On the Yukon Quest trail

Posted On February 15, 2010

The lead teams in the Yukon Quest will cross the finish line in downtown Whitehorse in a few hours, and I hope to be down there with my camera. Yesterday I volunteered to take 3 checkpoint volunteers up to Carmacks and Pelly Crossing, and the photos below are from that trip.

I know there’s a big sporting event going on in Vancouver, but I’m just not interested. The Quest is my style – a shoe-string budget, no glitz, no crowds and no exorbitant costs to watch.

At the Carmacks checkpoint I dropped off a woman from Australia and a guy from (I think) Germany, then Patrick from Perth Australia and I were off to Pelly. Just north of Five Finger Rapids we came across this scene:

I stopped, of course. These 3 guys from Kelowna (they’re from China, going to College in Kelowna) had lost control of the car on this icy, descending corner about 5 minutes before. While they seemed to think that somehow the 5 of us could push it back onto the road, I drove one of them the 25km back to Carmacks and found him a tow truck. The fellow who came with us said that they were doing 120km/h when the accident happened – 120km/h on an icy road in a 2-wheel-drive car you have no experience with. I wish that suicidal people would stay home. I stopped back at the wreck just long enough to tell them that the truck would be a half hour or so, and that there was no way that the car was going to be driveable as they thought.

Okay, back on course for Pelly! Within a few minutes of arriving, Patrick was hard at work, helping a local Mountie get stuff positioned for the next musher in.

I decided to go down the river to watch Josh Cadzow (a 22-year-old from Fort Yukon, Alaska) approach.

Here comes Josh up the Pelly River. Although it looks cold, the temperature was an amazing -13°C (that’s +9°F).

A little added push by Josh eases the climb up from the river.

The first order of business is a high-energy snack for the athletes.

Then some fresh straw to get comfortable on.

Josh talks to and inspects each dog as he comes down the line and takes their booties off to dry. You’d never know that these dogs were several hundred miles into a 1,000-mile race – they were all both calm and strong, with no hint of stress or aches. While I really wanted some close-up photos of the dogs, I forced myself to stay well away so they could rest.

There was nobody at Pelly Crossing wanting to go back to the city, so I headed south by myself. This is the North Klondike Highway near Minto.

Looking down the Yukon River at Yukon Crossing, a difficult place for the river steamers a century ago due to the many islands and low water at this bend.

Five Finger Rapids, a legendary spot on the river, where a winch was installed to haul upriver steamers through the fast, rough, narrow channel.

I stopped for a few minutes at the Carmacks checkpoint, but it was very quiet there. For many residents, the frozen Yukon River makes getting to town a short walk instead of a 2-mile drive via the highway bridge as it is during the summer.