Eagle, AK - It doesn’t necessarily take a whole lot of experience to drive a dog team, but in the Yukon Quest, it certainly helps. Mushers are at a point in the race where they’re learning whether they have what it takes to keep their dogs healthy. Some of them are also learning from their mistakes.
Good mushers are always learning, that’s according to John Schandelmeier. “Yeah, every time you hook up a dog team you learn something," says Schandelmeier. "It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve hooked them up, you learned something.”
Schandelmeier believes there’s no way of knowing how competitive a dog team can be until after they cover at least 200 miles of trail. “You have to know what you can get out of the race if you’re going to run the other 800 miles.” Schandelmeier has posted some of the fastest run times between checkpoints in the Yukon Quest. But he still maintains he isn’t anywhere close to catching leaders. “This is kind of where I am," he says. "Now it’s up to me. I know what the dogs can do. It’s up to me to take care of them. If I slow down, yeah, I can get 14 dogs to Whitehorse and back if I go slow enough but if I speed up, then I’m probably going to lose a dog or two.”
Sticking to a pace is a delicate dance for a dog musher, as is trying to figure out what works. A series of equipment problems had Ken Anderson bewildered by the time he reached Central. He says he thought he had his gear figured out. “I built this trailer sled thing and it just didn’t work out how I had hoped," says Anderson. "I had been using a different version of it all year long and then kind of last minute, I built a different design and it’s not working that good. I have to go back to the drawing board.” He says he made lots of little mistakes and strategic errors early on, but it’s unlikely to ruin his race. “I ditched the sled and I’m just kind of getting into the rhythm of things," says Anderson.
Rhythm is what Matt Hall says he’s found. “I’m happy," says Hall, with a broad smile. "I’m just cruising along so I’m pretty happy and I want to keep the dogs looking good and cruise home.”
Home is in Eagle, where Hall grew up. His father Wayne ran the Quest three times. The younger Hall says he asked his dad for advice, but he also says a lot of what he’s learned has come from his own experience.
Mainly, I guess it’s just still getting my routine down when I’m camping or at a checkpoint. Just still getting efficient. I don’t have a lot of time doing that kind of stuff, so it’s just still doing 10 passes up and down the gang line instead of 20 brining things back and forth and stuff like that I’m still improving on basically.”
Trail experience also drew Rookie Kurt Perano to the Quest. “I think it’s not as much of a trail. There’s a bit more work to do to get from one end to the other. I like to expose my dogs to as much as I can and also it develops me too.” Perano is originally from New Zealand. He knew how to mush but he came north for the landscape, terrain and distance. “It’s a different world and that’s the reason we came over here to do it," he says. "Back home it’s pretty popular but on a small scale and it’s very recreational and it’s sprint. There’s no mid or long distance and definitely nothing like this.”
With more than half the race still ahead of them, there are lots f new experiences still ahead for dog teams and mushers.