Spell of the Yukon...Quest.

If you'd asked me four years ago where I'd be right now I'm really not sure what I would have said.

I didn't quite foresee being at the start of the race, driving the tag along sled behind Hugh, carrying the Quest Guest.

Nor did I foresee being at the finish line in Whitehorse holding the gangline of the winning team while Nicole fed them steaks.

The 2016 Yukon Quest was my first time handling for a musher, on any race at all, ever.

"Talk about trial by fire." I was told by one long time Quest volunteer on the American side. "At least it's not a cold year, so there's that." He said.

I was at the first checkpoint of Two Rivers.

A glitch in the trackers had Joanna and I there entirely too early but it gave me time as a new handler to sit back and watch the checkpoint procedures unfold. Especially since I'd missed a majority of the Handler's meeting.

Hugh told me it started at eleven o'clock.

It started at ten. I was there at ten thirty-five.

Hugh and several other veteran thousand mile teams rested for four hours or so a few miles from the Two Rivers checkpoint. As those teams began to blow through the checkpoint I began to see why.

In another hour the dog lot would be slammed with YQ300 teams. They were already starting to pile up. Rest would be hard to come by in such a busy place.

Since Hugh blew through that checkpoint all Joanna and I really had to do was pick up his drop bags; supplies he wouldn't need.

Back in Fairbanks by about midnight I picked up Hugh's truck at the hotel where we left it after the start of the race.

Next item on the agenda was to pick up Nicole, who had just finished the Denali Doubles race in 5^th place with Paul Gebhart that morning. Having just come off a big race she was spent. She crawled into the backseat of the truck and crashed out while I felt my way to Mile 101 under the dim glow of Hugh's crappy headlights.

Hugh beat us to 101 by at least 20 minutes.

A three hour nap in the truck was in our very near future. I had been awake for 21 hours and road tired is a special kind of tired. The strain on the eyes is bad enough as it is, let alone with dim headlights.

It was about -18F and a poorly remedied broken section of the rear windshield allowed a wicked draft to drain the heat from the truck whenever it was off for too long.

Too warm. Turn the truck off.

Too cold. Turn the truck on.

Too warm.

Too cold.

Is there exhaust in the cab? I think there's exhaust in the cab...

By the time Hugh was back on the trail I was eager to clean up his camp and get down the road. Two hours sleep is plenty. Was that sleep? Did I sleep? Maybe?

Whatever.

Mile 101

We made the drive over Eagle Summit in the morning, the mountains bathed in the rosy glow of a cold sunrise.

I'd been over Eagle summit many times in the summer but it's never quite so beautiful as it is cloaked in snow and painted with the many hues of a February sunrise.

I have a love of mountains. They call me to them but I don't get to spend nearly as much time in them as I would like to...

Seeing that alone was worth every missed minute of sleep.

Sleep when you're dead.

Central wasn't much warmer. It was about -20F when we crossed Birch Creek, fog rising from unseen overflow. As the sun rose the temp climbed to about -5F.

This checkpoint was the first one I'd been to where there weren't a bunch of Quest volunteers standing around waiting to guide mushers into the dog lot. Nicole sprinted over to the chute to help Hugh when he came in. They obviously needed more help guiding the team in but my feet seemed glued to the ground as my tired brain struggled to recall race rules. I didn't want to screw up his run by making a bonehead move.

Hugh at Central

Afterward I mentioned feeling like an idiot for not helping. Nicole informed me that it was okay because only one of us were allowed in the dog lot at a time when the team was present.

After Hugh came into Central we ate lunch and I was instructed to go take a nap.

Five below is a much more tolerable napping temperature.

I hadn't been napping for long when the door to the truck popped open and there stood Hugh and the race marshal.

"Just so you know you guys didn't put enough dog coats in my sled bag so I'm being fined a hundred bucks."

"What do you mean 'you guys'?" I mumbled. I wasn't the one he assigned that job to...

It's your race. It's mandatory gear, I thought to myself. How about packing your own sled bag?

Nicole cleaned up Hugh's camp when he left, then woke me up to drive some more.

By the time we reached Circle it was dark again.

I don't remember much from Circle. I don't remember how long Hugh stayed there. I remember Nicole led him into the chute, probably led him out again, and cleaned up his camp. I only really remember being woken up to drive back to Fairbanks again.

Ahh. Sleep deprivation and memory lapses...The spice of life. Right?

Right.

We made good time driving back to Fairbanks in the daylight. Better time than driving by braille...

We didn't spend much time in Fairbanks. Just long enough to pick up a ton of Chinese food to take to Dawson.

Hugh's dog trailer was in my driveway out in North Pole. I had it dropped off there after the race so it would be less of a headache to retrieve on the way back through. There were some loose nuts and bolts on the thing so I had it gone through and made sure it was safe to make the trip. A padlock was added to it too, as there was no hitch pin.

It was time to make the big run to Dawson. I figured it would take us about 22 hours to drive from Circle to Dawson.

I have no idea how long it took...

Nicole drove from Fairbanks to Tok.

Before leaving Fairbanks we'd heard Jessie Holmes had won the YQ 300. Nicole and I were ecstatic for him as we passed Moose Creek.

We'd been watching Jessie clean sweep every checkpoint in first place the whole race, running and resting out front with the YQ1000 mile racers. At the end Aily Zirkle was creeping up on him with her larger team and better speeds. She was trying to close that gap...

I made a facebook post right about then, joking that he'd have to arm-wrestle her for it...

Jessie took it home.

In Tok our task was to reorganize the truck, locate rabies vaccination certificates, and pick up four other dogs to deliver to Tamra so they could be run in preparation for Iditarod.

It was -15F in Tok, but hardly noticeable. We had our hustle on.

Having everything in order for our border crossing, we set back on the road towards Whitehorse. I crawled in the backseat to nap for a while.

About 35 miles from the American border crossing Nicole stops the truck, startling me awake.

"What's up? What's wrong?" I ask deliriously.

"Someone is in trouble, they're waving us down."

It's probably about one in the morning. Pitch dark. Fifteen below.

I watch Nicole's headlamp bobble over to what appears to be a wreck. I can't really see though. A few minutes later Nicole comes back to the truck carrying this little fat, cold, Shitzhu.

"We need to take this lady to the border station. She's in a bad way."

The woman had rolled her vehicle. Her rear windows were busted out and her stuff was scattered all over the roadside and in the ditch though she'd managed to gather up a few important things. She said her name was Chi...something...

We can't remember so we referred to her as "Chi Chi Rodruguez" for the whole trip.

Chi Chi was a little in shock. She'd been on the side of the road in fifteen below for an hour or so, without the right gear. She was cold, dehydrated, and had a bit of a bump on her head. She said she'd had the flu for five days and hadn't been able to keep anything down. She was driving up from Ohio by herself to live with her step sister in Kenai after losing all her children and her husband in unrelated incidents.

She chugged two bottles of water and was overjoyed to be offered a cigarette.

"Oh thank GOD!"

She was feeling pretty alone. We tried to talk up her strength. Nicole offered suggestions as to what she might do for the night. Catch a ride to Tok? Get a hotel there? Pop into the clinic? Call a tow truck in the morning?

My job was to sleep, so I snuggled her cold dog back to warmth in the back seat.

In the entire time we spent on the roadside with her, and at the border crossing station, not another soul passed by.

We almost didn't even see the wreck. As we passed it her car battery died and the headlights flashed a dying gasp.

That woman was so lucky. I'm not sure she even realized how lucky she was.

After the border crossing I fell back to sleep (?).

Somewhere outside of Burwash my eyes snapped open to find that we had stopped. Nicole was asleep in the front seat. It was my turn to drive again.

I popped up, "Okay, where are we? Are we pointed in the right direction? No. No we're not."

"I'm really glad you're able to make that observation at this point." Nicole says. "We go that way."

"Got it."

Waking up in strange and unfamiliar territory is slightly disorienting. I hadn't been in Canada since I was about 8 years old.

As I crawled into the front seat felt as though my body was vibrating... As if I was phasing in and out of this dimension in time and space. The sensation only lasted a few seconds, but persisted the entire race almost every time I woke up from a micro-nap.

In Destruction Bay we stopped for breakfast, used the Wi-Fi to check the trackers and made sure we were still on schedule.

Destruction Bay

In Haines Junction we stop to fuel up.

And pick up our first hitchhiker...

(Yes, mom. I know.)

He was only a half bubble off. Better than a whole bubble I guess...He was a Frenchie/Newfoundlander raised native. As a result he had a pretty interesting mélange of accents.

Eh?

He'd had a misscheduled doctor's appointment in Whitehorse. He needed to be there by three and couldn't miss it or he'd have to wait another two weeks. He told us he'd suffered a bad head injury in a car accident when he was young, and couldn't read or write anymore. But he was communicative and cordial. He told us his wife made mukluks and did beadwork, and that was essentially how they made their living.

On the road.

In exchange for the ride he gave us some salmon and some decent moose jerky.

We dropped him off in Whitehorse and continued on to meet Tamra and hand off the four dogs we picked up in Tok.

After handing off the dogs we picked up another hitchhiker headed to Dawson.

He was about our age and pop-culturally aware, which made him much easier to chat with. We had a few good laughs, mostly about South ark and their depiction of Canadians.

We tried to turn that hitchhiker into our dog lot slave, but apparently we failed to make the job sound glamorous enough...He got out at Carmacks.

What? Setting up dog camp at midnight in fifteen below doesn't sound fun?

Whatever. I had fun. But like I said before...I'm a bit odd.

Dawson City, Yukon

It was a humble, no thrills camp. No fancy camping gear. No expensive arctic oven tent. It only took us about two and a half hours to set up. It would have taken less time if we'd had one big tarp instead of eight tarps of varying sizes. A couple ratchet straps would have been handy. Rope with less give would have been great... Luckily neither of us lacked the ability to improvise.

Ta Daa!

Notes for next time around...

We managed about 5 hours sleep...in real beds.

In the morning we began preparing for Hugh's arrival. Reheating Chinese food. Laying out clean clothes. Filling a thermos with hot Emergen-C. Starting a fire at the dog camp.

It had warmed up significantly in the night and we awoke to a skiff of snow weighing down our dog tent. I set about to making adjustments and tightening rope. Wiring sticks to the ropes to space it out and keep tension.

Hugh and the dogs arrived in good spirits in 3^rd place. Vets talked about how good the dogs looked as they scanned for microchips.

The dogs did look pretty good. Except for Bodhi, who was so interested in Cohiba being in heat, he wasn't very interested in food and had a bit of diarrhea.

We picked up Boppy, one of Hugh's dropped dogs, from the race vets on our way out of camp. There had been some logistical issues with getting the other two dropped dogs, to Dawson as there was a storm between Dawson and Eagle that had mushers stalled out below the tree line, waiting for it to pass. Initially we'd been told the dogs were being flown back to Fairbanks, which had us mildly concerned, as we wouldn't be back in Fairbanks for almost two weeks. Our panic waned quickly as I remembered had two empty spots in my dog yard back home. I made a few phone calls to arrange for the possibility.

Nicole and I spent roughly 28 of that 36 hour layover on our feet. Metronidazole for Bodhi and Lester. Deep tissue massages all around...

"We approve."

The weather forecast for the week called for warm temperatures all along the trail from Dawson to Whitehorse.

Fish weather.

Fish is a great way to keep a team hydrated on a warm trail.

Hugh scored some stinkfish from Brian Wilmshurst, another veteran Yukon Quest musher who lives just outside of Dawson.

One of Brian's dogs.

Stinkfish, if memory serves me, is salmon that's been allowed to "sour". Its laid out in the open air in the fall when the temperature isn't enough to freeze the fish, but enough to keep the flies dormant and off of the fish. The fish doesn't rot. It does, however, accumulate bacteria and enzymes integral to a dogs digestive health.

The smell can also tempt finicky dogs into eating.

Hugh sets me to chopping this fish into "pieces about this size" with the dullest splitting maul...

A dull splitting maul is not a precision instrument...

As I struggle to chop this fish into uniform pieces I begin to wonder...

I'm suddenly suspicious the only reason he picked up stinkfish...was to make me chop it up.

Bodhi was only slightly more interested in the stinkfish than he was in Cohiba. He did eat some, but picked at it gingerly.

If he didn't come around better than that, he would be the next dropped dog.

The fish was cut. Dog coats and harnesses were dry. Booties were winnowed through. Any damaged ones were thrown away. Runner plastic was changed. It was almost time to get back on the trail.

Hugh's official departure time was somewhere in the wee hours after midnight.

More last minute massaging had all the dogs smelling of eucalyptus, rosemary, and a bevy of other anti-inflammatory oils. They stretched and yawned as we began to harness up.

Their drowsiness was quickly replaced with anticipation. Tails wagged and Stevie Ray babbled readiness.

"Let's go, go, go!" He barked.

The team launched in the dark, leaders wearing LED lit collars, after howling their checkpoint chorus.

They sang their way out of every checkpoint on the race. The war cry of a tightly knit unit.

Nicole and I immediately broke down the dog camp. We bagged up all the straw and set it at the edge of our campsite.

Nicole dragged a bagged up bale of good straw, the shovel, and the rake from camp. I pulled a sled loaded down with what was left of Hugh's drop bags, the dull maul, a lawn chair, and probably a few other things I don't recall...some rope I think.

At the end of my 20 hour day, that sled load of crap did its best to kick my ass. Our camp was a good quarter mile from the truck, part of the walk was slightly uphill. And 22 degrees is entirely too warm for me. Back at the truck I took off my coat and steamed and steamed.

I wouldn't have minded having the -15 temps back. I'm sure I wasn't the only one though.

It was "too warm" for much of the race.

I think that night we actually managed 6 hours of sleep.

The next morning we ate breakfast and went back to dog camp to pick up one last load. There had been no room on the sled the night before for the last bale of straw and the pile of tarps.

Someone had already picked up our bagged straw. In the daylight we scoured the camp for whatever little pieces of trash we might have missed in the dark.

A camp site that isn't cleaned to satisfaction could incur a fine for the musher.

As we pulled our last load out of the campground the Wild and Free crew was just getting around to breaking down their camp, which consisted of way more stuff.

"Why don't you drive in and load up your truck?" Horst asks.

"Rulebook doesn't say we can. It says we can only drive the truck in one time to drop off camp gear. We're done anyway."

On our way out of camp we learned we'd be able to pick up Hugh's other two dropped dogs from Eagle and Slaven's sometime after 4pm.

There was nothing wrong with the dogs. They were just young, and this was their first race. Young dogs don't typically finish their first 1000 miler. They just aren't mature enough in their conditioning.

Nicole feeding dropped dogs.

We had plenty of time to spend one more night in Dawson enjoying showers and sleeping in real beds. The run to Pelly would take the mushers a while.

Even so...Hugh beat us to Pelly by about thirty minutes.

At Pelly Crossing.

And that's where Hugh made his move, only stopping for an hour.

That's also where Bodhi was dropped, as Nicole and I anticipated would happen.

Out of Pelly we were on the lookout for the notoriously easy to pass McCabe Creek pull off.

Nicole had asked the race marshal if the pull off was marked. He grumbled an uncertain grunt and gave a shrug.

Awesome.

Super.

Thanks for the info...

We knew the road down to the farm was across from virtually the only pull off between Dawson and Carmacks. We kept our eyes peeled against the glaring sun, hoping not to miss it.

Because there's really no place to turn a dog trailer around after that...

But I thought, could have swore, there was at least one other pull off before Carmacks...

Yeah, we passed McCabe.

"Pull off!" I blurt out. But it was too late. Nicole as already over the bridge and stopped in front of the McCabe Creek farm road.

There was a sign...

It said..."Fresh pork."

Nicole wanted to try to back the trailer across the bridge and into the pull off but the bridge is on a curve in the road on a slight hill. Aside from that, we both suck at backing up short little single axle trailers.

We'd passed a lot of semi trucks that day and it wasn't a super safe place to dink around with a trailer of live cargo. So I talked her into going ahead, because I was so sure there was another pull off...somewhere.

Nicole is starting to panic a tiny bit.

As luck would have it, in about 15 miles, we found a recently plowed driveway to nowhere in the middle of a long straight stretch of road where we could see and be seen for miles in both directions. It was a much safer place to suck at backing up a trailer.

Fresh pork.

Back on track we arrive at McCabe and come to the sudden realization...we left Hugh's drop bags in Pelly crossing...

Ohhh, that sinking feeling...

The bag we'd retrieved was a drop bag from Dawson, full of garbage and other things he'd ditched from his sled...

I dropped Nicole off there at McCabe and hauled ass back to Pelly...

And hoped desperately I wouldn't pass McCabe a second time on my way back in the dark.

Luckily I had been noting the terrain.

Out of Pelly there's a lot of curvy hilly parts of road. Eventually you cross a long valley. McCabe Creek is on the far side of that valley at the foot of a particular hill that I made every effort to memorize.

Another hill forever seared into my memory.

It was dark by the time it reared up on the horizon and I strained my eyes to see it against they sky.

I pulled back into the McCabe Creek pull off just in time to see Hugh and his team run under the bridge.

He complained to me later that the dogs heard his truck and wanted to go to it.

Wild and Free pulled up just in time to give me a ride down to the farm. We were told at the handler's meeting there was no place down there to turn around a trailer, so our rig had to stay parked in the pull off.

When I dropped Nicole off there it was 22 degrees and she hadn't been wearing a coat. I was overheating so I gave her mine.

Steam rolled off me the whole walk back to the truck.

It was a beautiful night for a five degree stroll through the Yukon.

Hugh didn't stop for very long there. No dropped dogs.

On the way to Carmacks I notice...there IS another pull off, just five more miles after where Nicole and I got the truck turned around earlier...

Notes for next year...

It was a longer run to Carmacks. We beat him there by a few hours. I think we got a two hour nap before he came in. But I can't recall for certain. Best I can recall was that the food there left much to be desired...

In at Carmacks.

Hugh looked pretty tired when he came in. More tired than I'd seen him look on the whole race.

He took a shorter nap than he'd made his wake up call for and was up eating and drinking when Brent came strutting through the door with all kinds of hustle in his bustle...

Brent always blows through Carmacks. Always.

First musher to Braeburn usually has this race in the bag, provided nothing bad happens.

There's an 8 hour mandatory rest there.

As Brent blows through Hugh booties his dogs and the chase is on. We noted Brent took a half a bale of straw, signaling intent to rest on the trail...

It's at this point Nicole and I begin to see the possibilities here.

We clean up Hugh's camp, take another nap, and press on to Braeburn.

Breakfast at Braeburn was a slice of french toast as big as my head. The food at Braeburn is some of the best food along the Quest Trail, and it all comes in huge portions. Every burger and sandwich there could feed four people for two days. It's what they're famous for.

They had the biggest Reuben sandwiches I'd ever seen. My son would have been in heaven, as it's his favorite sandwich.

But Braeburn is most famous for it's huge fresh cinnamon rolls.

Hugh came into Braeburn first. Almost two hours in front of Brent.

That's a huge lead at this stage of the game.

It's at this point I begin to compile all of the video Hugh and I had been accumulating over the course of the race. I wanted to have it most of the way edited when he came across the finish line in Whitehorse so that all that would be left to do was add another clip or two of the finish, dub it over with a Hobo Jim track, and post it to facebook.

I had put in the extra effort to keep Hugh's fan base in the loop on this race. It was something that had been lacking in previous years and everyone seemed to really appreciate it.

At some point Nicole made me go to sleep. I can't even remember if I drove from there to Whitehorse or not. I think Nicole drove.

I'm pretty sure she drove the whole way from Dawson to Whitehorse, except for my run back to Pelly.

Once in Whitehorse we dragged all our stuff out of the truck up to the hotel room...

And took another nap.

Handling the Yukon Quest for the front runners amounts to two weeks of your life that are nothing but a series of naps... many not longer than three or four hours (if that) after being awake for at least twenty.

But I'm a mom. I've been exhausted for 17 years. I'm used to it.

I was never so exhausted on the Quest as I was when I was the single mother of a newborn infant...

Hugh crossed the finish line on a warm and sunny Monday afternoon to a huge crowd of spectators. It was a surreal moment. Before the race we were all figuring top three, top five. Hugh would say things like "I'm fat and old. I can't beat Brent. There's nothing wrong with third place..."

But on our way to Dawson I told Nicole...

"Hugh is every bit as good a dog musher as Brent frickin' Sass."

Old age and wisdom versus youth and cunning...or is it old age and treachery?

Hugh has forgotten more about dog mushing than I will ever know. I'm sure.

Hugh and I met in 2012. The year he first won the Quest.

After the race this year he gave me a hug and mumbled something about a good luck charm.

It does seem odd that he would win the first time I handle for him. Who would have thought?

The stars seemed to have aligned for both of us, he'd been asking me to handle for him for the past four years. Every year something would come up that kept me on the sidelines and every year Nicole would come off the trip with handler horror stories.

This year was pretty uneventful, and both of them seemed pretty grateful to have me along.

It was a cakewalk, really. People even told Nicole and I that we seemed more laid back than some of the other handler crews who appeared to be a little stressed out.

I got to put into practice a lot of things I'd learned over the years about dog care.

I also learned that everyone is waiting for me to get out there with my dogs...

I met so many awesome people along the way. Who knows what impact they'll have on my life in the future...but I'm looking forward to it, for sure.

And I think I left a little piece of my heart in the Yukon...

So I'll be back.

And one year I'll run that damn race.

Some day.