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THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES – Yukon Quest musher Brent Sass beds down his dogs under the northern lights at the Eagle, Alaska checkpoint. Yukon Quest Photo by JULIEN SCHRODER

Sass leads Quest by two hours into Eagle

The front pack of Yukon Quest mushers pulled into town early this morning led by defending champ Brent Sass, who arrived at 4:28 a.m. under a faint green aurora.

By Freelancer on February 9, 2016

EAGLE, Alaska — The front pack of Yukon Quest mushers pulled into town early this morning led by defending champ Brent Sass, who arrived at 4:28 a.m. under a faint green aurora.

Sass, of Eureka, was followed to this Yukon River community about 375 miles into the 1,000-mile race by fellow Quest champions Allen Moore, a Two Rivers musher, at 6:23 a.m. and Hugh Neff, from Tok, at 6:33 a.m.

Local hero Matt Hall, who grew up in Eagle, was running in fourth and was expected in a little after 8 a.m.

Mushers have a mandatory four-hour layover here. They then head over 3,420-foot American summit, across the border into Canada and on to Dawson City 144 trail miles away.

“Good dogs,” Sass told his team while giving them sticks of beef for a snack after parking in the Eagle checkpoint’s dog yard. “You guys kicked some ass on that run.”

A wisp of aurora curled overhead as Sass set to work with the usual dog chores a musher has upon arriving in a checkpoint.

He talked to veterinarians examining the team, spread straw for the dogs and mixed hot water and food for them, ladling the soupy mix into metal bowls.

Then he headed into the checkpoint building, Eagle’s old schoolhouse, for a bowl of moose stroganoff.

Earlier in the race, Sass said, some of his dogs had been a little sick with diarrhea and he had worked hard to keep them eating well and hydrated.

He said they were looking better in the last couple runs since Circle City, though, and Sass still felt good about his chances against the other top teams, given his fast pace so far.

“Keeping my speed at this point is more important than getting way ahead of ’em,” he said in between bites.

“Because I definitely have more speed right now than I have had in the past, and it’s a lot more fun to go fast for 50 or 60 miles than to go slow for 100.”

Still, Sass was not counting out his competitors.

“We’re all really close. It’s anybody’s race at this point,” he said.

Sass praised local volunteers for clearing new overland sections of hard and fast trail coming into Eagle that avoided some of the worst jumble ice on the Yukon River.

The river had frozen helter-skelter so that large, jagged blocks of ice were pushed up, rather than a smooth surface, Eagle residents said.

“The jumble ice is rough at times, but it’s just the crossings, and then it’s smooth on the sides for most of the miles,” Sass said.

“It keeps it interesting, keeps you awake. I was falling asleep in the jumble ice, at times. But it’s good. I didn’t break anything. Didn’t break any dogs, didn’t break myself.”

Moore, a Two Rivers musher, was not so lucky: The handlebar on his sled was broken from a rough ride over the ice coming into Eagle.

“Jumble ice, it’ll do it. Boom, boom, boom,” Moore said, describing how his sled bounced over it.

By Casey Grove
Fairbanks News-Miner

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