Guiding another Yukon Quest sled dog race tour
On Wednesday, January 30th, I began a 12-day tour with a group, focussed on the Yukon Quest sled dog race. I’m a few days behind (I’m writing this in Haines, on Day 6 of the tour), but I’ll try to catch up over the next couple of days.
I had a lot of preparations to get ready for the group’s arrival. The first step was picking up a 15-passenger Ford Transit van from Driving Force. Once it was home, I stuck my car in the garage for a 12-day rest.
As I was back in town, I saw dump trucks bringing snow to the Yukon Quest dog yard area. We’ve had very little snow this winter (so far), and it has caused some problems for the Quest.
Once I picked up the trailer we use for luggage, I went to the Yukon Transportation Museum for a photo. That DC-3, CF-CPY, is known as “The World’s Largest Weather Vane“.
I was at the airport for the group’s 17:05 arrival on Air Canada. I could see on my flight tracker that the aircraft was at Whitehorse, but they wouldn’t land. After about half an hour, they went to Fort St. John for fuel, stayed there for a while in case the weather improved at Whitehorse, then returned to Vancouver. The short version of a long story is that my people were stuck in Vancouver, and there was no indication when they might be able to get to Whitehorse.
One member of my group had come in early, so she and I began the tour, starting with the Meet the Mushers event that evening. It’s always a high-energy event, and provides great people-watching 🙂
The next day, Thursday, I showed Lori around Whitehorse, then that night, Cathy and 3 friends joined us at the Yukon Quest Start & Draw Banquet.
The banquet is where you really get to know a bit about the mushers – to see each one on stage as they draw their bib and starting position, and tell a bit about themselves.
As always, the Yukon Convention Centre was packed for the event. We left after the final bib was drawn, but I expect that the party went on for quite some time.
The silent auction fundraiser had a large number of items, the most impressive of which was this amazing glass sled dog team donated by Lumel Studios. The minimum bid was $2,500, and it sold, though I didn’t see the final price.It was one of the artists at Lumel that created “glass Monty” for me 2 years ago, with some of Monty’s cremation ashes in it.
Day 3 is always one of the highlights of the tour – mushing on Lake Laberge.
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