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The Quest for Yukon Gold
| Article
# : |
10581 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1986 |
2,574 Words |
| Author
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Ron Dalby
Author Ron Dalby is managing editor of Alaska magazine. A
resident of Palmer, Alaska, Mr. Dalby has done extensive
magazine writing for national publications. He is a member of
the Outdoor Writers Association of America. |
What's a thousand miles? In terms of time it's a couple of days in a car or a couple of hours in an airliner. In terms of distance, it's about equal to a straight line between Washington, D.C. and Omaha. Such measurements, however, mean little to the thirty or more sled dog racers lining up in Fairbanks, Alaska, on February 22 to start the third annual running of the Yukon Quest.
For them a thousand miles is the distance from Fairbanks to Whitehouse, Yukon Territory, Canada, via Angel Creek, Circle Hot Springs, Circle, Eagle, Dawson and Carmacks. In history books those tiny towns figure prominently in turn-of-the-century Alaska and northwestern Canada.
Whichever man or woman with a team of up to twelve dogs can cover the 1,000 miles in the shortest time will win $15,000, an amount that works out to more than $1,000 a day on the trail. It takes about twelve days to complete the race.
Winners earn their money. Temperatures along the route will hit twenty, thirty and even forty below zero. Mushers and dogs will move up the Yukon River into the teeth of an Artic wind howling at twenty, thirty, fourty mph or more. Wind chill factors--temperatures actually experienced by the body--can easily sink to 100 degrees below zero. Each of the twelve dogs in a team will consume ten to fifteen pounds of high-protein food every day of the race to maintain its strength.
Veteran musher Joe Runyan of Tanana, Alaska, won in 1985. He called the Yukon Quest a unique race, one which required strategy and planning. "The distances were so far and the loads
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