In the 550-mile division, all eight mushers are into and out of the Circle checkpoint.
Jeff Deeter left just after 8:00 a.m. Monday, hours before anyone else, and spent about five hours at Slaven’s Roadhouse before continuing. He’s expected to be the first in Eagle this afternoon. Following him are the middle four who are jockeying for position, after resting at Slaven’s: Lauro Eklund, then Jonah Bacon, Keaton Loebrich and Joey Sabin. In sixth place right now is Josi Shelley, who took a longer run from Circle to Slaven’s. And hours behind that pack are Jason and Patrick Mackey, arriving together at the Circle checkpoint after the other six teams had left.
In the 200-mile division, the notorious summits at the front of the race took out another team: JJ Levy scratched from that race around midnight Monday. Joe Weber crossed the finish line in Central after 1 day, 16 hours and 6 minutes, followed by Jody Potts-Joseph at 1 day, 17 hours and 49 minutes, and Emma Lewis after 2 days and 21 minutes.
It was mostly calm at the Circle checkpoint, where even with five dog teams bedded down, it was quiet.
Circle is an option for teams to get a required 4-hour rest, and musher took advantage of the showers at the washeteria, the beds in the loft of the firehouse or at the Earla Huchinson School, where teacher Amy Graham made lessons from the race content.
The dogs also get their rest here. Each team is staked out on a wide lane of straw. Even as mushers repack sled bags and prepare food, the dogs don’t stir.
Josi Sheely is sorting out various meat pieces to load into a cooker for her dogs. But one of the bags has a zip tie. Her husband, JJ, is trying to be useful.
“Can I give you my knife?”
“No.”
Race rules prevent anyone from helping the mushers with prep and dog care. But they can help with delivering food to checkpoints, providing everything is carefully marked with the musher's name. But most of the bags are marked THYR her name until November last year, which her husband teased her about.
“Yeah, she was upset about it just because, you know, last year she was writing four letters on the bags and now, now there's seven, so, there's a lot more work this year.”
Circle is also where the mushers prep for the next leg, out on the Yukon River. The Yukon Quest has not had a route on the big river since 2019, when it was still an international event.
Race Marshall, John Schandelmeier has been satisfied with all the trail conditions on the race course except on the river.
“Concern is the jumble ice on the Yukon, but Circle got eight inches of snow, so that will smooth things out a little bit. Still jumble ice and still going to be slow traveling, but there's been more help this year on the Quest Trail than I've ever seen before.”
That help is from people like trail boss Mike Reitz, and a cadre of snow machine volunteers who cut a trail with sledgehammers and splitting mauls.
“Some years it freezes rough and some years it freezes smooth and some years it's a combination and this year it's a combination. There’re 20 other guys out there and women helping out. Everybody pitches in.”
Joey Sabin:
"Jumbled ice. I don't know. Never seen it, so we'll find out how it is."
That was Joey Sabin…turns out, he’s not alone.
Of these eight experienced mushers, seven of them have never been on this leg of the river, and the reports of jumble ice are…unnerving.
"Yeah, sounds, uh, pretty intense and I'm not really looking forward to it, to be honest with you," Keaton Loebrich said.
In the fire station, changing his footgear, Keaton Loebrich says he mushed from Dawson to the Forty Mile river confluence with the Yukon, but has never been on this section.
"We're gonna go slow. We still got 14 dogs and they all look pretty good, but the sled we got right now, it's been pretty hard to steer. On the trail we've been going on and now we got more weight than we've had because it's a long run. And it's just been pulling hard to the left and I'm exhausted from just trying to keep it straight."
Jonah Bacon was sorting out food bags to pack up for the long run:
“It'll be a new experience. Yeah, so, very interested to see what it's like. Had some good reports — the race marshal, trail crew lead and yeah, we'll see though. It'll be a new experience."
Josi Shelley echoed that.
“I haven't been on jumble ice, so it's going to be a new adventure. ‘cause none of us have run the 1000-mile Quest. So we'll see how it goes. I'm excited to get to see it in the daylight first, though.”
After the sixth hour at the checkpoint, Josi Shelley is all packed up, her dogs fed and bootied, so they sit up. They know what comes next.
Then almost all together, they stand up and say they are ready, with a sudden chorus of baying and barking.
But the other four teams stretched out on straw nearby don’t even stir; it’s like they are saying “Wake me when it’s my turn.”
On the shore of the Yukon River, in Circle.
