February 16, 2006

• Yukon Quest update

  [EDIT - about two hours later:  It was after sunset but before
  dark when Doug woke up today.  As he wandered into the kitchen, I
  was picking up the last "full" water jug to pour water into a pitcher
  for use in preparing dinner (my dinner, and probably his lunch since he
  grabbed a granola bar for breakfast).  I noticed that the jug was
  nearly empty, so we loaded the car for a "short" water run.  That
  means we left the biggest containers home, and only got about thirty
  gallons instead of the usual sixty or more.

  I left the camera home.  You didn't miss anything worth
  seeing.  It's ugly out there, with dirty snow and gray skies... at
  least they were gray when we were there.  Now it's almost dark and
  the sky is just obscure.

  Latest news on the Iron Dog snowmachine race, which has seen lots of
  wrecked machines and injured riders this year:  weather conditions
  have caused the trail to be shortened to avoid standing water on top of
  ice.  This year's race has been more grueling than most.

  END OF EDIT]

  Lance
  Mackey was first into Dawson City this afternoon.  If he finishes
  the race, he’ll get four ounces of gold as his prize for being first
  into Dawson.  I don’t know when or where Lance passed Hans Gatt,
  who had been first out of Eagle yesterday.

  The big stories coming out of this race involve the rescue of six
  mushers and their teams who had gotten lost and/or pinned down by a
  blizzard on Eagle Summit.  The Alaska Air National Guard made four
  trips in a Pavehawk helicopter to get them all.

  I heard one of the guardsmen on the radio talking about one of the dogs
  that just didn’t want to stay back in the cargo area with the rest of
  the dogs, and kept crawling forward into the cockpit.  After being
  put back in the cargo bay several times, he finally settled on the
  console between the pilots and they let him ride there.

  Trail markers had been blown down or drifted over by snow, leading a
  total of thirteen mushers from the Quest and the Yukon Quest 300, a
  shorter race running concurrently, to be reported missing at least
  temporarily.  Six mushers were airlifted out and the rest
  straggled into checkpoints on their own. 

  The mushers who were rescued by the National Guard were disqualified
  from the race and some are trying now to get their entry fees refunded
  because they say that race officials were responsible for their
  problems, having told them that the trail was okay when in fact the
  high winds and whiteout blizzard conditions made it impassible.

  ADN.com has published four related stories over three days, but this one about the dogs is most interesting to me:

  Dog after dog scurried into the
  helicopter, finally free of the ripping wind. When every inch was
  covered by small furry bodies, rescuers closed the doors and began
  handing more animals through the windows.

  That’s how members of the Alaska Air National Guard packed 25 sled dogs
  into an HH-60 Pavehawk helicopter. And this was just one of four loads
  that capped the end of a successful search for six mushers and their
  dog teams who became stranded Monday along a stormy stretch of the
  Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

  “I was holding myself up, trying not to sit on the dogs,” flight
  engineer Staff Sgt. Dave Torrance said of his first mission with the
  Guard. “It’s going to be hard to come close to this one.”

  The story continues at that link above.

  ---

  
  
  

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  • 8:55 pm
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