YQ: Fourth Into Eagle

It’s 12.30am Wednesday AK time

Allen and his 14 team mates have just pulled into Eagle checkpoint at 12:15am. The official run time says 37 hours, 30 minutes from Circle, including the two rests they took on the trail – roughly 6.5 hours in Slaven’s and about 5 hours at Trout Creek.

The weather has warmed considerably at -12F in Eagle currently. Brent and Cody reported wind, blown in trails and trail breaking, making it a bit of a slog through from Trout Creek. On arrival Allen said “it’s hard to tell where to go, the trail has been blown over. So you see a marker, you can kind of guess where the trail was. If you don’t guess right, you fall through into the deep snow of the wind drift.”

Every team has a mandatory FOUR hour stop in Eagle and sounds like they will all thoroughly enjoy the rest. (Thanks Becky for pointing out the mandatory rest here was actually four hours and not six as previously written)

Eagle village is very remote so the volunteers and vets fly in and join the locals in supporting the teams. Handlers aren’t able to assist teams there. In other checkpoints the handler crews clean up the camp spots when their teams leave, and gather up all the returned gear such as booties, dog jackets and all other reusable equipment. In Eagle the mushers need to post a return bag home through the USPS, while volunteers clear the camp spots.

While Allen and his team were travelling to Eagle and Karolyn and her team were finishing the YQ300, Aliy and Bridgett (and their mystery guest) were travelling through to Dawson. They were able to send through a few pics from a late lunch break at Braeburn Lodge. Braeburn is the final checkpoint in the Quest so they will retrace their steps in a few days time. At Braeburn they chatted with owners Steve and Lee and petted Silver, Blue, Fuzz, and Obie. They were their ‘Welcome to the Yukon’ crew.

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Bridgett said they saw lynx, moose, wild horses, and coyote on the trip over. Yes, I did say ‘wild horses’. There is a herd of horses that live around the Takhini area and it’s always such a treat to see them as, in my experience they are pretty elusive. I feel like that is a good omen.

Aliy and Bridgett have arrived into Dawson and will get a good night sleep tonight before getting up early to set up dog camp. Hollywood (the dog truck) was packed to the gunnels with equipment for camp including the biggest tarpaulin I’ve ever seen, a set of wooden 2x4s and meters of rope to build a frame, and extra straw bales to make the dogs a warm and comfy spot for 36 hours. A number of drop bags were sent over to Dawson before the race that included three 40lb bags of kibble, beef, poultry skins, salmon and BLT (beef, liver, tripe) snacks plus bags of fat balls, lovingly handmade in advance using an ice cream scoop. They also have an arctic oven tent with them complete with a log burner, cot and sleeping bag for whichever handler is stationed over at camp. We don’t leave the dogs alone while they are in Dawson so we need to make camp comfortable for dogs and humans.

They are sure to send through some pics tomorrow.