The 2010 Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race starts in Fairbanks on Saturday, Feb. 6, with 24 teams heading for the city of Whitehorse, in Canada's Yukon Territory. The 1,000-mile trail follows the Yukon River, the old highway of the North, retracing the route the prospectors followed to the Klondike during the 1898 gold rush. The checkpoints are like echoes of Alaska-Yukon history: Central, Circle City, Eagle, Dawson City, Pelly Crossing, McCabe Creek, Carmacks... The Yukon Quest is known as the toughest sled dog race on Earth, crossing four mountain summits, including the 4,000-foot King Solomon's Dome, and with temperatures often dropping beyond 50 below. It's a grueling test of man and dog,
There's an impressive field of mushers entered, including the four-time Yukon Quest champion and reigning Iditarod champion, Lance Mackey; the three-time Quest champion Hans Gatt; the first place finisher in the first Quest in 1984, Sonny Lindner; last year's second place finisher, Hugh Neff; and the 2008 second place finisher, Ken Anderson. The 2009 champion, Sebastian Schnuelle, who set a new race record with his run of 9 days, 23 hours, and 20 minutes, is not running this year's Yukon Quest, but is entered in this year's Iditarod, which starts March 6 in Anchorage.
The international award winning film by Becky Bristow, "Dog Gone Addiction," follows three women as they test their personal limits in the 2007 Yukon Quest, One of those women, Kelley Griffin of Wasilla, is running again this year. According to the musher profiles, the only musher from the Lower 48 is Katie Davis, from Olney, Mont.; but then there's Pierre-Antoine Heritier of Switzerland and two Belgian mushers, Sam Deltour and Dries Jacobs. The rest of the mushers are from Alaska and the Yukon, with the exception of Bart De Marie, of Christopher Lake, Saskatchewan, who, like Dries and Sam, was born in Belgium. Every one of the mushers entered in this year's race has an interesting story, and the musher profiles are a great introduction to them.
The 2010 Yukon Quest calendar of events provides details on fun such as the Start and Draw Banquet on Wednesday evening. On Thursday evening the free pre-race Meet the Mushers gathering offers a relaxed evening with the mushers, sponsors, volunteers and fans, and an opportunity to hear stories from the trail and get autographs from this year's mushers. Other features of interest on the Quest site include the history of the Yukon Quest, Alaska-Yukon visitor information, a section providing information about the Yukon Quest sled dogs, information about the shorter Yukon Quest 300 and the Junior Yukon Quest, and plenty of photos, video and audio of past races and the current racers ready for the Saturday morning start!
Helen Hegener is an author and a documentary filmmaker specializing in long distance sled dog races and the men, women and dogs who run them. Learn more at Northern Light Media.
Silent film clip of men in Seward, Alaska, pouring barrels of alcohol into the street and breaking bottles of liquor during Prohibition. From the Alaska Film Archives.
