Fairbanks, AK - Mushers in Fairbanks and Whitehorse handed over thousands of pounds of dog food, human food and personal items to Yukon Quest race officials last Saturday. The annual food drop brings both a sense of relief and taste of reality to those who are signed up to run in the international sled dog race.
Yukon Quest Volunteer Casey VanDor walks in circles around and around a wooden pallet piled high with bulky white, nylon bags. He’s wrapping the piles in thick, clear plastic and labeling them with Yukon Quest checkpoint names. This is VanDor’s first year as a race volunteer. “I like watching the race. It’s nice to chip in and help!” He’s among roughly 25 volunteers who are helping unload, stack, wrap and move thousands of pounds of drop bags for this year’s race.
“Every bag is limited at forty pounds and if they’re all in that forty pound range then the math just adds up,” says race manager, Alex Olesen.
In Fairbanks, it adds up to more than five-thousand pounds of dog food, human food, dog booties, dry socks and other gear that Olesen will expedite to nine checkpoints along the race course this week.
“It’s like the first move in a Rueb Goldberg machine of moving all these things out to all these places.”
When he arrived in South Fairbanks, Rookie Fairbanks musher Cody Strathe still had some packing to do.
“I needed some more batteries, but I did get some Werther’s Originals and some Ricola to get me down the trail.” Strathe tosses the last-minute items into his bags and fastens them closed with zip ties. But he’s not the only musher who still had a few things to sort out.
2012 Champion Hugh Neff, of Tok, unloads more than 30 bags from his blue pick-up truck. “I had to run over to Freddie’s and get some socks and some five-hour energy drinks… musher priorities,” he laughs.
Neff decided to make the best of the trip to Fairbanks over the weekend. “We’re actually gonna go up and do a training run up on Eagle Summit - a little training to get some of these younger dogs used to the trail.”
This will be Neff’s thirteenth go at the 1000 mile race. Of the 26 teams signed up, fifteen are veterans and last year’s top five finishers are all returning. “I think it’s the best Quest field ever. I mean we say this often, but I really believe it this time," says Neff.
His competition includes 2012 second place finisher Allen Moore, who says he’ll only change a few things for his third run of the Quest. “Oh, let’s see, try to make up 26 seconds maybe," jokes Moore.
That’s the amount of time that stood between Moore and Neff last year and it’s not all that Moore has lost during the race. “Two years ago, I lost 25 pounds in the race. Last year I didn’t lose that much, but it wasn’t that cold last year, so I only lost ten or fifteen.” That’s why he has some extra treats in his drop bags.
“Let’s see, there’s some oatmeal cluster things that have some white chocolate and all that good stuff. Those are the first things I’m going for.”
Musher Brent Sass is known for gourmet trail food and as usual his bags are filled with tasty morsels.
“Candied bacon is back of course!” laughs Sass. He's running the Quest for the seventh time. He watches as volunteers sort his bags by check point. “I still feel like a rookie though as I was packing them," he says. "I’ve gotten a couple calls ‘Oh we want the veteran’s point of view!’ and I’m still not feeling like veteran in this race.”
One thing Sass has learned over the years is how to speed through checkpoints. That’s why his drop bags are painted black and gold. A few other mushers have also painted their otherwise non-descript bags with different colors. It makes them easy to spot among the hundreds of others at each checkpoint. With Food Drops complete, mushers only have mandatory vet checks left before they all head to Whitehorse for the 30th running of the Yukon Quest.