Ten mushers brought their burlap bags of supplies for the Yukon Quest sled dog race to the Whitehorse food drop Sunday.

Three-time Quest winner Hans Gatt was the first to arrive at the historic White Pass and Yukon Route train station to drop off his items.

He initially had to go into the station and cut the runners for his sled. The long pieces of black plastic had only been picked up by Gatt that day, though he had ordered them last August.

Despite the rush to get the runners ready and packed, Gatt said there were no surprises in his drop bags.

'Just regular stuff. All sorts of meat snacks and fish snacks. Just a wide variety of little goodies for them. Whatever they want to eat out there they can have,' he said.

There are no picky eaters on his team this year, he added.

'That's something that which is kind of changed. In the past, I used to have all the problems with getting them to eat out there,' said Gatt. 'This year, everybody seems just to really get eating. Lets hope it stays that way.'

Gatt also had Quest veteran Michelle Phillips' sled for the race in his truck.

'I smashed the bed out on a training run on glare ice,' Phillips told the Star. 'It can be stressful, for sure; you definitely want the sled to be in good condition.'

With the services of Gatt, who operates a sled building and repair business, the sled is now ready for the race, said Phillips, and she doesn't have concerns using it.

But looking at the worn-down spikes on her brake pad, Phillips added she might be replacing it before she gets to the Fairbanks starting line on Feb. 11.

Gerry Willomitzer knows all about what problems with a sled while out on the trail can lead to.

Willomitzer was a frontrunner in the 2005 Quest, but a runner on his sled broke while heading into Circle, Alaska, and by the end of the race, he had fallen to sixth place.

'It's dangerous to do these what if?' scenarios, but I've been playing them through my head quite a bit after the race and if my runner wouldn't have broken, you know, I would have been in contention for third place,' said Willomitzer.

He has stuck with his sled manufacturer, also Gatt Sled, but has switched runners and worked on improved sled design, he said.

His food drop bags consist of horse, beef and chicken for the dogs, but he also has beaver and hot dogs available.

'Beaver is something the dogs eat even if they don't eat anything else,' he said. 'It's a novelty, because they usually don't get it. Just the smell of it. It's really rich. It's really fatty meat. It just has a very unique taste and smell to it.'

Hot dogs are also another trick to get the dogs eating, he said, though he personally hasn't ever had a problem with dogs outright refusing to eat while on the 1,600-kilometre trail.

'My dogs are not known to be very good eaters, but miraculously enough, though, on the Quest they pull themselves together. They know they have to,' he said. 'You don't have much time. You want them to eat. You want to jump start them.'

Phillips agreed that keeping it simple is the best tact with the drop bags.

'The more complicated you get the more there is to think about at the checkpoint,' she said.

For himself, Willomitzer has packed trail mix, granola bars, chocolate bars, dried fruit and Gatorade power.

'It's all stuff that I feel like eating when I don't feel like eating. It's the same thing as the dogs.'

This year, he has also packed army MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) instead of precooking food.

Saul Turner, the son of Quest champion Frank Turner, who has retired from the race, decided to go with fresh food.

'Freeze dry food is pretty good,' he said. 'Not as good as the homemade stuff, though. Homemade is better to look forward to.'

Turner has spent a lot of time boiling pasta to pack for himself and plans to just 'thaw and eat' it on the trail.

Kyla Boivin, who will be running the Quest for her third time, said she has trouble getting herself to eat on the trail.

'It all tastes like dust. It makes me gag and it's disgusting,' said Boivin. 'But, you need to eat.'

Willomitzer agreed. 'It's easy to stand out there on the sled and be lazy about eating and drinking and then you run yourself down.'

Boivin said she has packed seven different kinds of meat for her dog team, including horse, ram, chicken and turkey. But the treat for herself is dried meat given to her by an elder in Mayo.

'Real home-style dry meat, no jerky, no processed garbage. That's what I send special for myself,' she said.

On the weekend of Jan. 21, Turner was preparing his food drop bags. He spent the Saturday cutting up approximately 90 kg (200 lbs.) of pork. He is also taking high-performance kibble, chicken skins and ground horse for the dogs.

Willomitzer also had his food prepared well ahead of time and sitting in a trailer on his front lawn waiting for yesterday's drop.

Veteran musher Sebastian Schnuelle, however, said he preferred to wait until closer to the last minute.

When the Star spoke to Schnuelle on Friday afternoon, he said he wouldn't be preparing his drop until Saturday.

But when he arrived on Sunday, he had the most bags to deliver, with 50.

Rookie musher Kiara Adams, an 18-year-old from Mount Lorne, had the fewest, at 22.

However, she also had the most colourful, with the labels on the front decorated with brightly coloured markers. Beyond stating her name and the dropping point, they included pictures of octopus, boats, flowers and smiling suns.

'It's so they stick out like a sore thumb at the checkpoints,' she told race officials, who claimed they were the nicest bags they've seen in all the past 22 Quests.

The average number of bags per mushers, which can contain up to 27.2 kilograms (60 lbs.) of supplies, was about 42.

'I'm always interested to see how many bags other people have,' said Phillips. 'I'm just trying to see how they are packing, what they are looking for.'

Paul Geoffrion, a Whitehorse dentist and veteran musher, and Alaskan musher Hugh Neff also attended the Yukon food drop.

William Kleedehn, who placed second in last year's Quest only eight minutes behind winner Lance Mackey, was the last to arrive.

The race officials had been expecting rookie German musher Matthias Blum to bring his load to the drop, but he never arrived.

The Quest confirmed to the Star this morning that Blum has announced his withdrawal from the race. It takes the Quest's starting line down to 22 mushers.