Gerry Willomitzer's
Blackjack Racing Kennel
March 25, 2005
Yukon Quest Pt. 1 - Whitehorse to Pelly Crossing
READER please note: This is a first hand acount of my 2005 Yukon Quest. I've done it while my memories were still fresh. I could have gone more into detail, but barely had enough time to put down what you see. There was no editing or proof reading. This text is as raw as the race itself.
Before every Yukon Quest mushers must undergo a series of skill testing questions and tasks, like "Can you come up with $1250 entry fee?", or "Can you fill in an entry form?", or "Can you keep you spouse happy even though you are barely at home and just playing with a bunch of dogs all winter while she is white-knuckling it at work?" The most difficult of all of them is: "Can you sign 190 posters in 1 hour?" All 21 mushers could (which makes 3990 signatures in one hour, a bit more than one per second - I am a stats freak).
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| Myself, Catherine Pinard, and Peter Ledwidge signing posters | Sebastian Schnuelle get dizzy... | ...very dizzy. |
I started in 21st position, the last starter of the 2005
Yukon Quest. Downtown Whitehorse was busy that February 13, sunny, and humming with
activity. I could barely get everything ready because too many people I knew came over to
my truck to wish me luck. My truck was parked right in front of the Department of Tourism,
my employeer. It seemed like they wanted me to think of my job as long as possible.
Johnny pulled really hard when he got put into the team and snapped one of the spreaders
in the gangline. Not a big deal, I had hockey tape handy and taped it up right at the
start line. I wish I could have taped my other broken sled part (see Dawson to Circle
section) just as easily.
The first 100 miles lead to Steve Watson's Braeburn Lodge, home of the world's largest cinnamon buns. My plan was to run there in two runs of equal length, but as I started last all good camp spots around halfway were taken up, so I had to push a bit further than I wanted. I ran until 7 at night, pulled over and camped: Snack the dogs with a piece of fat or fish, take off their booties and unhook their tug lines, bring out straw and have the cooker going before all that to melt snow for dog water. Check all their feet and joints, apply foot ointment and massage sore spots. Put dog coats on them. After an hour latest feed. Done. This routine would be repeated roughly 20 times, until we reached Fairbanks 11 1/2 days later.
The first camp-out turned out to be the coldest, at probably -30 degrees. I had a good campfire going and because I was too awake still did not use my sleeping bag. At 10:15 PM I started getting ready to leave: Collect the dog coats, put booties on, hook-up the tugs, and go. I got into Braeburn around 2:30 AM, just as I had planned. After a 5 hour rest which included breakfast in the lodge and a 2 hour nap in a bed that Hugh Neff just had left after his nap I was off at 7 AM, and left the noise of the checkpoint behind me.
The way over to Carmacks leads across the Chain Lakes, a series of small and medium-sized lakes separated by portages through mature spruce forest, some of which had burned in the 2004 fires. I caught up to Dave Dalton, William Kleedehn, Hugh Neff, and Lance Mackey, all of whom were to become "players" in the 2005 Quest. At this point we were just trading positions back and forth, snacking, replacing booties, and eventually William and I decided to camp just south of Mandana Lake for the afternoon. It was sunny, warm, some open water was near by. We went through the dog care routine, our teams lined up behind each other in a ski-doo track next of the trail. Sebastian Schnuelle camped 100 yards behind us, and joined us for a little BS session. I caught two hours of sleep in my down bag, and by 5:30 PM we were "outta there". Teams were leaving all around us, including people I would hardly see again in this race: John Schandelmeier, Ed Hopkins, and Bruno Baureis.
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| Sebastian Schnuelle watches as William Kleedehn feeds his dogs. | Looking back at Mandana Lake and Bruno Baureis, Ed Hopkins and William Kleedehn |
After Mandana the trail drops down through some dense bush to the Yukon River, and then is on and off the river to Carmacks. I was ahead of William at that point, and passed Jon Little and Sebastian Schnuelle. Cassius slammed into the frozen riverbank when the trail made a sharp turn off the ice into the bush, but continued without changing his gait, so I was not too concerned. A few more hairy spots followed, 90 degree turns in the bush, followed immediately by almost vertical 30 foot drops. Basically it looked like your team was gone, there was nothing ahead of the sled for a split second, then you found yourself "sky-diving" behind your team, and with some luck miracuously continued on through the bush. I was thinking about William and his one bad leg.
We rolled into Carmacks with good speed, and I still had to slow the team down because we were going a bit too fast. Stacy, Lara and DH, my official stats guru and inofficial president of my even more inofficial fanclub were on the trail just outside of the village and cheered me on. We went up the ramp to the checkpoint. Sam Perrino's and Dave's teams were resting, but the schedule William had worked out and shared with me before the race called for going through. I wanted to do this as quick as possible, to avoid having Jon catch up to us here at the checkpoint. I must have watched too may Iditarod videos, because I thought I could just roar in there, sign in, ask for my number 1 bag and straw, sign out and be on my way in 2 minutes. Unfortunatelly the volunteers wanted to park me next to the two resting teams, which I refused to do, as I did not want the dogs to get the idea they could rest on straw here. The vets checked out Cassius, and found nothing. He finished the race, so the accident must have looked worse than it was. I ran over to fill up my alcohol container (with methanol for the cooker). Volunteers delivered my number 1 bag and a bail of straw, half of which I strapped onto my sled to haul to the next rest stop. I had cameras and microphones in my face, and spectators trying to talk to me. All I wanted was to go. Just as we were going to swing the team around to the out-trail someone parked Jon's team right across that trail! I was furious, and told race judge Curtis Erhart that I was going to buy property and build a place here if I had to stay any longer. Eventually someone moved Jon's team up, I signed out and was gone. William left a few minutes behind me.
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| Volunteers check my mandatory gear in Carmacks | Leaving Carmacks with 1/2 a bail of straw on the sled | My sleeping bag next to my wheel dogs Cassius and Mohammed, ready for a two hour nap |
From Carmacks the trail follows Freegold Road for about 13
miles. I stopped at the first hill to quickly repack my sled. William passed me there. A
bit later Rainbow stopped pulling, and I wondered if she got thoughts of camping in
Carmacks. She ran without necklining, and had no injury so I left her in the team. After
about 1 1/2 hours the Quest trail left the road, and jumped on the old Dawson Trail (or
Overland Trail). Not too far down the trail William had pulled over to camp, it was 10:45
PM. Without too much chatting we took care of our dogs. 30 minutes later I saw Jon
Little's light approaching, and he stopped next to me: "I just wanted to see what you
were doing" he said with an innocent tone in his voice. Think of your local part-time
newspaper reporter, who is hungry for a story and strolls over to your place, trying to
come across casually (but is determined to find something (anything!) out to put on
paper). You are just fixing your lawn-mower and even though this is an obviously low-key
event he goes: "Oh, I just came over to see what you were doing, this is really
interesting, maybe I could write a little story about you and your lawn-mower in the
paper." That's kind of how it sounded.
As you might know Jon actually is a journalist, and every year he follows the Iditarod for
www.cabelasiditarod.com. Jon now knew what we were doing and camped 50 yards down the
trail. I did not talk to him then because I was busy with my dogs. I was still wondering
if the mess in Carmacks had actually resulted in him following us. Jon and I ended up
running together for part of the way between Fortymile and Circle, and he was one of the
most pleasant guys to have around on the trail. But right here I was not too amused to see
him. On the other hand this was so early in the race that it hardly mattered.
I got another 2 hours of sleep in my sleeping bag, and an unidentified team silently glid by while I was snoozing. I saw the dogs' feet and the bottom half of the sled go by through the 4 inch air hole I had in front of my face, at ground level right next to the trail. At 3 AM we (William and I, and "coincidentally" also Jon) broke camp and were on our way by 4. I quickly passed Jon, who ran more conservatively here than I did. The trail rolls through Yukon Crossing, an old roadhouse from the heydays of the Overland Trail (1903 - 1930s), and is on the Yukon a few times as well. I was moving pretty well, and noone from behind was catching up. Maybe I should have been on the brake a bit, but still being a rookie of some sort I was enjoying being in the front of the pack and wanted to stay there.
Rough jumble ice ususally markes the river crossing at McCabe dog drop, which is located at the Farm of Jerry Kruse and family. This place offers some of the best hospitality on the trail. At 6:50 AM I rolled in there, and stopped quickly to drop Rainbow. There was no benefit to her or myself in running her further. As a former stage racer in Hans Gatt's team this was just not her type of event (even though she finished my first Quest in 2004). Race Marshall Mike McGowan was on site, woke up a vet, I signed the drop form, handed her over to my handler Rosa and was gone. Beautiful, no delay. Dave's team was resting nearby, everyone else was behind me. I was leading the Yukon Quest and have to admit this filled me with more excitement than I'd like to admit. But many teams have led after 200 miles only to falter in the end, or even worse - scratch. But we were looking good, 13 dogs pulling strong on a brand new trail. Actually the trail was too new, and fell apart by the time my wheel dogs were over it. I gained about 1 mile on the 6 mile stretch along the Klondike Highway over the guy behind me (who was William which I did not know at this time).
We left the highway ditch with a 90 degree turn, and the team bolted up the wood cutting road that leads into the hills and the 1995 burn. Volunteers under the guidance of assistant race manager Heinz Sauer (If you haven't noticed by now, the Quest is infested with German musher and volunteer involvement!) have steadily improved this fairly new part of trail, and removed most hairy spots. I enjoyed the early light of the day, and simply rolling along with a bunch of good dogs. I wish every day could start like this. The team behind me seemed to fall back, again a warning sign for me not to go too fast. After crossing a few lakes the trail winds aimlessly for a few miles through willows before dropping down a few steep (and in no-snow-years dangerous) drops to the Pelly River level. As in many cases when approaching a community the trail turned into a wider trail, then a bad road, a better road, and then followed the highway ditch into Pelly. It crossed a village road, and WOOOSH!, my leaders Jack and Maggie blew sideways, narrowly missing a car by maybe a few inches. I found myself with one foot firm on the brake, my upper body thrown forward over the handle bar. There were no barricades or warning signs for either musher or motorized vehicle. I think only because I weigh 200 pounds I was able to stop my 13 loaping dogs on the spot. Without further delay we kept going, across another road and right up the checkpoint banner in front of the new rec centre. 10 AM, time for some rest and breakfast.
William came 15 minutes later and parked right next to me. We were two hours ahead of my desired arrival time of 12PM, but running up-front was just the result of following the schedule William and I were on. His team was a bit slower at that point, but we saw that we were well in the mix. We were not cutting rest, our teams looked just as good as Mackey's and Little's, and better (faster) than Neff's and Dalton's.
To be continued in the next newsletter...