FAIRBANKS — Add Mother Nature to the list of those chasing Yukon Quest leader Hugh Neff on Friday.
The Tok musher left Eagle at 7:45 a.m., missing some of the harsh weather between the Dawson City and Eagle section of trail that included heavy snow and 30 mph winds.
“It was a really fun day, until about five miles the other side of American Summit, and that’s when you could literally hear the roar of the wind,” he said before leaving Eagle.
Mushers struggled to get over American Summit and into Eagle, the first checkpoint on the Alaska side of the race.
2010 champion Hans Gatt found serious trouble on the way.
Gatt had tried to make the summit Thursday night, but blowing winds and large drifts battered him and forced him to descend.
Wet and cold, he climbed into his sleeping bag and waited for the next musher to come by.
“(I) was pretty much at the edge of feeling over,” Gatt told KUAC’s Emily Schwing. “I know the dogs are tough — someone would have found them.”
Hours later, musher Brent Sass came through. He broke trail and guided Gatt’s team into Eagle.
“I’ve never been in a storm that bad, with the wind blowing that hard, ever,” Sass said in Eagle. “The wind was blowing so hard in our faces and you had to rely totally on your lead dog.”
Sass made it to the checkpoint at 11:15 a.m., six minutes ahead of Gatt.
But despite being cold and tired in Eagle, Gatt recovered enough to leave the checkpoint at 6:30 p.m. Friday, ahead of Sass.
Neff, meanwhile, had built a nine- to 10-hour lead. He was, at 10:30 p.m. Alaska time, about 40 miles from Slaven’s cabin, a Yukon River dog drop 108 miles from Eagle and 60 miles from Circle.
A group of three — Ken Anderson of Fairbanks, Sass and Gatt — were Neff’s closest yet distant competition.
American Summit wasn’t the only harsh spot Friday.
First-time Quest mushers Wade Marrs of Wasilla and Clint Warnke, who is an Iditarod veteran, of Fairbanks, turned back to Dawson before reaching the Fortymile hospitality stop 48 miles outside of the Yukon city.
Marrs said he knew about the bad weather, but slow dogs and a pinched nerve in his back that caused numbness in his arm finalized his decision to return.
There he found he was running into the storm instead of out of it.
“The trails were good but then they started getting windy and blown in,” he said by phone from Dawson. “Coming back it was bad.”
While Marrs scratched in Dawson, Warnke was still contemplating his next move Friday afternoon. When Warnke, a three-time Iditarod finisher attempting his first Quest, returned to Dawson after realizing he had traveled only eight miles in a few hours.
The five other mushers still in Dawson began leaving at about 10:30 p.m. Alaska time, all rolling out onto the Yukon River within minutes of each other. Fairbanks rookie Tamara Rose, whose 36-hour layover ended at 1:12 p.m. Friday, was expected to depart with them as well.
Eureka rookie Kyla Durham was excited about continuing as a group.
“We’ll make a big, happy, back-of-the-pack, walk-through-the-storm thing,” she told Quest correspondent Wendy Morrison in a YouTube video earlier in the day.
Anchorage rookie Christine Roalofs, who had been slowly making her way toward Dawson, withdrew from the race Thursday after accepting outside help from Canadian Rangers and Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
In an interview with Morrison, she said she made a “rookie mistake” and packed too lightly for the trip, underestimating the trail and running out of dog food.
Roalofs was disheartened to encounter the Rangers on snowmachines but grateful for their support.
“(The Quest) is a wilderness adventure, you want to think you’re self-sufficient,” she told Morrison. “But when a mistake like that is made, it’s nice to know there’s backup available.”
Features writer Suzanna Caldwell reported from Fairbanks. Photographer John Wagner contributed to this report from Eagle.
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