Sunny skies and warm temperatures leave 2009 Quest racers smiling

Lake Laberge showed a kinder and gentler side to paddlers in the 2009 Yukon River Quest.

Lake Laberge showed a kinder and gentler side to paddlers in the 2009 Yukon River Quest.

The calm water throughout the first day of competition was a pleasant surprise for racers familiar with the lake, known for stormy weather and rough conditions.

The tranquil environment even carried over to Thursday, which had many participants smiling regardless of their position. The ideal racing conditions have included plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures.

“The lake was very good to us this year,” said veteran River Quest paddler Susan McVeigh, who came from Toronto to paddle in the race.

“We did it one year where it rained for the first 30 hours, so every year we say thank you after that.”

Laura Gosset said this year’s conditions on Lake Laberge were perfect.

“I think we are being spoiled,” she said. “You can’t complain, I mean it’s long, but I thought we were in for some rockin’ and rollin’ right at the beginning.”

Gosset said the lake has a reputation of being tough, adding she came in expecting the worst, but was pleasantly surprised.

Gosset travelled from Kelowna, B.C. to participate in her first Yukon River Quest. She, along with her husband Don, formed a team in the tandem kayak category.

“We didn’t start paddling until March,” she said laughing.

“We actually did a bit of recreational paddling about 20 years ago,” adding this is her first taste of competition in the sport.

Lake Laberge is approximately 48 kilometres long and one of the things that makes it so difficult on paddlers is the fact that it absorbs the Yukon River’s strong current. This forces canoeists and kayakers to work a little harder when traveling across the lake.

Regardless of the calm water on Wednesday, nine-time River Quest participant and Whitehorse resident Ingrid Wilcox wasn’t singing its praises.

“That’s my least favourite,” she said about Lake Laberge. “It shows because everybody says I make up whatever time I lose on Lake Laberge. I make it up afterwards.”

Wilcox biggest problem with Lake Laberge is its slow current, which she said seems to get in the way of achieving her desired time.

She said ideally there would be a little bit of a breeze blowing behind her, but added that’s rare on the lake.

“That doesn’t happen very often, but at least it’s not a wind in the front,” Wilcox said. “That’s always a highlight, getting past here, and then it’s, as they say, ‘all downhill from there.’”

Ralph Crouse, who is competing in the solo kayak category, didn’t find Lake Laberge overly difficult.

“It was flat, calm, a little windy, but all in all it was pretty good,” he said. “They always tell you the worst case scenario to get you ready for that, but it was fine.”

The first-year River Quest competitor said he didn’t really have any expectations regarding the lake.

“I had goals of what I wanted to meet, but they were uneducated goals,” Crouse said, adding he liked his overall time. “It was straight forward; I got behind a voyageur, so it made it actually quite quick.”

He said he had a strategy of trying to pace himself, but admitted that it didn’t go quite as planned.

“Eventually, I got into the pace I should have started at because I did go out hard,” he said.

The weak current didn’t bother him either.

“I’m from Kingston, so I’m out on Lake Ontario a lot,” he said. “I think Lake Ontario, the storms can brew up pretty quickly, similar to Lake Laberge, so that’s what I have lots of experience with. The fast river I do not and unfortunately that’s what 90 per cent of this is.”

The Yukon River Quest is approximately 740-km and runs every year from Whitehorse to Dawson City.