind them is weighing on the top five competitors.

Just as the sun was sinking, a headlamp sparkled through the trees along the Yukon River.  It was coming toward Carmacks.  Spectators believed it was Allen Moore’s , but the first musher in to the checkpoint was actually Hugh Neff.

“Yeah, we kicked it into gear, whenever I pass a team on the trail,” he says.  ” I don’t like to just have them drafting off me, whenever I pass a team I always like to leave them in the dust and let them know they ain’t gonna be drafting off me for a while.”

But it took Neff all day to pass Moore, and he only got the chance when Moore made an unfortunate mistake.

“I thought this checkpoint was a lot farther away for some reason, laughs Moore.  “I even snacked the dogs just a half a mile from here that’s when he passed me over there.  That better not happen again.”

He says little mistakes like that could determine the race.

“It’s gonna depend on who makes a mistake or what dog gets hurt if any or just some little something like that if n o one gets hurt it’s gonna be really close,” says Moore.

He will benefit from a 30 minute penalty against Neff, who forgot his axe at Dawson.

Before they took off, Neff and Moore spent at least an hour tossing gear from their sleds to ease up on weight for the push to the next checkpoint, Braeburn.

As they put booties on their dogs, Lance Mackey pulled in… to the chagrin of Hugh Neff.

“When you have a chance to beat the guy you want to beat him because it doesn’t come up very often,” says Neff.  He might say he’s given up and the race is over for him but he’s a Mackey and they’re always competitive.”

Mackey is competitive.

“I’m not going down without a fight.”

But what Neff and Moore don’t know is that he may have already called the race in their favor.

“Third place will be the worst performance for me in the Quest.  That’s not so bad.”

Ever the trickster, Mackey threw booties down in front of his dogs instead of snacks after parking his sled.

“They both are a little sketchy just knowing that I’m here,” says Mackey.  “I don’t want to be here, they don’t want me here and rightly so. I’ve raced both those guys for years now and they’ve seen some of the stupid things I’ve done that paid off so but that was a dog team that’s capable of doing stupid things.  This one I don’t think is.  I’m not willing to find out.”

The two teams up front didn’t know whether he chose to sleep at the checkpoint or if he jumped on his runners to catch them.  They took off right after he arrived.

Mackey is looking over his own shoulder as well.

“I’m realistic,” he says. “I’m not gonna catch the guys in front of me, but I just don’t want the guys behind me  running me over.”

One of “those guys” is rookie Jake Berkowitz.

He’s the closest competition.  I know I can’t catch Hugh and Allen.  I’ve been slowly picking away at his lead over me since Stepping Stone.  It could be a finish line finish.”

He says he’s surprised that Mackey was still at the checkpoint when he got there.

“It’s a pretty smart tactical move to stay out of sight of your competition,” he says.  “If you keep staying away from than they think you’re uncatchable.  If you keep catching sight of them that person starts getting pretty hungry.”

Berkowitz also chose to say.  He says the decision was based on a combination of dog care and competition.

“I didn’t really want to load up a heavy sled and find a place to camp since I don’t know what the terrain is like,” he says. “And I was able to see lance leave and gauge when I want to leave off of that.”

But he’s still not sure if what’s in front of him is catchable.  He’s also looking over his shoulder to find out if his own team is vulnerable.