EAGLE, Alaska — For the second year in a row, Brent Sass confronted a moose on the Yukon Quest trail in a potentially violent showdown that saw his dogs barking like banshies and the musher himself brandishing a ski pole for self-defence.

In spite of the man-moose standoff, he gained on second-place competitor Allen Moore by the time Sass hit Eagle, Alaska, at 3:10 p.m. Thursday, sporting a lead of 50 kilometres and a team of 13 dogs.

The nine-time Quester had departed Dawson City on Wednesday afternoon in first place and high spirits.

By Thursday morning, he had traversed the Forty Mile River leg to cross into Alaska, and began toward American Summit, the steepest ascent in the race aside from the notorious Eagle Summit.

Suddenly, the dogs started “going crazy….I came around the corner and there he was!”

The bull moose was running the other way, but had nowhere to go. A cliff stood on one side and a drop-off on the other, “he wanted an exit; but there was no exit.”

Sass halted his team.

“It literally slowly sauntered right at us,” he said. “Its hackles went up….”

Sass was effectively paralyzed — not with fear, but because he couldn’t take his feet off the snow hooks, which act as anchors, “or the dog team would’ve run right at it.

“I’m waving my pole and yelling and screaming. Thinking I should get my camera out and take a picture of this, but I didn’t because I was way more worried about my dogs and myself,” Sass said.

“He literally walked right up to the team and went up in the air and just — bang, bang!” — the moose reared and virtually pounded his hooves on the tow lines.

“I was like, oh God, my race is going to be over, I’m going to have hurt dogs and every other thing,” said the 35-year-old, who has finished the Quest in the top five four times.

“Luckily my four leaders just spread out, and then the whole team just moved off to the side.”

The moose then galloped parallel to the stationary team directly toward its driver. Sass could have reached out an arm and grazed its head — “two feet from me,” he said.

“I looked him right in the eye, and he just went right on by.”

With that, Sass released the hooks and fled like a sprinter.

Remarkably, a similar incident occurred during last year’s Quest, when a one-antlered bull moose charged him in the darkness near the Black Hills.

That encounter did become violent.

Sass “whacked the moose with my ski pole as hard as I could” as it plowed toward him head-on — “one of the scariest moments that I’ve ever had, mostly for the dogs.”

The ski pole was split in two.

Moore on the mind

Moose aren’t the only concerns Sass is coping with.

Two-time champion Moore is trailing him by more than eight hours, with all 14 of his dogs still on the tow line.

“I was still looking down the trail, wondering, ‘OK, when’s his headlamp going to show up?’— even when it was not even mathematically possible,” Sass said.

He realized after a recent bout of anxiety that Moore could not have even left the Dawson start chute yet, “and I was still looking over my shoulder.

“It keeps me on my toes, but it also drives me a little crazy.”

Sass was racing head-to-head with Moore, 57, to the final pre-finish line checkpoint last year when he fell from his sled, overcome with exhaustion.

The fall cost him a chance at the gold — literally: the musher who makes it to the Dawson halfway point first, as Sass did, must complete the race to keep the four ounces of gold — worth more than $6,000 — earmarked for him or her.

This year, Sass’s strong performance between Dawson and Eagle on Wednesday and Thursday added a near-two hour time gap between the two competitors.

Moore was trailing Sass by about six hours when they pulled into the Klondike town Tuesday; he was behind by seven hours and 45 minutes following their respective arrivals at Eagle — a mandatory six-hour checkpoint.

Fresh snow north of Dawson followed by patches of jumble ice on the Yukon River made for slow going initially for both Sass and Moore.

The jagged, high-piled portions of frozen river “were pretty rough, but my dogs walked right through it,” said Sass. “Actually, they sprinted through it.”

After that, “it was awesome,” with the trail “moving hard and fast and the dogs … doing great.”

Sass breezed into Eagle — more than 225 kilometres northwest of Dawson — after cresting American Summit — more than 1,000 metres (3,420 feet) above sea level — west of the border, where he made camp.

The climb was a trot in the park compared to 2011, the last time up he was up there. He and Hans Gatt — the previous year’s race winner — found themselves in a blinding snowstorm, through which the more experienced Gatt, a four-time champ, led the way.

The mountain was written out of the route the last two years due to poor conditions elsewhere that necessitated extending the trail around American Summit.

Safety first

Sass also stood by his signature helmet.

“I kind of enjoy wearing the helmet, to be perfectly honest…I don’t even really think about it anymore, to tell you the truth.”

He started to wear one in training after the fall near Braeburn in the 2014 Quest.

“It ruined my race last year,” he said. “I got a really bad concussion … so there’s no second thoughts for me.”

On a stomach full of moose meat stew, Sass took off on the next leg to the Circle checkpoint, 250 kilometres.

He dropped one dog, Rosie, due to a heart murmur, according to trail veterinarians.

He was glad to leave Thursday night, rather than in the day, so his heavy-coated team could run in the cold.

Temperatures in Eagle rose to -15 C Thursday night, with highs of -5 C predicted for Saturday — a major rise in the mercury compared to the -47 C registered earlier this week at the Stepping Stone lodge between Pelly Crossing and Dawson.

‘My race to lose’

“I’m pretty determined to win this race,” Sass said. “It’s totally my race to lose at this point.”

“But I know who I got behind me,” he added.

Moore slid into Eagle at 9:10 p.m. Thursday.

He sported a characteristically calm demeanour despite the arduous trek from Dawson.

“Howdy,” he said, offering his trademark greeting.

Like Sass, he noted the windy conditions on American Summit.

“Not bad, a little breezy, but I’ve had a lot worse.”

Of his full fleet of healthy dogs, Moore said: “You’ve got to feel good about that.”

He added that he wasn’t too concerned with the position of his competitors and was sticking to his original race plan.

“We just thought it would be better, hopefully, that they would have a lot of energy at the end of the race….they’re pretty perky right now.

“His lead is substantial, but a lot of things can happen,” he said of Sass.

Moore added that evidence of moose around American Summit abounded: “Their tracks are everywhere.”

He conceded he has not had a man-on-moose showdown yet this week.

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