Quest questions

I ran my first and only, so far, Yukon Quest in 2005, making quite a few mistakes but still having a pretty good run. Even my team’s melt-down on Eagle Summit is a pretty fond memory, mainly because I dealt with my own failings and got the dogs moving again. It was raw and real and I learned a lot. The other day, a friend e-mailed with a few questions as they consider running as a rookie in 2009. Here’s a look at what they asked and what I said back…

Q: When you made the 200 mile push to Dawson, how many times did you camp in that section of trail?

I took off from Pelly Crossing with the heaviest sled I’ve ever had. It creaked and groaned like an old wooden ship. But I needed every ounce of that dog food. Don’t skimp. We had a good year that year with easy trails and temps about 0 F. I went past Stepping Stone for another hour or two, and just pulled over on a hilly trail. It made for about a six or seven hour run because we weren’t running fast. If I’d gone just a little farther, there was a nice little pullout down in a valley on the right side of the trail, which even had some firewood. Then I made a mistake. I meant to run straight to Scroggie, which would have taken me seven hours. That would have been fine. But Scroggie is just a cabin at the side of Stewart River and I was used to seeing Iditarod checkpoints. I didn’t think that cabin could be the dog drop, and went another two hours looking for it, winding up with a nine hour run. (That seemed long to me at the time, but these days, it’s almost expected, even on a first leg of a long-distance race.)