Yukon Quest 2011 – Day 4

The original “quest” in the Yukon was the search for deposits of placer gold in the waterways. Someone is going to “find” four ounces of placer gold if they are the first team into Dawson. Everyone “discovers” a 36-hour break from the trail to catch up on their sleep, personal hygiene, and laundry. They’ll need it because the toughest part of the trail is ahead with the worst climbs and normally coldest temperatures on the Quest.

All of the teams are on the trail between Pelly Crossing and Dawson, a stretch of over 200 miles, so position reports beyond yesterday’s are pretty meaningless until they starting coming into Dawson. The climb up Solomon’s Dome isn’t that bad, but the descent to Dawson can be tricky, and the temperatures really start to drop on the other side.

The Fairbanks Daily News Miner has a nice picture of the Aurora Borealis over Braeburn, which has been providing more light at night than the crescent moon.

Update at 4PM: Apparently there have been some computer problems and nothing is coming out of Scroggie Creek. Hugh Neff’s GPS tracker is out of whack and hasn’t been reporting his position for about 14 hours. The race is going through an area of hills and mountains, so communications, other than satellite phones, is fairly nonexistent. [I wonder if I could get Al Jazeera interested in sled dog racing? They seem to be able to deal with these kinds of problems.]

Ken Anderson made it to Dawson with two dogs riding in the sled. The vets are saying that they are seeing a lot of “wrist” injuries, probably from ice chunks on the rivers that have thawed and refrozen.

Finally –

At Dawson
1 Hugh Neff (8)
2 Hans Gatt (13) +3 hours 1 minute
3 Ken Anderson (18)
4 Brent Sass (22)

Beyond Pelly Crossing
5 Sebastian Schnuelle (11)
6 Wade Marrs (15)^I
7 Dallas Seavey (3)^I
8 Allen Moore (24)^I
9 Dan Kaduce (10)
10 Kelley Griffin (1)
11 Joshua Cadzow (16)
12 Michelle Phillips (4)
13 Jodi Bailey (17)^R
14 David Dalton (23)
15 Mike Ellis (5)
16 Johannes Rygh (6)^R
17 Clint Warnke (25)^I
18 Tamara Rose (12)^I
19 Jerry Joinson (21)^R
20 Didier Moggia (7)
21 Hank DeBruin (19)^I
22 Kyla Durham (14)^R
23 Christine Roalofs (9)^R

The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Yukon Quest, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, the small “I” indicates a Quest rookie who has competed in the Iditarod, and the small “R” indicates a total rookie.

Note: This post will be updated during the day, and the map changed on all posts to reflect the current situation.

All posts on the Yukon Quest can be seen by selecting “Yukon Quest” from the Category box on the right sidebar.