The start of the Yukon Quest 2019 sled dog race
Saturday, February 2nd was the main event that my tour guests had come to see – the start of the Yukon Quest 2019 sled dog race!
The race was scheduled to start at 11:00, but the dog yard where all the mushers and dogs ge ready was open to the public from 09:00 until 10:00, so I dropped my guests off there as it opened, with the temperature at -36°C (-33°F).
The dog yard is both exciting and interesting. There’s a whole lot of preparation needed to leave on a 1,000-mile race, and each of the 30 mushers in this year’s Quest has his/her own methods.
Here are a few of the army of volunteers that help put this race together and make it run smoothly whatever Mother Nature throws at them.
The dogs have widely-varying reactions to the activity in the dog yard. Some are excited, some bored.
Once the dog yard closed, there were still good photo ops over the low fence.
This particularly handsome team caught my eye, but I did a poor job this year of keeping track of who is who.
By the 11:00 start time, there were over 1,000 people braving the cold to see the mushers off.
Matt Hall, with starting position and bib #7, on his way to Fairbanks the hard way. Although the Yukon Quest no longer promotes itself as “the toughest sled dog race in the world”, every fan of the sport knows that it is.
Olivia Webster, starting position and bib #15, starts her first Yukon Quest.
Brian Wilmshurst, from Dawson City, has starting position and bib #16. By this point, the crowd had thinned substantially due to the cold.
Hendrik Stachnau, starting position and bib #20, has come from Germany to run his first Yukon Quest.
I had to leave before all the mushers had left, to move my van over to the spot where I would meet my guests. Somewhere in the start line crowd, my wife, Cathy, was still cheering on the mushers, but I couldn’t find her.
I don’t know what this stand was selling, but there was a long line of people waiting for it. The fire sure looked good! 🙂
One of the final teams getting ready to move to the start line.
We went for a nice warm lunch, then I drove the group out to the Takhini River to watch about a dozen teams go by. This provides a good look at the teams out in the wilderness. Cody Strathe, bib #28, appreciated the cheers.
I’m not sure who this approaching musher is – his bib number wasn’t clear.
Yukon Quest rookie Chase Tingle, bib #22, glides past the endless, silent forests…
…and then into an area fogged by snow dust and the breath of previous mushers and dogs.
Curt Perano from New Zealand, bib #29.
A final shot of Rob Cooke, bib #30, as he heads north, and then I took the group back to Whitehorse.
Over the next 2 days, while the mushers made their way towards Dawson where we’d meet them again, our tour would drive and ferry around “the Golden Circle” from Whitehorse to Skagway and Haines and back to Whitehorse.
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