2025 Yukon Quest Alaska 550

The Yukon Quest Alaska 550.. wow! What a race.. what a trail.. what absolutely incredible dogs these are! We spent 5 and a half days traveling over 500 miles of the roughest, rawest country Alaska has to offer.. and it was absolutely epic!

We left downtown Fairbanks on Feb 01, where we almost immediately busted a bolt holding the drag mat (what the musher uses to moderate the speed of the dogs and keep their speed steady) bracket to the sled. I still had one bolt holding the drag mat to the sled, but since the team had so much speed and power, I didn’t want to risk catching the drag mat on ice or other trail feature and then end up busting the other bolt and losing the whole drag mat. I decided to hinge the drag mat into its upright position, where it would not be at risk of further damage, and I would fix it at my first camp stop. This left me to use the claw brake as the only method for controlling my speed. It was an uncomfortable position to be in trying to control a 14-dog train that was fresh and full of spit and vinegar since we had just started the race. But we made it to the first checkpoint (Two Rivers), grabbed a bale of straw, and departed down the trail to our first camp spot. At about mile 55, a couple miles from where I was looking to camp, more misfortune struck as a bolt for my claw brake sheared as well. Now I had no drag mat and no claw brake.. basically I didn’t have a way to stop the team! Not at all what you want.. so I decided to pull over right away and camp at the nearest spot. This put us a couple miles short of my desired camp spot, but overall still alright because we were still set up to do the run to the second checkpoint (Mile 101) in two roughly equal runs. We had a nice first camp, and I was able to replace the bolts on both my drag mat and claw brake and we were ready to carry on!

Our second run of the race included the exciting Angel Creek “pinball” section, where we quite literally pinballed off of a couple of trees and obstacles going through, and then the famous Rosebud summit. Before we got to Rosebud, though, we encountered an unexpected obstacle.. a recently-graded road that was sheer ice! When we came onto the road, the dogs felt the ice and had good traction and took off. I had both feet on the claw brake with my entire weight and there was nothing I could do to stop the team! And the team decided to run down the middle of the road, meaning that I couldn’t get to the berm on the side to try to get a snow hook to catch. Every command I gave the dogs (“Gee-Over” or “Whoahhhhh”) only made the dogs pull harder.. we were in a pickle! And then came the trail markers indicating a hard 90-degree lefthand turn off of the road, around a snow berm, and back onto a trail. As we approached, I made the “Haw” call for a lefthand turn.. but once again this just made the dogs run faster! And the road was graded straight ahead of the dogs into a driveway.. we blew by the corner we needed to turn at and went down the driveway.. not ideal at all! I finally got the team stopped.. still on glare ice.. and was able to do a 180-degree turn with the dogs to be facing back towards where we needed to make a turn onto the trail, now a righthand “Gee” turn. The turn was just about 20 yards in front of my leaders.. I kept heavy pressure on the claw brake and slowly allowed the dogs to move ahead towards the corner and as we approached the corner I gave them the “Gee” command and they burst forward with power and energy! Only the dogs didn’t take the turn.. they insisted on running down the road, right back in the direction we had just came. We were now running in the complete wrong direction back down the middle of the road.. an even worse situation to be in! At the end of the road was another driveway, which the dogs ran right into before calming enough to be stopped. I tied the dogs off and did another 180-degree turn to face them back in the right direction down the trail. Other mushers were coming up behind me at this point and were also having difficulty turning and stopping their teams and convincing them to make the turn off of the glare-ice road. Eventually we were able to make it to the corner and this time the dogs took the turn and we were back on the trail.. after about an hour of high-stress shenanigans! From there, we cruised up Rosebud which was a big climb but fun to work with the dogs to get to the top. On the way down, the trail was a bit windblown and steep at times, meaning the brake was catching on rocks and gravel at times on our descent. We finally made it through though and into the Mile 101 checkpoint. After taking a 6 hour rest, I decided to drop Mario from my team as he was showing some residual soreness in his shoulder.

Our next challenge was Eagle Summit, a notorious mountain well-known for whiteout blizzard conditions that can make the trail difficult to find and travel. For us, the weather was favorable, and we had a nice easy climb up and then a harrowing but overall uneventful drop down the other side. We coasted down the mining roads and onto Crooked Creek. Last year (2024), Crooked Creek was full of overflow, but this year there was none present, which I was very happy about. We made it into Central, grabbed a bale of straw and other dog supplies, and a bacon cheeseburger TO-GO! from the Corner Bar there and headed out towards the next major feature of the race - Birch Creek. About 20 miles out of Central, right about where the trail meets Birch Creek, we camped out with our friend Lauro and his team. There we rested for about 6 hours and then took off at about 11pm to tackle the 55 miles of Birch Creek into the next checkpoint, Circle.

Birch Creek has a reputation for being a long, mind-numbing, and extremely cold run for the race. Lucky for us, temperatures were reasonable this year - only maybe 20 degrees below 0! Not bad.. but the run was still extremely mind-numbing. Birch Creek is an extremely meandering river, flowing back and forth across the landscape in a snaking-fashion. The trail tracks about 55 miles to cover a distance that is only about 30 miles as-the-crow-flies and seems to take forever. Our run also started at 11pm and carried into the early morning hours, when sleep deprivation really started to catch up to me. I tied myself off to the sled so that I could nod off for naps of a couple of minutes at a time. Finally, we came up to Circle. We took another 6-hr rest in Circle and loaded the sled for the long 160-mile trek ahead of us along the Yukon River. I made the decision to drop Yoshi and Oasis in Circle as they were showing signs of fatigue and I didn’t want to have to carry them in my sled for such a long stretch of the race if they lost interest in running.

The Yukon River was a feature of this year’s race that I was really looking forward to. I had never spent time on the River before and was excited to travel a section of the traditional Quest trail that I had not been on before. Our first run along the river took us from Circle to Slaven’s Cabin, a cabin managed by the National Park Service and a staple stop for mushers on the 1000-mile Quest race. This was about a 60-mile run. Along the way, we crossed a new challenge that I hadn’t faced before - jumble ice. Jumble ice forms when the River is icing over in the fall. Ice forms over the river and then the river water level drops, leaving a pocket of air underneath the ice and above the liquid water below. The water is not supporting the ice from below and so for wide expanses of the river, the weight of the ice is too much and it breaks off and falls into the water below as ice chunks ranging in size up to the size of a small car! These icebergs float down the river until they encounter an area where the ice didn’t calve. The icebergs dam up there and then freeze in place. However, the icebergs are no longer in a nice smooth conformation but rather in a jagged array. From Circle to Slaven’s Cabin, we had to cross sections of jumble ice numerous times. The trailbreakers for the race had spent many hours picking a trail through the jagged ice chunks, even using chainsaws and sledgehammers to break open trail in some sections. This was a challenging section of the trail to drive the sled through because there were ice chunks on both sides of the narrow trail and the ice was completely unforgiving if I slightly misjudged how to brake and drive around the curvy trail. But mile by mile, we made it through. And then we came around a big bend in the river into a narrow canyon and were faced with the next challenge of the race - a strong headwind! The wind in this section probably averaged about 50 mph with gusts up to 70 mph or more. Snow had fallen on the river a couple days prior, and the wind was blowing it all over the place. The trail was blown over and nearly impossible to find. There was essentially no evidence of sled tracks from the couple of teams ahead of us in the race. Instead we were trying to find and follow the skeg scratches in the river ice from the trailbreakers’ snowmachines. It was slow going, but I had Peso in single lead and he was finding the trail and was receptive to me calling him side-to-side across the ice and so we were moving upriver. Then we got into the real heavy wind! In this section of the trail, the river channel was about 200 yards wide from bank-to-bank and the trail traveled right about down the middle. But down the middle of the channel was also where the stiffest head wind was and the dogs instead wanted to run over on the far lefthand bank of the river, where the wind was slightly less strong. I could still see the trail markers over to my right in the middle of the channel and we were moving in the right direction, so we carried on. Then we had to make a hard turn to cross the river and cross through jumble ice. The wind was confusing the dogs and they were having a hard time finding the main trail through the jumble ice, so we had to pick our own way through the jumble ice. This wasn’t ideal because it meant we had to go up and over and around all these big icebergs. The sled took quite a beating.. but eventually we made it through and luckily that was the end of the blowhole and wind. From there, we cruised the last 10 miles into Slaven’s Cabin, where we were met by Park Service employees and a nice warm cabin. The food at Slaven’s Cabin was absolutely spectacular, I got a nice warm 2 hour rest in the bunk room, and the coffee was strong - I felt like a brand new man leaving Slaven’s Cabin for our next run!

The next run was also a long, 55-mile traverse. We left Slaven’s in the early morning darkness and then had the fortune to watch a gorgeous sunrise over the tall river bluffs of the mighty Yukon River. This run was mostly uneventful, and we found a nice camp spot in a slough of the river for a nice afternoon rest. The final run from this campsite into Eagle was about 55-miles as well and we left right about sunset time (5:00pm). We travelled into Eagle nice and easy as well aside from one section of glare ice where the dogs wanted to follow other team’s sled runner tracks off of the trail to Trout Creek cabin. Eventually I was able to coax the dogs back to the trail and onward we went to Eagle. I was extremely happy to reach Eagle after the 160-mile, physically- and mentally-grueling Yukon River trail. In Eagle I made the difficult decision to drop Ivory J. as she was toughening out a weird soreness in the tendons of her wrist. This left me with 10 dogs - a solid core of strength and experience - to tackle the next big section of the race - 170 miles of the Taylor Highway to the finish line in Tok.

Our first run leaving Eagle took us up and over American Summit. This was a long, slow climb to the top of the Summit. Along the way, our friend Lauro and his team came up from behind us. Over the winter, we do tours with Lauro at Rod’s Alaskan Guide Service. When Lauro passed us, I think my dog team recognized him and figured we were at another day of tours at Rod’s because my team immediately matched his team’s speed and we followed right behind him the rest of the run to our camp spot. We would run with Lauro and his team for the remainder of the race to the finish line. The Taylor Highway, as I came to learn later, is extremely hilly. The snow on the trail also was the kind that didn’t set up well and was a little loose, meaning the dogs didn’t have good traction to pull up the hills. The snow also had a sticky effect on the sled runners, keeping the sled from gliding nicely. This all meant that I had to work my tail off - pedaling, kicking, and running - to keep the team and sled moving down the trail. Lauro and I camped our teams near each other about 45 miles from Eagle. This left us with about 50 miles yet to go to reach the last checkpoint of the race - Chicken. The run to Chicken was even hill-ier than the previous run, meaning even more effort was necessary to make it there. When the team finally made it to Chicken, I was thoroughly exhausted. I also had forgotten to pack a thermos on this race. This meant that I could get water to drink for myself at checkpoints and at camp spots, but that I didn’t have a method to carry it with me when I got on the runners and we took off. This left me with long stretches, especially on the Taylor Hgwy, without water, and with the exercise I was doing, I was starting to get dehydrated. I never plan to forget a thermos again! The checkpoint volunteers in Chicken cooked me up some chicken nuggets and chicken tenders, which hit the spot, and I took a nice nap to prep for the last run of the race to the finish line.

Lauro’s and my team travelled together on the 75-mile run to the finish line in Tok. At times, my team would be the front team and at other times, Lauro’s team would go out front. We made it up over the last summit of the race, Mt. Fairplay, and from there on the snow changed and the trail really improved. The team started to run easier and faster, which is always a big mental boost at the end of a long race like this. Twenty miles from the finish, the trail finally turned off of the Taylor Highway. The trail had a couple of big climbs from there until we got to the Tanana River crossing - about 5 miles from the finish. At this point, Lauro and I stopped our teams and put our bibs on and celebrated the moment. We were both exhausted but extremely excited to be approaching the finish. From there, Lauro’s team led in to the finish line, where he finished in 3rd place and I right behind him in 4th place.

The challenges never ceased throughout the race. Every run was more difficult than the one before. From tackling Rosebud and Eagle Summit back-to-back to the endless miles on Birch Creek to the piles of jumble ice to cross on the Yukon River to the long slow climbs of the Taylor Highway, this was the coolest mushing I’ve ever done with the dogs! There were many beautiful sights along the way and amazing people all throughout. This is the longest race I’ve completed yet, and it was a true test of my dog care, woodsman-ship, and team management skills.

Dogs: Peso, Lefty, Badger, Belle, Jackson, Marley, Pancho, Hoodoo, *Mario, *Yoshi, *Ivory J, Soda, *Oasis, Husker

Handlers: Deke and Eric

Start date: Feb 01, 2025 at 11:00am

Finish date: Feb 06, 2025 at 11:34pm

Total run time: 5d,12h,34m

*= Dog dropped from team throughout race