CIRCLE CITY, Alaska – Just two days after rescuing one of his Yukon Quest competitors on American Summit, Eureka, Alaska musher Brent Sass experienced one of the harshest realities of sled dog racing.

As he and his dogs were setting out from their camp at Trout Creek, Sass's wheel dog, Taco – a five-year veteran of the Quest – stopped running.

"(He) just tipped over, and that's pretty much it,” Sass said Sunday afternoon, shortly after arriving in Circle City.

"There wasn't any lead-up. He ate fine at the rest place and was acting just like he always does when we take off and go. We literally made it on to the Yukon and he tipped over.”

Sass did all he could do, which was load Taco's body into the sled and carry him the 100 kilometres into Slaven's Cabin.

There, Taco was passed over to the veterinarian on duty, who will fly the dog into Circle today, where veterinary pathologist Christine Christensen will try to determine the cause of death.

Race officials were not speculating on what might have led to Taco's death.

For Sass, the ride into Circle was not a time to speculate nor to race. Instead, he took his time, and mourned his old friend.

"He was one of my first. He was the third sled dog I ever had,” Sass said. "... He's been on my team every year and always in wheel. He was definitely the go-to wheel dog.”

The wheel dogs are the ones who run directly in front of the sled. They carry the bulk of the weight and are generally the strongest and largest on the team.

"We just went really slow,” Sass said of the 100-kilometre trek into Slaven's. "Mostly because I was sort of in shock, and I think that fed into the dogs.

"It was five years ago the exact same thing happened to me, right outside of Slaven's. I've been through it before, and I think that definitely made this one a little different than the last one, but this one hit home a little bit harder just because he's been with me ever since the beginning.

"... I cried all the way here, basically.”

Taco's death was not the first dramatic turn this race has taken for Sass.

Early Friday morning, he was preparing to climb American Summit, and full of enthusiasm for the 722-metre elevation gain ahead of him.

"That's where I thrive,” he said of the steep and windy terrain at the top of the summit.

"When they said it was windy and bad conditions up there, I was looking forward to getting up there and blasting over the top and getting into Eagle as quickly as I could.”

But that plan was not to be.

Hours earlier, Whitehorse musher Hans Gatt had attempted the summit but his dogs couldn't make it through the blown-over trail.

He had tried to lead them through himself a number of times without success, and eventually turned around.

Part way down, he crawled into his sleeping bag, exhausted and soaked with sweat – soon he was freezing.

"I was very, very surprised to come upon Hans and his team – Hans laying basically right in the middle of the trail ....

"The only ones ahead of me at that time were Hans and Hugh (Neff), and I thought they were way ahead, so I knew something was up when he popped up and it was very apparent that he was cold.

"He told me, ‘I'm nearing hypothermic,' and at that point, I just said, ‘We need to go, we can't go back, it's way too far to go back,' and he was like, ‘Can you get through?' and I was like,'Yeah.'

"It's all about (lead dog) Silver. Once again, Silver's the hero. I put him up in single lead and he just drove right into it. We didn't have any real problems; he just drove right into the snow drifts, drove right into the storm.”

It wasn't exactly easy going, however. Leading two dogs teams through a blown-in trail resulted in some jumbled up dogs, and Sass kept having to go back and untangle the teams so they could keep moving on.

"It was tough to keep the dog teams together, but I couldn't leave him,” Sass said.

"It definitely took some willpower on the dogs' part to stop for three or four minutes at a time in the middle of that storm and just hang out up there ....

"My glasses were totally iced over and I didn't have my parka on or anything because I'd just planned on running up and going over and putting the parka on on the way down and when I got to Hans, it was just straightforward so my face was totally exposed. I got some windburn on my face and my lips took a

beating.”

Never one to take too much credit, Sass praised his lead dog's tenacity in finding the trail.

"It was all Silver .... He knows what a trail marker is and he just went trail marker to trail marker .... He knows his position in those circumstances.”

And in the end, mornings like the one he had on American Summit are what the Quest is all about for Sass.

"In the end, I can say that I had fun. I don't know why I'm always the one that comes up on people when they're in peril, but I was glad to help.”

Sass and Gatt are trailing Neff, who was one step ahead of blizzards that caught many of the other teams as they crossed mountain passes along the Alaskan border.

Twenty-five racers set out on Feb. 5 from Whitehorse, and seven teams have pulled out of the 27th running of the annual race.

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