Whitehorse Daily Star

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Photo by Christopher Reynolds

READYING FOR THE CHALLENGE – Yukon Quest musher Allen Moore gears up at Central, Alaska on Sunday afternoon, preparing to tackle the notorious Eagle Summit and eventually to blow past then-race leader Brent Sass at Mile 101 late Sunday night.

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Photo by Christopher Reynolds

NO BIG PROBLEM – At Central, Alaska, Brent Sass – then the Yukon Quest frontrunner – laughs off his extended nap, which would last more than eight hours southwest of Circle and enable Allen Moore to blow past him roughly 100 kilometres later at Mile 101 on Sunday night.

Moore makes significant gain on sleeping Sass

A long nap may have cost Brent Sass the Yukon Quest.

By Christopher Reynolds on February 16, 2015

MILE 101, Alaska – A long nap may have cost Brent Sass the Yukon Quest.

Sass, the undisputed leader in this year’s race, snoozed for more than eight hours in a frozen marsh southwest of Circle, Alaska.

That enabled Allen Moore to gain 40 kilometres on the frontrunner Sunday morning.

Moore, who won the mushing marathon the past two years, then blew by Sass at the Mile 101 checkpoint shortly before 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

Sass, who barely an hour earlier said he planned to rest three to four hours regardless of Moore’s progress, sprung from the checkpoint’s two-room cabin in his long underwear to rouse the dogs and mush like the wind.

He lit out just before 11 p.m., clawing back the lost ground he’d lost and running neck-and-neck with the reigning Quest king for the final 10 kilometres of the 132- kilometre leg between Mile 101 and Two Rivers, Alaska.

The heated drive took the mushers to their last checkpoint. They entered it two minutes apart, just after 5:30 a.m.

An eight-hour mandatory rest awaited them before the final 72-kilometre dash to the finish line.

Sass – 10 hours ahead of Moore as recently as Saturday – saw his dogs struggling that night en route from Circle to Central, Alaska, where he took his second- last mandatory stop less than one degree south of the Arctic Circle.

The nine-year veteran made camp and laid down in his sleeping bag to rest his team.

“I don’t usually get in my sleeping bag because you get comfortable, and when you get comfortable and you’re tired, it becomes a problem,” he said.

He woke up between four and six hours later, telling himself: “‘Just going to lay here for a little bit longer’ — and then I lay there for another three hours.

“I jumped out frantically to frozen boots,” Sass recalled at the isolated Mile 101 checkpoint after 9 p.m. Sunday.

“We were there for a long time, and it took me a long time to get the dogs going.”

Still, the “bummed-out” musher from Eureka, Alaska insisted “that 8 1/2, nine hours of rest is paying off and will pay off.”

Shortly after 9 p.m., before Moore’s arrival, he told a small crew at Mile 101: “I don’t care. I’m going to stay here three or four hours .... I’m not going to blaze out of here when he gets here.

“If he blows through, he blows through .... I’m pretty confident that he’s going to stay here for a little bit.”

Moore didn’t stay more than five minutes – the official Yukon Quest log has him in and out at 10:26 p.m. Sunday, though he lingered at Mile 101 for a few minutes to feed his dogs.

The calm, calculated Moore did not even bother to change his dogs’ booties after the gruelling run.

If the paw covers absorb any water – liable to then freeze – or take in ice or pebbles, the canines can suffer chafing, cuts or other problems.

Moore, after breezing into the nameless cabin checkpoint, said his time ascending Eagle Summit was “fantastic ... couldn’t ask for a better summit.”

Sass said precisely the opposite. Facing unco-operative dogs, he had to dismount and pull the sled uphill for parts of the 1,123-metre (3,685-foot) mountain.

“I probably lost about 10 pounds in sweat,” he said.

Moore noted the lack of wind atop the Quest’s steepest climb was “unusual.”

The first thing he asked was whether Sass had stopped, and was surprised to hear his race rival was resting.

“I wonder why,” he mused. “His dogs must be tired.”

Just then, Sass, 35, hustled around the corner in the cabin.

“How’d Eagle Summit treat you, Allen?” he asked.

“Oh, it was great, it was beautiful, wasn’t it? Lots of snow,” replied Moore, 57.

“Got plenty sweaty, though,” offered Sass.

“Oh, I know it,” Moore said.

Just that afternoon, at Central, he had put forward some cocky, and perhaps prescient, words for the belaboured Sass.

“All he has to do is fall through just a little bit now, I mean the least little bit.”

Moore’s “number-one goal” was “to stay within two hours” of his competitor. He has surpassed both.

He was wrong about one thing: “I’m sure he will not stop at 101 – ’cause I won’t.”

He didn’t, but Sass did.

That, as well as Sass’s misplaced assumptions, spoke to the unpredictability and impromptu nature of mushing.

At Central on Sunday morning, Sass said of Moore: “I think that he is a smart enough guy that he’s not going to blow through (Mile 101).”

As of 6 a.m. today, both mushers were resting at Two Rivers, gearing up for the final push to the Fairbanks finish line on Moore’s home turf, which his dogs know like the back of their paws.

Moore made it to the final checkpoint mere minutes ahead of Sass this morning.

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