Dawson City, YK - Yukon Quest personnel scrambled to put the final touches on the checkpoint as the first few teams made their way into Dawson City on Tuesday. The top three teams have checked into the race’s fourth check point.
Race officials originally estimated the arrival times into Dawson City for the first few teams at three o’clock in the afternoon, but Hugh Neff arrived much early. When the 2012 Yukon Quest Champion’s team came trotting across the line, Neff said he’d had a rough run. “Yeah, it’s been an interesting day," he said. "I was coming down King Solomon’s three hours ago. Then a snowmachine came through with a paddle track and tore up the trail and then I got down to the road and there were three loose dogs that attacked my team, so it took me a while to get here.”
Arriving in Dawson City first comes with a prize. Neff will claim four ounces of gold, valued at nearly seven-thousand dollars. But winning it also comes with an ominous stigma. Many people think it’s a bad idea to go for gold and win the race. But it’s been done ten times in the last 30 years, by six different mushers. Neff says claiming gold was the plan all along. “Two years ago I got here and unfortunately I wasn’t able to get the gold, so I get to try again," he said. Neff has to finish the race to keep his prize. His dogs weren’t wagging their tails when they came trotting into the checkpoint. The sleepy team did perk up their ears at the sight of a crowd gathered to welcome them in. After a snack, Neff drove them down to the dog yard for a long rest. There’s no telling how the second half of his race will go, but he says it’s unlikely he’ll arrive first in Fairbanks. “Oh no, Allen Moore’s got the team to beat.”
Two hours later, Allen Moore made his intentions clear. “Well, let’s see, if we can just flip flop it from last year and he came in second and I came in first… there you go,” he laughed long. Moore lost to Neff last year by a mere 26 seconds. His arrival in Dawson City this year remained a mystery for most of the day. His spot tracker showed him blowing through Scroogie Creek dog drop overnight, but shortly after, it quit working. The Two Rivers musher says he only gained a lead briefly, and pointed to his dogs when he explain why he didn’t keep it. “I probably could have just kept on going, but they wouldn’t have felt too god if I had," he said. The team happily snacked on salmon, chicken skins and thinly sliced chunks of BLT – beef, liver and tripe. A small black and brown female named Scooter, stuck her nose out of the bag. Moore had carried her over King Solomon’s Dome because she’d started showing signs of a sore shoulder. He says the 36 hour layover is plenty of time to massage and rest his dogs for a strong performance in the second half of the race. “You know it’s just keeping healthy dogs. If you keep a good group of healthy dogs, you’ve got a good chance.”
Keeping dogs healthy is the goal for Jake Berkowitz. 14 dogs pulled the 2012 Rookie of the Year into Dawson City. When his sled finally came to a halt, lead dogs and team dogs jumped in harness eagerly.
“We got five two-year-old dogs in there so that’s kinda been the main thing in this race was fusing them with my main veterans," he said. "To have all fourteen here... it's definitley something we'll be working on for the rest of the race."
After signing in, Berkowitz gave the clipboard in his hand a look-over. His face wrinkled as he read over the incoming times for the two teams ahead of him. “I mean they made up that distance on me in the first half of the race, so it's clearly possible in the second half," he said. "We’re not happy with third and you can hear the dogs barking, they’re not happy with it either.”
Mushers will rest their dogs for the next 36 hours. Hugh Neff is set to leave early Thursday morning. there's another 500 miles of trail in front of him. When he leaves he'll tackle two major summits and long frigid miles on the Yukon River and Birch Creek.