One of the very many things I learned from being a race judge on the 2014 Yukon Quest was that I wanted to take part in the Quest again – as a competitor. In terms of weather, and not coming particularly close to death, my memory was telling me that the 2013 Quest had not been as tough as I had been expecting it to be; maybe if it had been I would have been a bit more apprehensive about ever taking part again. As it was though I decided that we needed to up the ante a bit and so I decided that we would not only sign up for the 2015 Quest but we would also have a go at running the Iditarod in the same winter. Yea, that certainly upped the ante, and not necessarily in a smart way.
If my memories of the 2013 Yukon Quest are disjointed fragments, my memories of the 2015 Yukon Quest are exactly the opposite: they are very vivid; it was the year we came very last!!
When I look back on the race today I think it can be very nicely divided into two: the first half of the race where I made mistake after mistake and seemed to do everything imaginable to screw up the team and the second half of the race, post Dawson, where we did everything we possibly could to keep moving and get to that next checkpoint and ultimately the finish line, although in reality my goal always seemed to be to get to the next checkpoint so I could scratch. It is probably a good thing that on a Whitehorse start year you have to go 300 miles after leaving Dawson before you can sensibly, or maybe that should be economically, scratch.
2015 had been one of those mild winters with temperatures barely getting below -30C and often between -10C and -20C, the dogs, or at least the musher, got acclimatised to those temperatures. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when the forecast began predicting temperatures down towards -40C for the first weekend in February 2015, and even more of a shock when start morning dawned at -45C.
Fortunately the truck started OK (we were now back living off-grid, renting a cabin off William Kleedehm and so had no way to plug in the block heater) and we made it to the staging area in good time. Notwithstanding the cold everything seemed to be going pretty smoothly despite the fact that we had a second team running in the YQ300 and relationships with that ‘musher’ were tense to say the least. Maybe it was a mixture of this tension and being too confident in my own abilities but the aforementioned mistakes began even before we had left the start line. More on that in a moment, but for now things seemed to be going like clockwork: the dogs were bootied and harnessed in good time, they were hooked to the gangline without issue, the power they displayed as they dragged us into the start chute was impressive to say the least. Chris was out from the UK to help Louise handle and was driving the tag sled, our friend Krys was our Quest Guest, riding along inside the tag sled. And really everything continued to go as planned: we left the start line well, dropped off the tag sled without issues and headed down the Yukon and then up the Takhini bound for Braeburn, Carmacks, Pelly and then Dawson – we were even promised that the weather would warm up ‘later’ (although later was never fully defined).
I said previously that long distance racing can be described as long periods of time where nothing at all happens, and a lot of time can be spent thinking. One of the things I think about, when I get to a certain point in a run, is what I will do when we get to our next camping spot or checkpoint, I go over the routine in my head so that by the time we stop I can go through the motions semi-automatically. Whitehorse to Braeburn is just about 100 miles and so it is extremely rare for anyone to attempt that in one go – the dogs would be able to make it but I doubt they would thank you further down the line. It is therefore not unusual to see teams camped out next to the trail anyway between 40 and 70 miles after the start depending on conditions and race strategy. I had decided that we were going to run the 180 miles from Whitehorse to Carmacks in three 60 mile runs, ‘blowing through’ (I lol in advance) the Braeburn checkpoint – a plan I rigidly adhered to despite the fact that the cold and my mistakes suggested I should have chosen otherwise. I planned to camp out the pull out at the lookout point above Dog Grave Lake, about 63 miles into the race. As we were coming toward the end of the Takhini I started to think about snacking the dogs as well as getting my mind ready for camping; I suddenly realised that I hadn’t packed any meat in the sled to add to the meal when we camped, in fact I hadn’t packed any kibble either – how could I have made such a fundamental, dumb mistake. I quickly assessed what I had in the sled and figured that if I didn’t use the meal I had prepared in my cooler for wet snacks along the trail, I could use that for the meal when we camped and I had just about enough dry snacks to get us to Braeburn if I was careful with the size of the snacks I handed out. The fact that I had made such an error in not packing the sled properly (I had been told repeatedly in the past that I should have a checklist for sled packing) was playing on my mind, and coupled with the extreme cold I was not too happy when I got to the Lookout. A number of teams were already camping there when I arrived including Brent, Cody Strathe and Mike Ellis – thankfully this meant that there was a roaring fire already underway. Having put down straw for the dogs and taken off their boots I started to melt snow so that I could warm up the food in the cooler. This year instead of using a regular cooler with a flip up lid I was using a food bucket wrapped in insulation with a screw-on lid. The lid may have been screw-on before the race but the fact that food had been sloshing around in there for almost 8 hours at 40C below meant it was not a screw-off, it was frozen solid. As I continued to melt snow I smashed and smashed at the lid with my axe, finally managing to turn it enough to get the lid off, the food inside was now frozen solid too. I did however manage to melt enough snow and boil the water enough to heat the meal and feed the dogs but my mood was sinking rapidly towards depression.
I decided that trying to sleep was pointless as it was so cold so I spent the remainder of my 4 hours camping time searching for dry wood to keep the fire going; once the four hours was up we slipped back into the dark and bitterly cold night.
As I said my plan had been to ‘blow through’ Braeburn just stopping long enough to grab food, snacks and fresh booties for the next 85 mile leg to Carmacks, my plan being to camp again about 20 miles past Braeburn. I always find the final stretch into Braeburn much longer than I anticipate and by the time I got to Braeburn I was tired and frustrated; Tidgie was also not running at all well. She had had a shoulder injury a few weeks before and whilst she had been living in the cabin with us, and getting intensive massages, the injury had obviously recurred so I was going to have little option but to drop her. Considering how cold it was, the fact I had so very badly screwed up with the food, and that I now needed to drop a dog I really should have changed plans and elected to rest in Braeburn. Belligerently I decided to continue with ‘blowing through’ the checkpoint. Blowing through would suggest doing things quickly, and in later years at Iditarod in particular, I found I was able to check-in, resupply and check out in a matter of minutes; this blow through in Braeburn went on for just about one hour, all the time the dogs were stood around wondering why they weren’t getting straw, food or sleep – this was the first time we had ever attempted to run through a checkpoint and it was not going well. Eventually we repacked the sled, I managed to get a drink as the extreme cold was adding to my own dehydration, we signed the paperwork to drop Tidgie and set off back into the night. As we crossed the highway and rejoined the trail the dogs finally realised that we were not going to camp just yet; I wouldn’t say there was a mutiny but I could tell from their collective body language that they were both bemused and dismayed – but we carried on. As day broke we made the camping spot, again others had camped there, Brent had just left but Mike had a fire going, which was a good thing as the temperatures had dropped even further, by now it must have been into the -50s Celsius (I heard later that one musher had recorded -75F on this stretch but I was never able to confirm that). Camping was really difficult: it was so cold that the moisture was being sucked out of the snow, it felt like I was shovelling crystals into my cooker. It was taking so long to get enough water, and I was using so much fuel, that I seriously doubted that if I was forced to camp again before Carmacks that I would have enough fuel left to make another meal. Eventually though I did get enough hot water together to feed the dogs and dragged my sleeping bag over by the fire to try to grab my first sleep of the race – fat chance. By the time we hit the trail again after another 4 hour break I was fully into depression, things seemed to be going so badly. The dogs still didn’t seem that sure what was going on, and were I think a reflection of my own poor attitude, it took us forever to get back up to speed after camping. The rest of the run across the lakes was uneventful but then as we hit the section where we run on and off the Yukon, and have some pretty sporting climbs and drops to navigate, two teams from the YQ300 caught up with me. By now Terror had started limping and despite the fact that I had to stop to put him in the sled bag, the teams didn’t seem inclined to pass me. The fact that they were running right behind me however was really putting the dogs off and in the end I snapped and turned around and told them where to go – one team passed, the other dropped back.
In Carmacks the talk was of how cold it was, how we were due to hit bad jumble ice before McCabe Creek and how many teams were scratching. Before the race I had looked at the roster and figured out which teams would be running at roughly the same pace as us: two of those scratched in Carmacks meaning the back of the pack just got appreciably smaller. Worse still I ran into Scott Smith inside the checkpoint. Scott and I had both run our rookie Quests in 2013 (Scott had been rookie of the year) and had both been judges in 2014. I could see Scott was fighting back the tears and then heard that one of his dogs had myopathy and he suspected a second one might also have the condition; although both dogs recovered Scott made the understandable decision to scratch – we were only 180 miles into the race and already three teams had scratched and it was still bitterly cold. It was however due to warm up …. later! The run to McBride was uneventful; although we had been warned to expect very perilous jumble ice, the Rangers had done an amazing job literally cutting a trail through the ice. In McCabe I heard that Matt Hall had now scratched in Pelly; Matt had been rookie of the year in 2014 and I had seen first-hand what an excellent musher he was; I began to question if he and Scott were scratching should I really be in this race.
The run into Pelly was equally uneventful but we were slow and it was frustrating; we pulled into the checkpoint very late on Monday evening. Having stopped for a good rest in McCabe my plan had been to grab supplies and go on to Stepping Stone before resting. Firstly I was told that there was no second bale of straw available for me (I was convinced I had requested two when we put in our orders back in the fall). And then, having decided I was going to take a break in Pelly, I was told that the kitchen had closed for the night and there was no food available – now I was in a really bad mood. The bonus in stopping, I was told, was that it was so cold coming out of Stepping Stone that no teams were leaving there and so there would be nowhere to camp or sleep if I did go straight there. Bob McAlpin, the race judge, managed to find a spare bale of straw and having fed the dogs I set about packing the sled for the 200 mile unsupported run from Pelly to Dawson. Just like coming int the start chute for the first time, or climbing Eagle Summit, you really need to experience packing a sled for this leg to really appreciate how difficult it is to get 2 ½ days of supplies into a small sled bag. Just over an hour later the sled was packed and runner plastic changed and all I would need to do after a few hours sleep would be to make up food in the cooler, put boots onto the dogs and hit the trail. Packing the sled hadn’t gone well, and changing the runner plastic had gone even worse, so now in an even worse mood I went inside in the hope that Bob had been wrong about the kitchen being closed – he hadn’t been wrong, there was no food in sight. I looked around for Chris and Louise so I could have some company in my depression but it seemed both had gone to get some sleep. I sat down rather forlornly at a table and tried to sort out my headtorch – it was really suffering in the cold and didn’t look like it was going to charge properly just what you need when the next charging point is almost three days away - things were just dandy!! One of the PR team took sympathy on me and asked if coffee might help. When I said it undoubtedly would, and he discovered the pot was empty, he took it upon himself to make a fresh pot – not everything was bad in the world. After a few hours of cold, disturbed sleep that was wracked with seemingly perpetual cramps in my legs, I got up in the hope there would be hot food before I left – there was not. Chris and Louise were also still nowhere to be seen so I had no one to share my misery with. All was not lost, my headtorch battery had started to recharge and so I had some hopes that it would last long enough to make it to Dawson if I was very careful. As I sat there wallowing in self-pity I overheard Aliy, who had just finished, and won, the YQ300 describe how unbelievably cold it had been on the next section of trail, some of the coldest conditions she had run in. I am not sure what look passed over my face but she noticed, gave me a sympathetic smile, said sorry and then said “it is supposed to warm up …. later”. 40 minutes later we set off into the night and the slightly daunting 2 ½ day run to Dawson. Aliy had been correct, it was unbelievably cold. As daylight hit and the temperature dropped even further we were on the rolling hills of the Pelly Farm Road: this is a tough section on a good day, with a fully laden sled and such cold temperatures we were crawling along. As we got closer to Stepping Stone, I was really becoming overcome by sleep deprivation and our slow progress was bringing me very close to tears. Then coming in the opposite direction was a friendly face, Claudia Wickert was running in the YQ300 and heading back to Pelly to finish. Really now fighting back the tears I asked her to tell my handlers to wait in Pelly until they were sure I was going past Stepping Stone and on to Dawson as I was super close to scratching. Claudia then said that I should expect to run into Jeff King anytime soon as he had made the decision in Stepping Stone that it was too cold to continue and he was heading back to Pelly to scratch. My heart sank even further, if all these top mushers were scratching what right did I have to continue. Shortly after we were passed by a very cheery Jeff King heading in the opposite direction, his dogs looked amazing. Then dropping onto the Stewart River at Pelly Farm, the temperature seemed to drop another 10 degrees (I cannot remember ever being that cold before or since) and finally we made it into Stepping Stone. Under the impression that it was going to warm up …. later, I decided that we would stay a few hours at Stepping Stone in the hope that if I slept, and it did warm up a bit, I might change my mind about scratching. A few hours turned into 8 hours (the hospitality at Stepping Stone is immense and hard to walk away from). It also seemed like it was finally warming up. Despite all these trials I also wasn’t on my own, Kristen, Ryne and Magnus were all running at around the same pace and so with spirits lifted slightly I decided we would head out to Scroggie Creek – 65 miles up the trail and the halfway point between Pelly and Dawson. It had been a while since I had made a screw up so now seemed like as good a time as any – I decided we would do a straight run to Scroggie. Ordinarily this would have been fine but given that we had been moving slowly, and the dogs undoubtedly had been mentally affected by the extreme cold, I should have done what the other three did and take a short break on the way. In my wisdom however I decided to do it in one run and then, about 5 miles from Scroggie, the dogs decided that they would take over team strategy and we would stop for a rest. Knowing how close we were to fresh straw and a good meal for the dogs, I desperately set about swapping out leaders, but nobody seemed to want to go, it looked like we were going to sit it out. I cast a glance over the team on more time and there stood right in the middle, looking me right in the eye was Maddie. Why had I not tried Maddie? I put her up in lead and she surged forward but Nutter, next to her, seemed less inclined to move. It seemed even Maddie could not fix this mistake. I don’t know why, because it was not something we had ever done before, in racing or training, but I wondered what would happen if I put Maddie in single lead. I did, she jumped forward, the other dogs jumped up and we took off – at pace. Considering how tired they had appeared moments before I could not believe how fast they were now going. We quickly covered the last few miles into Scroggie and we settled in for a long break.
It would be nice to think that this was the end of the problems but in over-running the dogs in those conditions I had really flipped their mindset; I have heard before, and since, that if your team loses speed during a race, it is really difficult to get it back. Maddie was the only one who really wanted to lead now (she went on to be in single lead for the majority of the remaining 650 miles) and when we got into the Black Hills I realised that none of the dogs wanted to pull the sled up hills any more if I was standing on the runners and so we pretty much walked up the switch backs and also up every other climb once we were on the Summit. Eventually through the Black Hills we pulled into our chosen camping spot just above Indian River as Ryne and Kristen were heading back out; after feeding the dogs I managed to get a good fire going and slept fitfully for a few hours. We set off again just after daybreak but still progress was very slow. Eventually we started the climb that would lead us up onto King Solomon’s Dome, the final climb before Dawson. The dogs had actually started to pick up a bit when, much to our collective dismay, a huge bundle of straw appeared in the middle of the trail where someone had obviously camped. It can always be difficult to get dogs to go past straw and for this reason etiquette should dictate that you always pull off the trail as far as possible when camping and certainly never camp in the trail: firstly there are too many interesting smells, secondly the dogs know there is a good chance that there will be food hidden away amongst the straw, and finally dogs associate straw with going to sleep and can try to bed down. Our previous improvement in performance was immediately wiped away and even though we were passed the straw the team slowed to a crawl as they kept looking back. I knew we would not be getting very far if we continued like this and as it was now approaching midday and starting to warm up (how ironic is that), I decided to pull off the trail, put down some spruce bows and give the dogs a few more hours rest. I planned to scratch in Dawson anyway so what was the rush.
As I sat forlornly on the sled watching the dogs sleep I heard a snow machine coming towards me from the direction we had just come. It stopped next to me and the rider said ‘there is a dog team coming through’. When I quizzed him as to what was going on he said that Roland Troubridge’s team had quit the night before and the Rangers had got him into a shelter cabin overnight and he was now running into Dawson. All this time I had been thinking that I was the only one with problems. About 30 minutes later I heard snow machines coming from the opposite direction. They stopped and the first rider asked if I was OK. I replied I was and they said they were just heading into the Black Hills as Magnus’ tracker hadn’t updated for a long time and they wanted to make sure he was OK. So I really wasn’t alone in this escapade.
As the afternoon started to cool off we got back on the trail; the additional break seemed to have done us all some good and we made progress up and over the Dome and down into Dawson. We now had at least 36 hours to rest and recover and decide if we really wanted to go on or if we should join the ever growing list of scratches – the dogs deserved the break much more than I.
If my memories of the 2013 Yukon Quest are disjointed fragments, my memories of the 2015 Yukon Quest are exactly the opposite: they are very vivid; it was the year we came very last!!
When I look back on the race today I think it can be very nicely divided into two: the first half of the race where I made mistake after mistake and seemed to do everything imaginable to screw up the team and the second half of the race, post Dawson, where we did everything we possibly could to keep moving and get to that next checkpoint and ultimately the finish line, although in reality my goal always seemed to be to get to the next checkpoint so I could scratch. It is probably a good thing that on a Whitehorse start year you have to go 300 miles after leaving Dawson before you can sensibly, or maybe that should be economically, scratch.
2015 had been one of those mild winters with temperatures barely getting below -30C and often between -10C and -20C, the dogs, or at least the musher, got acclimatised to those temperatures. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when the forecast began predicting temperatures down towards -40C for the first weekend in February 2015, and even more of a shock when start morning dawned at -45C.
Fortunately the truck started OK (we were now back living off-grid, renting a cabin off William Kleedehm and so had no way to plug in the block heater) and we made it to the staging area in good time. Notwithstanding the cold everything seemed to be going pretty smoothly despite the fact that we had a second team running in the YQ300 and relationships with that ‘musher’ were tense to say the least. Maybe it was a mixture of this tension and being too confident in my own abilities but the aforementioned mistakes began even before we had left the start line. More on that in a moment, but for now things seemed to be going like clockwork: the dogs were bootied and harnessed in good time, they were hooked to the gangline without issue, the power they displayed as they dragged us into the start chute was impressive to say the least. Chris was out from the UK to help Louise handle and was driving the tag sled, our friend Krys was our Quest Guest, riding along inside the tag sled. And really everything continued to go as planned: we left the start line well, dropped off the tag sled without issues and headed down the Yukon and then up the Takhini bound for Braeburn, Carmacks, Pelly and then Dawson – we were even promised that the weather would warm up ‘later’ (although later was never fully defined).
I said previously that long distance racing can be described as long periods of time where nothing at all happens, and a lot of time can be spent thinking. One of the things I think about, when I get to a certain point in a run, is what I will do when we get to our next camping spot or checkpoint, I go over the routine in my head so that by the time we stop I can go through the motions semi-automatically. Whitehorse to Braeburn is just about 100 miles and so it is extremely rare for anyone to attempt that in one go – the dogs would be able to make it but I doubt they would thank you further down the line. It is therefore not unusual to see teams camped out next to the trail anyway between 40 and 70 miles after the start depending on conditions and race strategy. I had decided that we were going to run the 180 miles from Whitehorse to Carmacks in three 60 mile runs, ‘blowing through’ (I lol in advance) the Braeburn checkpoint – a plan I rigidly adhered to despite the fact that the cold and my mistakes suggested I should have chosen otherwise. I planned to camp out the pull out at the lookout point above Dog Grave Lake, about 63 miles into the race. As we were coming toward the end of the Takhini I started to think about snacking the dogs as well as getting my mind ready for camping; I suddenly realised that I hadn’t packed any meat in the sled to add to the meal when we camped, in fact I hadn’t packed any kibble either – how could I have made such a fundamental, dumb mistake. I quickly assessed what I had in the sled and figured that if I didn’t use the meal I had prepared in my cooler for wet snacks along the trail, I could use that for the meal when we camped and I had just about enough dry snacks to get us to Braeburn if I was careful with the size of the snacks I handed out. The fact that I had made such an error in not packing the sled properly (I had been told repeatedly in the past that I should have a checklist for sled packing) was playing on my mind, and coupled with the extreme cold I was not too happy when I got to the Lookout. A number of teams were already camping there when I arrived including Brent, Cody Strathe and Mike Ellis – thankfully this meant that there was a roaring fire already underway. Having put down straw for the dogs and taken off their boots I started to melt snow so that I could warm up the food in the cooler. This year instead of using a regular cooler with a flip up lid I was using a food bucket wrapped in insulation with a screw-on lid. The lid may have been screw-on before the race but the fact that food had been sloshing around in there for almost 8 hours at 40C below meant it was not a screw-off, it was frozen solid. As I continued to melt snow I smashed and smashed at the lid with my axe, finally managing to turn it enough to get the lid off, the food inside was now frozen solid too. I did however manage to melt enough snow and boil the water enough to heat the meal and feed the dogs but my mood was sinking rapidly towards depression.
I decided that trying to sleep was pointless as it was so cold so I spent the remainder of my 4 hours camping time searching for dry wood to keep the fire going; once the four hours was up we slipped back into the dark and bitterly cold night.
As I said my plan had been to ‘blow through’ Braeburn just stopping long enough to grab food, snacks and fresh booties for the next 85 mile leg to Carmacks, my plan being to camp again about 20 miles past Braeburn. I always find the final stretch into Braeburn much longer than I anticipate and by the time I got to Braeburn I was tired and frustrated; Tidgie was also not running at all well. She had had a shoulder injury a few weeks before and whilst she had been living in the cabin with us, and getting intensive massages, the injury had obviously recurred so I was going to have little option but to drop her. Considering how cold it was, the fact I had so very badly screwed up with the food, and that I now needed to drop a dog I really should have changed plans and elected to rest in Braeburn. Belligerently I decided to continue with ‘blowing through’ the checkpoint. Blowing through would suggest doing things quickly, and in later years at Iditarod in particular, I found I was able to check-in, resupply and check out in a matter of minutes; this blow through in Braeburn went on for just about one hour, all the time the dogs were stood around wondering why they weren’t getting straw, food or sleep – this was the first time we had ever attempted to run through a checkpoint and it was not going well. Eventually we repacked the sled, I managed to get a drink as the extreme cold was adding to my own dehydration, we signed the paperwork to drop Tidgie and set off back into the night. As we crossed the highway and rejoined the trail the dogs finally realised that we were not going to camp just yet; I wouldn’t say there was a mutiny but I could tell from their collective body language that they were both bemused and dismayed – but we carried on. As day broke we made the camping spot, again others had camped there, Brent had just left but Mike had a fire going, which was a good thing as the temperatures had dropped even further, by now it must have been into the -50s Celsius (I heard later that one musher had recorded -75F on this stretch but I was never able to confirm that). Camping was really difficult: it was so cold that the moisture was being sucked out of the snow, it felt like I was shovelling crystals into my cooker. It was taking so long to get enough water, and I was using so much fuel, that I seriously doubted that if I was forced to camp again before Carmacks that I would have enough fuel left to make another meal. Eventually though I did get enough hot water together to feed the dogs and dragged my sleeping bag over by the fire to try to grab my first sleep of the race – fat chance. By the time we hit the trail again after another 4 hour break I was fully into depression, things seemed to be going so badly. The dogs still didn’t seem that sure what was going on, and were I think a reflection of my own poor attitude, it took us forever to get back up to speed after camping. The rest of the run across the lakes was uneventful but then as we hit the section where we run on and off the Yukon, and have some pretty sporting climbs and drops to navigate, two teams from the YQ300 caught up with me. By now Terror had started limping and despite the fact that I had to stop to put him in the sled bag, the teams didn’t seem inclined to pass me. The fact that they were running right behind me however was really putting the dogs off and in the end I snapped and turned around and told them where to go – one team passed, the other dropped back.
In Carmacks the talk was of how cold it was, how we were due to hit bad jumble ice before McCabe Creek and how many teams were scratching. Before the race I had looked at the roster and figured out which teams would be running at roughly the same pace as us: two of those scratched in Carmacks meaning the back of the pack just got appreciably smaller. Worse still I ran into Scott Smith inside the checkpoint. Scott and I had both run our rookie Quests in 2013 (Scott had been rookie of the year) and had both been judges in 2014. I could see Scott was fighting back the tears and then heard that one of his dogs had myopathy and he suspected a second one might also have the condition; although both dogs recovered Scott made the understandable decision to scratch – we were only 180 miles into the race and already three teams had scratched and it was still bitterly cold. It was however due to warm up …. later! The run to McBride was uneventful; although we had been warned to expect very perilous jumble ice, the Rangers had done an amazing job literally cutting a trail through the ice. In McCabe I heard that Matt Hall had now scratched in Pelly; Matt had been rookie of the year in 2014 and I had seen first-hand what an excellent musher he was; I began to question if he and Scott were scratching should I really be in this race.
The run into Pelly was equally uneventful but we were slow and it was frustrating; we pulled into the checkpoint very late on Monday evening. Having stopped for a good rest in McCabe my plan had been to grab supplies and go on to Stepping Stone before resting. Firstly I was told that there was no second bale of straw available for me (I was convinced I had requested two when we put in our orders back in the fall). And then, having decided I was going to take a break in Pelly, I was told that the kitchen had closed for the night and there was no food available – now I was in a really bad mood. The bonus in stopping, I was told, was that it was so cold coming out of Stepping Stone that no teams were leaving there and so there would be nowhere to camp or sleep if I did go straight there. Bob McAlpin, the race judge, managed to find a spare bale of straw and having fed the dogs I set about packing the sled for the 200 mile unsupported run from Pelly to Dawson. Just like coming int the start chute for the first time, or climbing Eagle Summit, you really need to experience packing a sled for this leg to really appreciate how difficult it is to get 2 ½ days of supplies into a small sled bag. Just over an hour later the sled was packed and runner plastic changed and all I would need to do after a few hours sleep would be to make up food in the cooler, put boots onto the dogs and hit the trail. Packing the sled hadn’t gone well, and changing the runner plastic had gone even worse, so now in an even worse mood I went inside in the hope that Bob had been wrong about the kitchen being closed – he hadn’t been wrong, there was no food in sight. I looked around for Chris and Louise so I could have some company in my depression but it seemed both had gone to get some sleep. I sat down rather forlornly at a table and tried to sort out my headtorch – it was really suffering in the cold and didn’t look like it was going to charge properly just what you need when the next charging point is almost three days away - things were just dandy!! One of the PR team took sympathy on me and asked if coffee might help. When I said it undoubtedly would, and he discovered the pot was empty, he took it upon himself to make a fresh pot – not everything was bad in the world. After a few hours of cold, disturbed sleep that was wracked with seemingly perpetual cramps in my legs, I got up in the hope there would be hot food before I left – there was not. Chris and Louise were also still nowhere to be seen so I had no one to share my misery with. All was not lost, my headtorch battery had started to recharge and so I had some hopes that it would last long enough to make it to Dawson if I was very careful. As I sat there wallowing in self-pity I overheard Aliy, who had just finished, and won, the YQ300 describe how unbelievably cold it had been on the next section of trail, some of the coldest conditions she had run in. I am not sure what look passed over my face but she noticed, gave me a sympathetic smile, said sorry and then said “it is supposed to warm up …. later”. 40 minutes later we set off into the night and the slightly daunting 2 ½ day run to Dawson. Aliy had been correct, it was unbelievably cold. As daylight hit and the temperature dropped even further we were on the rolling hills of the Pelly Farm Road: this is a tough section on a good day, with a fully laden sled and such cold temperatures we were crawling along. As we got closer to Stepping Stone, I was really becoming overcome by sleep deprivation and our slow progress was bringing me very close to tears. Then coming in the opposite direction was a friendly face, Claudia Wickert was running in the YQ300 and heading back to Pelly to finish. Really now fighting back the tears I asked her to tell my handlers to wait in Pelly until they were sure I was going past Stepping Stone and on to Dawson as I was super close to scratching. Claudia then said that I should expect to run into Jeff King anytime soon as he had made the decision in Stepping Stone that it was too cold to continue and he was heading back to Pelly to scratch. My heart sank even further, if all these top mushers were scratching what right did I have to continue. Shortly after we were passed by a very cheery Jeff King heading in the opposite direction, his dogs looked amazing. Then dropping onto the Stewart River at Pelly Farm, the temperature seemed to drop another 10 degrees (I cannot remember ever being that cold before or since) and finally we made it into Stepping Stone. Under the impression that it was going to warm up …. later, I decided that we would stay a few hours at Stepping Stone in the hope that if I slept, and it did warm up a bit, I might change my mind about scratching. A few hours turned into 8 hours (the hospitality at Stepping Stone is immense and hard to walk away from). It also seemed like it was finally warming up. Despite all these trials I also wasn’t on my own, Kristen, Ryne and Magnus were all running at around the same pace and so with spirits lifted slightly I decided we would head out to Scroggie Creek – 65 miles up the trail and the halfway point between Pelly and Dawson. It had been a while since I had made a screw up so now seemed like as good a time as any – I decided we would do a straight run to Scroggie. Ordinarily this would have been fine but given that we had been moving slowly, and the dogs undoubtedly had been mentally affected by the extreme cold, I should have done what the other three did and take a short break on the way. In my wisdom however I decided to do it in one run and then, about 5 miles from Scroggie, the dogs decided that they would take over team strategy and we would stop for a rest. Knowing how close we were to fresh straw and a good meal for the dogs, I desperately set about swapping out leaders, but nobody seemed to want to go, it looked like we were going to sit it out. I cast a glance over the team on more time and there stood right in the middle, looking me right in the eye was Maddie. Why had I not tried Maddie? I put her up in lead and she surged forward but Nutter, next to her, seemed less inclined to move. It seemed even Maddie could not fix this mistake. I don’t know why, because it was not something we had ever done before, in racing or training, but I wondered what would happen if I put Maddie in single lead. I did, she jumped forward, the other dogs jumped up and we took off – at pace. Considering how tired they had appeared moments before I could not believe how fast they were now going. We quickly covered the last few miles into Scroggie and we settled in for a long break.
It would be nice to think that this was the end of the problems but in over-running the dogs in those conditions I had really flipped their mindset; I have heard before, and since, that if your team loses speed during a race, it is really difficult to get it back. Maddie was the only one who really wanted to lead now (she went on to be in single lead for the majority of the remaining 650 miles) and when we got into the Black Hills I realised that none of the dogs wanted to pull the sled up hills any more if I was standing on the runners and so we pretty much walked up the switch backs and also up every other climb once we were on the Summit. Eventually through the Black Hills we pulled into our chosen camping spot just above Indian River as Ryne and Kristen were heading back out; after feeding the dogs I managed to get a good fire going and slept fitfully for a few hours. We set off again just after daybreak but still progress was very slow. Eventually we started the climb that would lead us up onto King Solomon’s Dome, the final climb before Dawson. The dogs had actually started to pick up a bit when, much to our collective dismay, a huge bundle of straw appeared in the middle of the trail where someone had obviously camped. It can always be difficult to get dogs to go past straw and for this reason etiquette should dictate that you always pull off the trail as far as possible when camping and certainly never camp in the trail: firstly there are too many interesting smells, secondly the dogs know there is a good chance that there will be food hidden away amongst the straw, and finally dogs associate straw with going to sleep and can try to bed down. Our previous improvement in performance was immediately wiped away and even though we were passed the straw the team slowed to a crawl as they kept looking back. I knew we would not be getting very far if we continued like this and as it was now approaching midday and starting to warm up (how ironic is that), I decided to pull off the trail, put down some spruce bows and give the dogs a few more hours rest. I planned to scratch in Dawson anyway so what was the rush.
As I sat forlornly on the sled watching the dogs sleep I heard a snow machine coming towards me from the direction we had just come. It stopped next to me and the rider said ‘there is a dog team coming through’. When I quizzed him as to what was going on he said that Roland Troubridge’s team had quit the night before and the Rangers had got him into a shelter cabin overnight and he was now running into Dawson. All this time I had been thinking that I was the only one with problems. About 30 minutes later I heard snow machines coming from the opposite direction. They stopped and the first rider asked if I was OK. I replied I was and they said they were just heading into the Black Hills as Magnus’ tracker hadn’t updated for a long time and they wanted to make sure he was OK. So I really wasn’t alone in this escapade.
As the afternoon started to cool off we got back on the trail; the additional break seemed to have done us all some good and we made progress up and over the Dome and down into Dawson. We now had at least 36 hours to rest and recover and decide if we really wanted to go on or if we should join the ever growing list of scratches – the dogs deserved the break much more than I.
With the dogs not showing much inclination to pull up hills, and with American Summit, Eagle Summit and Rosebud all in our futures, I had some concerns about continuing past Dawson in the 2015 Yukon Quest; by far the easiest option was to scratch. My mindset around the Quest had always been that the toughest, most psychologically intense leg of the race was the 200 mile run from Pelly to Dawson, and that was now behind us. What I was to learn in 2015, and reinforced in 2016, is in fact that the 300 miles between Dawson and Circle, with just the remote checkpoint of Eagle to split the journey up, is much more mentally daunting. I was also aware, from observing the mushers in 2014, that running on the Yukon river was not a flat track walk in the park.
Physically the dogs were in great shape despite my best efforts in the first half of the race, I hoped the 24 hour layover in Dawson would help them recover mentally. In an effort to slow the race down somewhat, the Board of Directors and Rules Committee had decided to reduce the mandatory layover from 36 hours to 24 hours, thinking that less rest in Dawson would encourage mushers to take more rest before and after the halfway point; a 24 hour mandatory worked for Iditarod, why not Quest. As it turned out reducing to 24 hours made little difference to the speed of the race in the first 500 miles but it did mean that dogs and mushers did not have enough time to recover fully before setting out on the second half of the race. There are many reasons why 24 hours mandatory works on Iditarod but not the Quest but now is probably not the time to have that discussion, struggling as we are to keep these short stories, well, short.
For a couple of reasons the race had not gone over American Summit in 2013 (or 2014 if it came to that) and so if we continued in the race we would be heading into uncharted territory for us; I was pretty concerned what would happen if we got to American Summit and the dogs didn’t want to climb. I was aware from listening to both Sebastian Schnuelle and Jody Bailey that American Summit was not necessarily a nice place to be, especially if the weather turned bad. Very much like Rosebud, American Summit never really seems to get the bad press it deserves! As I was trying to decide whether to continue in the race or not, I chatted with Sue Ellis and Paige Drobny and they assured me that the climb up to American Summit was nowhere near as bad as the climbs onto Rosebud (from Fairbanks) or the climb onto Eagle Summit (from Circle) as it was all on the Taylor Highway. As we finished our chat they did however point out that you were climbing pretty much for 25 miles after leaving the Forty Mile river.
Not everything was bad news; despite the fact that we were still very much learning how best to care for the dogs in a long layover, they were still looking rested and happy to continue. I also wasn’t that far behind Kristen (although there was little chance of catching her, at least volunteers in checkpoints and hospitality stops would not be sat around for days waiting for us) and Magnus was still just behind us. I was under no illusions that he would catch and pass us before Eagle checkpoint but there is something reassuring in knowing that there is another team not so far away and, I felt, the race would be a lot less inclined to withdraw me if they knew there were two of us travelling fairly close together. With all these things considered I resolved to remain in the race and head to Alaska.
The benefits the dogs had gained from the 24 hour layover really were disappearing by the time we turned up the Forty Mile river, 50 miles after leaving Dawson; even if the dogs were doing OK, I had certainly sunk back into a funk and was already feeling exhausted again. 2 miles after hitting the Forty Mile, I followed the signs for dancing women and pulled off the river into the hospitality stop at Earl and Sandy’s cabin on Clinton Creek. Earl, a large, bearded, grizzled bush guy, showed me where to park the team and explained the amenities that were available and then left me to my own devices. After I had bedded down and fed the team and repacked the sled I headed inside the cabin to see what this hospitality stop had to offer, remembering that we had not come this way in 2013. As I opened the door and was greeted by waives of light, heat and amazing odours of home cooked cuisine, I was welcomed by Sandy: “well here is the current Yukon Quest red lantern holder”. I had been looking over my shoulder all the way from Dawson but I had not seen any signs of Magnus behind me so knew Sandy was mistaken. For a few minutes we discussed how I was in fact not in last place and then Sandy delivered what was for me dispiriting news, Magnus had waited until I had left Dawson and then scratched. I appreciated that he had delayed making any announcement in order to discourage me from also scratching, but being hit with the fact that I was now last, and very alone on the trail, was exceptionally demoralising. I enquired about Kristen and learnt that she was now travelling with Lance and they were probably about 6 hours ahead of me. Sandy said that Lance had joked about this being his first ever opportunity to ‘win’ the red lantern; I responded that he was welcome to it but they had better stop and wait for me to catch up.
The trip from Dawson to Eagle is about 140 miles: 50 on the Yukon, about 40 on the Forty Mile and the remainder on the Taylor Highway. Most teams will do the leg in three runs, in either direction, resting at Clinton Creek and somewhere on the Taylor, just after getting off the Forty Mile. My plan was to take around 4 hours at Clinton Creek and then camp by the bridge over the Forty Mile; it was a couple of years before I would realise that the higher you climb away from the Forty Mile river the warmer it gets and so the easier camping becomes. The hospitality at Earl and Sandy’s is amazing, truly amazing! For a couple living so far out from Dawson, and only really accessible by snow machine in the winter, the range of food on offer was incredible. Then, to cap things off, they offered up the warmest most comfortable bed imaginable; in 2015, and every year since, it has always been a struggle to leave Clinton Creek and there have been years where the allure of the bed has encouraged me to stay a lot longer than planned, not hindered by the fact that both Earl and Sandy are great conversationalists.
As things turned out, and despite my previous skepticism, Sue and Paige had been correct about the climb up to American Summit going on for about 25 miles. It was also not just a single climb: the road twisted and turned and rolled up and down as we slowly edged towards the Summit. The dogs were still not that eager to pull up hill so every time I saw the road drop back down, and knowing that we would have to regain that height around the next bend, I cursed and got more disconsolate. I had tried different leaders coming out of Clinton Creek but still Maddie was the only dog eager to be in front and so she pretty much remained in single lead. Eventually, however, we did make the Summit just after daybreak and I was gifted with perfect sunny weather and the most spectacular views. 2015 is still, I think, the only year that I have been on American Summit in daylight, and the only year when I haven’t been battered by winds and/or snow at some point (spectacular views = above the treeline and very exposed). Despite the views and the balmy weather it was not somewhere I wished to hang around; having spent a couple of miles twisting and turning along the ridge line that marked the summit, we eventually dropped back into the treeline and began a gradual, 17 mile descent into Eagle.
Although the dogs were looking great, and despite the fact that we were heading downhill to rejoin the Yukon River, the depression that had begun in the first half of the race still enveloped me. I so badly wanted to scratch from the race but I knew that logistically and financially Eagle would not be the best place to do that: it would probably cost a minimum of $500 to fly the dogs out, probably more as I would likely have to fly them to Slaven’s and then Fairbanks, and there would be a possibility I would have to leave my sled behind until the summer. Although I really did not want to think about it at this stage, we were still due to run Iditarod a few weeks after finishing the Quest (whenever that may be) and the sled was going to be kind of required equipment. I was extremely down when we finally pulled up in front of the old school house in Eagle that served as the checkpoint, but my mood lifted somewhat when I saw that good friend Fabian Schmitz who was there as a race judge. As I hooked down to sign in and do the gear check, Fabian gave me a hug and asked how things were going. He then announced that there was a plane waiting to take him to Fairbanks and so he would see me later. I asked why the race official was leaving when I was only just arriving, I was convinced that I must be being withdrawn from the race for being too slow (it is funny how minutes before I wanted more than anything to scratch from the race and now I was desperate to stay in the race). Fabian tried to reassure me that I was not going to be withdrawn and when he could see his words were having little effect he told me he would have the Race Marshall, Doug Grilliot, call me as soon as possible to let me know everything was good.
As I was bedding the dogs down and feeding them I learnt that both Joar Ulsom and Cody Strathe had both left Eagle heading for Circle and then turned around, returned to Eagle, scratched and then chartered an aircraft to get their teams and sleds out. The thoughts I had had in the first half of the race returned, what right did I have to continue in the race when much better mushers than I were scratching. Still, the conviction remained that Eagle was not the place to scratch, I would do all I could to get us to Circle and, on rejoining the road system and meeting up with the handers for the first time in almost four days, scratch at that point.
Lance and Kristen were getting even further in front of me, and so despite the fact I was last and alone on the trail, nonetheless I did have the bonus that I had the entire checkpoint, and all of the volunteers, to myself – I really was waited upon and had excellent service and food. A few moments after I had got into the School and sat down to eat, the door burst open and through the icy blast a large, uniformed gentleman appeared. “Hi, I am looking for Rob Cooke, I have a warrant for his arrest!” I was aghast. “You’re Rob? I have it on good authority that you are trying to smuggle a red lantern into the US!!” Apparently this was very funny, almost everybody in the room laughed. “No seriously Rob, welcome to the US, I just need to check your passport!”.
Just before I went into the backroom of the school house to get some sleep the checkpoint phone rang. Modern amenities are not that prevalent in the old school building and the phone ringing was (and always is) a very rare occurrence. The checkpoint manager picked up the phone. As I listened to one half of the conversation I could see he kept casting somewhat worrying glances towards me – he put the pone on the desk and walked up to me. “Rob, I am sorry, the Race Marshall wants to speak to you”. So this was it, the dreaded Race Marshall phone call, I was being withdrawn. “Hi Doug”, “Hey Rob how are you doing”, “OK, look Doug are you withdrawing me?”, “What are you talking about, of course I am not withdrawing you, Fabian said you wanted me to call you! Look, keep going, the jumble ice on the … blah, blah, blah … 10 miles… blah, blah, blah…. very bad… blah, blah, blah … 30 miles … blah, blah, blah .. OK good luck, we’ll see you in Circle”. I am never one to listen to trail reports, things can change so fast, however listening in on this trail report may have been a good idea – as we would discover later. The important thing though was that I wasn’t being withdrawn – even if I still wanted to scratch.
I took my mandatory four hour rest, and a bit longer, and headed out onto the Yukon and towards Circle. The run from Eagle to Circle is about 160 miles but again it is split up nicely into three runs, about 40 miles to Trout Creek (and we sure as hell were stopping there this year) then about another 60 miles to the dog drop at Slaven’s Cabin, which would offer the next unrealistic opportunity to scratch, and then about 60 miles on to Circle. Pretty much the whole way, apart from the Beaver Ponds, is on the Yukon River. Despite it being flat, travel on the river can be perilous. At times the river is wide, extremely exposed and even on a good day there are sections where the wind howls non stop; there were also reports of really bad jumble ice between Slavens’ and Circle at mile blah, blah, blah, that lasted for blah, blah, blah miles.
Like Stepping Stone and Clinton Creek, Trout Creek is an absolutely amazing place. About 2 miles before you turn off the river and into Trout Creek you start seeing pie plates attached to lathes announcing the availability of water for dogs, food for mushers and a warm place to sleep. You pull off the river, twisting and turning on narrow trails through the bush and suddenly the trees thin out and a welcoming cabin appears right in front of you. I am not sure how he does it, considering the remoteness of the cabin and lack of reliable communications, but the owner, Mike Saga, always seems to be outside to meet teams as they come in, well in all future years he was, I was greeted by a darkened cabin. I hooked down the dogs and gave them straw and removed booties and grabbing my water bucket went inside to find the promised hot water. As I pushed open the door I was hit with a surge of escaping heat. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside I saw a hand appear from within a sleeping bag in the corner and a gruff, but mumbled voice announced: “water there, coffee over there, sleeping up there, see you in the morning” silence.
Having completed all my chores, I came back inside and hung all my gear around the woodstove to dry and foregoing the coffee clambered up the rickety stairs to see where I would sleep. What was on offer was a hard floor with a thin sleeping mat – the most comfortable hard floor and sleeping mat in the world! A few hours later I woke to bright sunlight and groggily stumbled back down the stairs, Mike was sat at the table, where Mike would always be in the future: “Coffee? Chilli?” I graciously accepted both. Mike was a one time resident of Eagle but now lives in Fairbanks. The cabin is little more than a hunting camp but every year he snow machines the 100 miles or so from Fairbanks to Trout Creek and opens up his cabin just so that Quest mushers have a warm place they can stop and get off the river – the people around the Quest are pretty amazing. Another great thing about Mike is that he doesn’t waste too many words, particularly as this was our first meeting – in future years we would often discuss politics but this year it was mostly silence: “More coffee? Looks like the wind is going to pick up, don’t hang around too long” silence. I was genuinely concerned about the wind picking up and so before long we took the death defying drops and turns to get out of Trout Creek and back onto the Yukon, heading towards Slaven’s Cabin.
There are so many high points on the Yukon Quest, even in depressing years like 2015; Slaven’s Cabin is another one of those high points. Operated by the Parks’ Service, the volunteers have collections, events, bake offs etc. all year round in order to support the dog drop. Then they give up their own time, and often on vacation, to snow machine in and stay there for the duration of the race offering amazing service and hospitality: the conversation, if you want it, is good; every volunteer always has a smile on their face; the sleeping area is warm and very comfortable and the food is, well the food is endless. The main room is dominated by a huge table covered in snacks and coffee and on the wall behind the table a huge blackboard with an extremely extensive menu. I always do my best to work down the list. It is always hard to leave Slaven’s but eventually we had to leave the hospitality behind. As we prepared to drop back onto the river race judge Bob McApline commented that the jumble ice was probably not as bad as everyone had said, everyone else had made it through OK!! Suddenly the telephone conversation in Eagle with Doug came back to me but try as I might I could not remember the ‘blah, blah, blah’, all I could remember was 10 miles and 30 miles. Oh well, how bad could jumble ice really be – the answer was very, very bad.
We hit the first of the jumble ice about 30 miles upriver of Circle and it truly was unbelievable. For the next ten miles there was no relief as we bounced from block to block, winding our way through blocks of ice that must have been over 20 feet tall. As the dogs were dancing their way through the mayhem I was wrestling with the sled, doing my absolute best not to shatter my knees or break any bones. I swore … a lot. I was astounded that the trail breakers had been able to get through this with snow machines. Almost 2 hours later we emerged from the ten miles of hell and followed a flat trail along the side of the river; then before we knew it the trail was back into the ice field, although now slightly more manageable. For the next 20 miles we crossed back and forth across the river, long periods of wrestling the sled through the ice fields followed by shorter periods of respite on the banks of the Yukon. When we eventually pulled off the river to head into Circle I spotted someone sat on a snow machine high up on the bank. As we got closer I saw that it was Mike Reitz, the head trail breaker for the Alaska side of the race, waiting and watching to make sure we made it in safely. As I went passed I commented “Great trail Mike, that was amazing”. He looked at me trying to work out if I was being sarcastic, was drunk or just plain crazy; but I really was amazed that they had done such an incredible job getting a trail through 30 miles of hell.
In Circle the race rejoins the road system and we get to meet up with our handlers once again, always a morale booster even though my attitude was still particularly black. With still over 220 miles of trail to go, and with Eagle and Rosebud Summits and Birch Creek to negotiate the desire to scratch was still very strong. For the last three to four days pretty much all I had been able to think about was getting to Circle and scratching. Lance and Kristin were long gone, it was now well over 300 miles since I had last seen another dog team. Despite the overwhelming desire to quit, after food and sleep I decided that we would cover the next 85 miles to Central and then decide what to do; Maddie was still running well in single lead and let’s face it, all that separated us from Central was Birch Creek.
For those who are apt to use the phrase ‘when hell freezes over’, let me tell you, hell freezes over every winter – hell is Birch Creek. I cannot say why exactly I have come to despise it so much: whether it is the constant twisting and turning so that every few minutes you seem to be going in opposing directions; the fact that, particularly up the creek from the canoe landing every twist and turn looks the same as the last; maybe it is because heading west it never seems to end, around every corner you think you are going to see the overland trail that leads to Central but the trail never seems to appear; or maybe it is because it is cold, colder than hell, when hell freezes over. Local knowledge would suggest that it is always at least 10C colder on Birch Creek than it is in Circle or Central, something I strongly believe to be true. This far into the race, and particularly with a dog team that is still recovering from all my missteps in the first half of the race, doing a single run to Central would be mushing suicide. We ran for just over 40 miles out of Circle and then pulled off the side of the trail to camp for a few hours. Having bedded the dogs down and got a good meal inside them, I wrapped my parka tightly around me and sat on the back of the sled to try to get some sleep. We were stopped in the middle of the creek, and the snow off the trail was too deep and banks too high for me to consider trying to collect firewood so I decided I would brave the cold. I must have dozed off briefly but then, all of a sudden I was awake … and cold, so bitterly cold. Suddenly I was convinced I was going to die, I was so cold. Whether still half asleep or my brain was being frozen, I started to get into a panic; I needed to move, we needed to get moving or I was going to die. I forced myself to look at my watch. As far as I could tell we had only been stopped for a little under two hours, there was no way I could get the dogs up now, we would never make it to Central. I started running, I ran back down the trail, turned and ran back to the sled; I jumped up and down, ran back down the trail, turned and ran back – the dogs did not bat an eyelid, they had learnt to ignore my insane moments long ago. Eventually my circulation began to improve and some degree of warmth returned, certainly enough so that I thought I have staved off death for the time being. I settled back onto my seat, this time put my parka on properly, pulled the hood up and zipped it up fully and shrinking as far into my parka as I could go, I rested my head on the handlebar and for the next 1 ½ hours did my best not to die.
Having left Birch Creek behind us (I resolved that this would be for the very last time in my life EVER) we very slowly ambled across the swamps and lakes and towards the airport that marked the turning onto the road leading the final ten miles into Central. Our progress was so laboured that I knew we would have to scratch in Central, Maddie was doing an incredible job in lead, but everybody else was just following.
In Central I scowled as best I could at anyone who came near me, media and the PR team included, I sorted out the dogs silently, ate and tried to get some sleep. If I didn’t scratch now, we had the slightly daunting task of trying to climb the steep part of Eagle with a dog team that was not at all keen about going up hills let alone mountains. I am not sure if it was the sadistic part of me, my belligerence or the egotist who didn’t want to be seen to walk away perhaps scared of Eagle Summit but we decided we would continue in the race, at least as far as Mile 101, and then decide if we would scratch or not. The ascent of the Summit was not as ‘easy’ as it would appear to be in 2017, nor as comical as 2015 but considering the mental condition of the musher and the rest of the team, with a bit if pushing and hauling we made it up and over. The run off into 101 was probably more challenging as there was very little snow in places and a couple of times we lost the trail but we were into the penultimate checkpoint and less than 140 miles to the finish line.
Maddie had now been in lead since before Scroggie Creek, over 500 miles, most of it in single lead; if it hadn’t been for her we would likely have scratched in Scroggie and would certainly never have left Dawson. As we left 101 to head to Rosebud she seemed, understandably, mentally very tired, she kept trying to pull the team off the trail and onto the road and our speeds were getting pretty slow. I thought I would take a risk and see if Psycho and Nutter were up for leading. Maybe they knew where we were from two years previous, maybe the example their sister had been showing for the last week or so shamed them into activity, but they immediately took up the challenge, our speed picked up and we had a relatively uneventful run over Rosebud and into Two Rivers Checkpoint. As with the previous 4 checkpoints Two Rivers was a lonely place in terms of other teams but very big on hospitality; everyone wanted to chat, to cheer me up, keep us going. I was still far from convinced that we were going to finish the race; it is around 80 miles to the finish line from the checkpoint, and it is not particularly challenging terrain, but still, 80 miles with a tired and demotivated team is a long way. We left at around 1am and after a very long night, daybreak saw us on the Chena River and re-entering civilisation. Military families on Fort Wainwright came out to cheer us on, people appeared on the bridges across the river to shout goodwill messages: I was amazed that anyone cared that we were finally going to drag our arses across the finish line, in a very embarrassing and slow last place. As we edged along the river and I sensed we were approaching the downtown area, I saw movement under a bridge up ahead and as we neared the bridge a blue parka emerged out of the gloom. As we got closer an arm was thrust out and in the hand a cup of coffee. Having just finished as rookie of the year, he should have been sound asleep, eating or drinking, or even all three, but Damon Tedford had come out onto the river to bring me a cup of ‘coffee’ and welcome me to Fairbanks. After 11 + days on the trail the taste was unbelievable, we exchanged brief pleasantries as I glided past and we continued on our way. The ‘coffee’ really did taste good. And then there it was – the finish chute. I could feel the tears welling up; the mental and physical effort it had taken to get this far began to release. I finished the coffee and tossed the cup into my sled bag and tried to put on a brave face. As we crossed the finish line there were hugs all round. I was absolutely amazed to see so many people there, and then slowly I realised that a lot of the people in the finish chute were mushers; in fact every Canadian musher who had finished the race that year had come down to see us finish. After being interviewed by another hero of mine, Brian O’Donoghue, he of lesbian lead dog fame, a plastic cup was thrust into my hand and Bill McDonald waved a bottle of Bombay Sapphire under my nose. It turned out that Damon’s coffee had been more Irish than coffee and after adding the gin into the mix, my slurred speech during the interviews was not all related to sleep deprivation.
The main photograph that captures that finish shows me hugging Nutter and Psycho, but whilst all the dogs that year were heroes it was Maddie who we were deeply indebted to for getting us to the finish line; she was, is and always will be my special girl. Maddie would take 2016 off so she could look after her puppies and this time, when things started to unravel only 12 miles from Dawson, she wasn’t there to save the day; but that is a whole other story.
Physically the dogs were in great shape despite my best efforts in the first half of the race, I hoped the 24 hour layover in Dawson would help them recover mentally. In an effort to slow the race down somewhat, the Board of Directors and Rules Committee had decided to reduce the mandatory layover from 36 hours to 24 hours, thinking that less rest in Dawson would encourage mushers to take more rest before and after the halfway point; a 24 hour mandatory worked for Iditarod, why not Quest. As it turned out reducing to 24 hours made little difference to the speed of the race in the first 500 miles but it did mean that dogs and mushers did not have enough time to recover fully before setting out on the second half of the race. There are many reasons why 24 hours mandatory works on Iditarod but not the Quest but now is probably not the time to have that discussion, struggling as we are to keep these short stories, well, short.
For a couple of reasons the race had not gone over American Summit in 2013 (or 2014 if it came to that) and so if we continued in the race we would be heading into uncharted territory for us; I was pretty concerned what would happen if we got to American Summit and the dogs didn’t want to climb. I was aware from listening to both Sebastian Schnuelle and Jody Bailey that American Summit was not necessarily a nice place to be, especially if the weather turned bad. Very much like Rosebud, American Summit never really seems to get the bad press it deserves! As I was trying to decide whether to continue in the race or not, I chatted with Sue Ellis and Paige Drobny and they assured me that the climb up to American Summit was nowhere near as bad as the climbs onto Rosebud (from Fairbanks) or the climb onto Eagle Summit (from Circle) as it was all on the Taylor Highway. As we finished our chat they did however point out that you were climbing pretty much for 25 miles after leaving the Forty Mile river.
Not everything was bad news; despite the fact that we were still very much learning how best to care for the dogs in a long layover, they were still looking rested and happy to continue. I also wasn’t that far behind Kristen (although there was little chance of catching her, at least volunteers in checkpoints and hospitality stops would not be sat around for days waiting for us) and Magnus was still just behind us. I was under no illusions that he would catch and pass us before Eagle checkpoint but there is something reassuring in knowing that there is another team not so far away and, I felt, the race would be a lot less inclined to withdraw me if they knew there were two of us travelling fairly close together. With all these things considered I resolved to remain in the race and head to Alaska.
The benefits the dogs had gained from the 24 hour layover really were disappearing by the time we turned up the Forty Mile river, 50 miles after leaving Dawson; even if the dogs were doing OK, I had certainly sunk back into a funk and was already feeling exhausted again. 2 miles after hitting the Forty Mile, I followed the signs for dancing women and pulled off the river into the hospitality stop at Earl and Sandy’s cabin on Clinton Creek. Earl, a large, bearded, grizzled bush guy, showed me where to park the team and explained the amenities that were available and then left me to my own devices. After I had bedded down and fed the team and repacked the sled I headed inside the cabin to see what this hospitality stop had to offer, remembering that we had not come this way in 2013. As I opened the door and was greeted by waives of light, heat and amazing odours of home cooked cuisine, I was welcomed by Sandy: “well here is the current Yukon Quest red lantern holder”. I had been looking over my shoulder all the way from Dawson but I had not seen any signs of Magnus behind me so knew Sandy was mistaken. For a few minutes we discussed how I was in fact not in last place and then Sandy delivered what was for me dispiriting news, Magnus had waited until I had left Dawson and then scratched. I appreciated that he had delayed making any announcement in order to discourage me from also scratching, but being hit with the fact that I was now last, and very alone on the trail, was exceptionally demoralising. I enquired about Kristen and learnt that she was now travelling with Lance and they were probably about 6 hours ahead of me. Sandy said that Lance had joked about this being his first ever opportunity to ‘win’ the red lantern; I responded that he was welcome to it but they had better stop and wait for me to catch up.
The trip from Dawson to Eagle is about 140 miles: 50 on the Yukon, about 40 on the Forty Mile and the remainder on the Taylor Highway. Most teams will do the leg in three runs, in either direction, resting at Clinton Creek and somewhere on the Taylor, just after getting off the Forty Mile. My plan was to take around 4 hours at Clinton Creek and then camp by the bridge over the Forty Mile; it was a couple of years before I would realise that the higher you climb away from the Forty Mile river the warmer it gets and so the easier camping becomes. The hospitality at Earl and Sandy’s is amazing, truly amazing! For a couple living so far out from Dawson, and only really accessible by snow machine in the winter, the range of food on offer was incredible. Then, to cap things off, they offered up the warmest most comfortable bed imaginable; in 2015, and every year since, it has always been a struggle to leave Clinton Creek and there have been years where the allure of the bed has encouraged me to stay a lot longer than planned, not hindered by the fact that both Earl and Sandy are great conversationalists.
As things turned out, and despite my previous skepticism, Sue and Paige had been correct about the climb up to American Summit going on for about 25 miles. It was also not just a single climb: the road twisted and turned and rolled up and down as we slowly edged towards the Summit. The dogs were still not that eager to pull up hill so every time I saw the road drop back down, and knowing that we would have to regain that height around the next bend, I cursed and got more disconsolate. I had tried different leaders coming out of Clinton Creek but still Maddie was the only dog eager to be in front and so she pretty much remained in single lead. Eventually, however, we did make the Summit just after daybreak and I was gifted with perfect sunny weather and the most spectacular views. 2015 is still, I think, the only year that I have been on American Summit in daylight, and the only year when I haven’t been battered by winds and/or snow at some point (spectacular views = above the treeline and very exposed). Despite the views and the balmy weather it was not somewhere I wished to hang around; having spent a couple of miles twisting and turning along the ridge line that marked the summit, we eventually dropped back into the treeline and began a gradual, 17 mile descent into Eagle.
Although the dogs were looking great, and despite the fact that we were heading downhill to rejoin the Yukon River, the depression that had begun in the first half of the race still enveloped me. I so badly wanted to scratch from the race but I knew that logistically and financially Eagle would not be the best place to do that: it would probably cost a minimum of $500 to fly the dogs out, probably more as I would likely have to fly them to Slaven’s and then Fairbanks, and there would be a possibility I would have to leave my sled behind until the summer. Although I really did not want to think about it at this stage, we were still due to run Iditarod a few weeks after finishing the Quest (whenever that may be) and the sled was going to be kind of required equipment. I was extremely down when we finally pulled up in front of the old school house in Eagle that served as the checkpoint, but my mood lifted somewhat when I saw that good friend Fabian Schmitz who was there as a race judge. As I hooked down to sign in and do the gear check, Fabian gave me a hug and asked how things were going. He then announced that there was a plane waiting to take him to Fairbanks and so he would see me later. I asked why the race official was leaving when I was only just arriving, I was convinced that I must be being withdrawn from the race for being too slow (it is funny how minutes before I wanted more than anything to scratch from the race and now I was desperate to stay in the race). Fabian tried to reassure me that I was not going to be withdrawn and when he could see his words were having little effect he told me he would have the Race Marshall, Doug Grilliot, call me as soon as possible to let me know everything was good.
As I was bedding the dogs down and feeding them I learnt that both Joar Ulsom and Cody Strathe had both left Eagle heading for Circle and then turned around, returned to Eagle, scratched and then chartered an aircraft to get their teams and sleds out. The thoughts I had had in the first half of the race returned, what right did I have to continue in the race when much better mushers than I were scratching. Still, the conviction remained that Eagle was not the place to scratch, I would do all I could to get us to Circle and, on rejoining the road system and meeting up with the handers for the first time in almost four days, scratch at that point.
Lance and Kristen were getting even further in front of me, and so despite the fact I was last and alone on the trail, nonetheless I did have the bonus that I had the entire checkpoint, and all of the volunteers, to myself – I really was waited upon and had excellent service and food. A few moments after I had got into the School and sat down to eat, the door burst open and through the icy blast a large, uniformed gentleman appeared. “Hi, I am looking for Rob Cooke, I have a warrant for his arrest!” I was aghast. “You’re Rob? I have it on good authority that you are trying to smuggle a red lantern into the US!!” Apparently this was very funny, almost everybody in the room laughed. “No seriously Rob, welcome to the US, I just need to check your passport!”.
Just before I went into the backroom of the school house to get some sleep the checkpoint phone rang. Modern amenities are not that prevalent in the old school building and the phone ringing was (and always is) a very rare occurrence. The checkpoint manager picked up the phone. As I listened to one half of the conversation I could see he kept casting somewhat worrying glances towards me – he put the pone on the desk and walked up to me. “Rob, I am sorry, the Race Marshall wants to speak to you”. So this was it, the dreaded Race Marshall phone call, I was being withdrawn. “Hi Doug”, “Hey Rob how are you doing”, “OK, look Doug are you withdrawing me?”, “What are you talking about, of course I am not withdrawing you, Fabian said you wanted me to call you! Look, keep going, the jumble ice on the … blah, blah, blah … 10 miles… blah, blah, blah…. very bad… blah, blah, blah … 30 miles … blah, blah, blah .. OK good luck, we’ll see you in Circle”. I am never one to listen to trail reports, things can change so fast, however listening in on this trail report may have been a good idea – as we would discover later. The important thing though was that I wasn’t being withdrawn – even if I still wanted to scratch.
I took my mandatory four hour rest, and a bit longer, and headed out onto the Yukon and towards Circle. The run from Eagle to Circle is about 160 miles but again it is split up nicely into three runs, about 40 miles to Trout Creek (and we sure as hell were stopping there this year) then about another 60 miles to the dog drop at Slaven’s Cabin, which would offer the next unrealistic opportunity to scratch, and then about 60 miles on to Circle. Pretty much the whole way, apart from the Beaver Ponds, is on the Yukon River. Despite it being flat, travel on the river can be perilous. At times the river is wide, extremely exposed and even on a good day there are sections where the wind howls non stop; there were also reports of really bad jumble ice between Slavens’ and Circle at mile blah, blah, blah, that lasted for blah, blah, blah miles.
Like Stepping Stone and Clinton Creek, Trout Creek is an absolutely amazing place. About 2 miles before you turn off the river and into Trout Creek you start seeing pie plates attached to lathes announcing the availability of water for dogs, food for mushers and a warm place to sleep. You pull off the river, twisting and turning on narrow trails through the bush and suddenly the trees thin out and a welcoming cabin appears right in front of you. I am not sure how he does it, considering the remoteness of the cabin and lack of reliable communications, but the owner, Mike Saga, always seems to be outside to meet teams as they come in, well in all future years he was, I was greeted by a darkened cabin. I hooked down the dogs and gave them straw and removed booties and grabbing my water bucket went inside to find the promised hot water. As I pushed open the door I was hit with a surge of escaping heat. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside I saw a hand appear from within a sleeping bag in the corner and a gruff, but mumbled voice announced: “water there, coffee over there, sleeping up there, see you in the morning” silence.
Having completed all my chores, I came back inside and hung all my gear around the woodstove to dry and foregoing the coffee clambered up the rickety stairs to see where I would sleep. What was on offer was a hard floor with a thin sleeping mat – the most comfortable hard floor and sleeping mat in the world! A few hours later I woke to bright sunlight and groggily stumbled back down the stairs, Mike was sat at the table, where Mike would always be in the future: “Coffee? Chilli?” I graciously accepted both. Mike was a one time resident of Eagle but now lives in Fairbanks. The cabin is little more than a hunting camp but every year he snow machines the 100 miles or so from Fairbanks to Trout Creek and opens up his cabin just so that Quest mushers have a warm place they can stop and get off the river – the people around the Quest are pretty amazing. Another great thing about Mike is that he doesn’t waste too many words, particularly as this was our first meeting – in future years we would often discuss politics but this year it was mostly silence: “More coffee? Looks like the wind is going to pick up, don’t hang around too long” silence. I was genuinely concerned about the wind picking up and so before long we took the death defying drops and turns to get out of Trout Creek and back onto the Yukon, heading towards Slaven’s Cabin.
There are so many high points on the Yukon Quest, even in depressing years like 2015; Slaven’s Cabin is another one of those high points. Operated by the Parks’ Service, the volunteers have collections, events, bake offs etc. all year round in order to support the dog drop. Then they give up their own time, and often on vacation, to snow machine in and stay there for the duration of the race offering amazing service and hospitality: the conversation, if you want it, is good; every volunteer always has a smile on their face; the sleeping area is warm and very comfortable and the food is, well the food is endless. The main room is dominated by a huge table covered in snacks and coffee and on the wall behind the table a huge blackboard with an extremely extensive menu. I always do my best to work down the list. It is always hard to leave Slaven’s but eventually we had to leave the hospitality behind. As we prepared to drop back onto the river race judge Bob McApline commented that the jumble ice was probably not as bad as everyone had said, everyone else had made it through OK!! Suddenly the telephone conversation in Eagle with Doug came back to me but try as I might I could not remember the ‘blah, blah, blah’, all I could remember was 10 miles and 30 miles. Oh well, how bad could jumble ice really be – the answer was very, very bad.
We hit the first of the jumble ice about 30 miles upriver of Circle and it truly was unbelievable. For the next ten miles there was no relief as we bounced from block to block, winding our way through blocks of ice that must have been over 20 feet tall. As the dogs were dancing their way through the mayhem I was wrestling with the sled, doing my absolute best not to shatter my knees or break any bones. I swore … a lot. I was astounded that the trail breakers had been able to get through this with snow machines. Almost 2 hours later we emerged from the ten miles of hell and followed a flat trail along the side of the river; then before we knew it the trail was back into the ice field, although now slightly more manageable. For the next 20 miles we crossed back and forth across the river, long periods of wrestling the sled through the ice fields followed by shorter periods of respite on the banks of the Yukon. When we eventually pulled off the river to head into Circle I spotted someone sat on a snow machine high up on the bank. As we got closer I saw that it was Mike Reitz, the head trail breaker for the Alaska side of the race, waiting and watching to make sure we made it in safely. As I went passed I commented “Great trail Mike, that was amazing”. He looked at me trying to work out if I was being sarcastic, was drunk or just plain crazy; but I really was amazed that they had done such an incredible job getting a trail through 30 miles of hell.
In Circle the race rejoins the road system and we get to meet up with our handlers once again, always a morale booster even though my attitude was still particularly black. With still over 220 miles of trail to go, and with Eagle and Rosebud Summits and Birch Creek to negotiate the desire to scratch was still very strong. For the last three to four days pretty much all I had been able to think about was getting to Circle and scratching. Lance and Kristin were long gone, it was now well over 300 miles since I had last seen another dog team. Despite the overwhelming desire to quit, after food and sleep I decided that we would cover the next 85 miles to Central and then decide what to do; Maddie was still running well in single lead and let’s face it, all that separated us from Central was Birch Creek.
For those who are apt to use the phrase ‘when hell freezes over’, let me tell you, hell freezes over every winter – hell is Birch Creek. I cannot say why exactly I have come to despise it so much: whether it is the constant twisting and turning so that every few minutes you seem to be going in opposing directions; the fact that, particularly up the creek from the canoe landing every twist and turn looks the same as the last; maybe it is because heading west it never seems to end, around every corner you think you are going to see the overland trail that leads to Central but the trail never seems to appear; or maybe it is because it is cold, colder than hell, when hell freezes over. Local knowledge would suggest that it is always at least 10C colder on Birch Creek than it is in Circle or Central, something I strongly believe to be true. This far into the race, and particularly with a dog team that is still recovering from all my missteps in the first half of the race, doing a single run to Central would be mushing suicide. We ran for just over 40 miles out of Circle and then pulled off the side of the trail to camp for a few hours. Having bedded the dogs down and got a good meal inside them, I wrapped my parka tightly around me and sat on the back of the sled to try to get some sleep. We were stopped in the middle of the creek, and the snow off the trail was too deep and banks too high for me to consider trying to collect firewood so I decided I would brave the cold. I must have dozed off briefly but then, all of a sudden I was awake … and cold, so bitterly cold. Suddenly I was convinced I was going to die, I was so cold. Whether still half asleep or my brain was being frozen, I started to get into a panic; I needed to move, we needed to get moving or I was going to die. I forced myself to look at my watch. As far as I could tell we had only been stopped for a little under two hours, there was no way I could get the dogs up now, we would never make it to Central. I started running, I ran back down the trail, turned and ran back to the sled; I jumped up and down, ran back down the trail, turned and ran back – the dogs did not bat an eyelid, they had learnt to ignore my insane moments long ago. Eventually my circulation began to improve and some degree of warmth returned, certainly enough so that I thought I have staved off death for the time being. I settled back onto my seat, this time put my parka on properly, pulled the hood up and zipped it up fully and shrinking as far into my parka as I could go, I rested my head on the handlebar and for the next 1 ½ hours did my best not to die.
Having left Birch Creek behind us (I resolved that this would be for the very last time in my life EVER) we very slowly ambled across the swamps and lakes and towards the airport that marked the turning onto the road leading the final ten miles into Central. Our progress was so laboured that I knew we would have to scratch in Central, Maddie was doing an incredible job in lead, but everybody else was just following.
In Central I scowled as best I could at anyone who came near me, media and the PR team included, I sorted out the dogs silently, ate and tried to get some sleep. If I didn’t scratch now, we had the slightly daunting task of trying to climb the steep part of Eagle with a dog team that was not at all keen about going up hills let alone mountains. I am not sure if it was the sadistic part of me, my belligerence or the egotist who didn’t want to be seen to walk away perhaps scared of Eagle Summit but we decided we would continue in the race, at least as far as Mile 101, and then decide if we would scratch or not. The ascent of the Summit was not as ‘easy’ as it would appear to be in 2017, nor as comical as 2015 but considering the mental condition of the musher and the rest of the team, with a bit if pushing and hauling we made it up and over. The run off into 101 was probably more challenging as there was very little snow in places and a couple of times we lost the trail but we were into the penultimate checkpoint and less than 140 miles to the finish line.
Maddie had now been in lead since before Scroggie Creek, over 500 miles, most of it in single lead; if it hadn’t been for her we would likely have scratched in Scroggie and would certainly never have left Dawson. As we left 101 to head to Rosebud she seemed, understandably, mentally very tired, she kept trying to pull the team off the trail and onto the road and our speeds were getting pretty slow. I thought I would take a risk and see if Psycho and Nutter were up for leading. Maybe they knew where we were from two years previous, maybe the example their sister had been showing for the last week or so shamed them into activity, but they immediately took up the challenge, our speed picked up and we had a relatively uneventful run over Rosebud and into Two Rivers Checkpoint. As with the previous 4 checkpoints Two Rivers was a lonely place in terms of other teams but very big on hospitality; everyone wanted to chat, to cheer me up, keep us going. I was still far from convinced that we were going to finish the race; it is around 80 miles to the finish line from the checkpoint, and it is not particularly challenging terrain, but still, 80 miles with a tired and demotivated team is a long way. We left at around 1am and after a very long night, daybreak saw us on the Chena River and re-entering civilisation. Military families on Fort Wainwright came out to cheer us on, people appeared on the bridges across the river to shout goodwill messages: I was amazed that anyone cared that we were finally going to drag our arses across the finish line, in a very embarrassing and slow last place. As we edged along the river and I sensed we were approaching the downtown area, I saw movement under a bridge up ahead and as we neared the bridge a blue parka emerged out of the gloom. As we got closer an arm was thrust out and in the hand a cup of coffee. Having just finished as rookie of the year, he should have been sound asleep, eating or drinking, or even all three, but Damon Tedford had come out onto the river to bring me a cup of ‘coffee’ and welcome me to Fairbanks. After 11 + days on the trail the taste was unbelievable, we exchanged brief pleasantries as I glided past and we continued on our way. The ‘coffee’ really did taste good. And then there it was – the finish chute. I could feel the tears welling up; the mental and physical effort it had taken to get this far began to release. I finished the coffee and tossed the cup into my sled bag and tried to put on a brave face. As we crossed the finish line there were hugs all round. I was absolutely amazed to see so many people there, and then slowly I realised that a lot of the people in the finish chute were mushers; in fact every Canadian musher who had finished the race that year had come down to see us finish. After being interviewed by another hero of mine, Brian O’Donoghue, he of lesbian lead dog fame, a plastic cup was thrust into my hand and Bill McDonald waved a bottle of Bombay Sapphire under my nose. It turned out that Damon’s coffee had been more Irish than coffee and after adding the gin into the mix, my slurred speech during the interviews was not all related to sleep deprivation.
The main photograph that captures that finish shows me hugging Nutter and Psycho, but whilst all the dogs that year were heroes it was Maddie who we were deeply indebted to for getting us to the finish line; she was, is and always will be my special girl. Maddie would take 2016 off so she could look after her puppies and this time, when things started to unravel only 12 miles from Dawson, she wasn’t there to save the day; but that is a whole other story.
