CIRCLE, AK The winner of the 2004 Yukon Quest 250 race walked away with the red lantern as well after being the only musher to finish the 415-km trek in Circle, AK.

John Korta, a musher from Galena, AK, finished in first and last in the race on Tuesday after the other three competitors scratched.

Korta noted the four mushers had a 'fun, little race' going for some time until the others started dropping out. 'It's sort of anti-climatic to just win because you're the only one in the race,' he said in an interview Tuesday afternoon at the 250's finish luncheon at the Circle School.

'I held in the longest, I guess, and barely so at that,'

The Quest 250 is a smaller race than the 1,600 kilometre Yukon Quest, running between Fairbanks and Whitehorse. The mid-distance race uses the same trail as the Yukon Quest with mushers leaving the Quest's start line in the afternoon or evening after the Yukon Quest start. The race is used as a qualifier to compete in the larger Yukon Quest.

While the other three bowed out, Korta ran into some of his own problems last night when his team had to take an unexpected rest on Birch Creek. The musher wasn't sure if the team might have been distracted because the main leader was in heat.

'I didn't drive them that hard that they should have quit on me,' he said. The musher couldn't find a way to keep the dogs moving so the team shut down on Birch Creek.

'I was freezing my butt off,' he said, though adding the temperature didn't feel like it was below -45 C, as a number of mushers competing in the Yukon Quest have suggested.

His team isn't unaccustomed to the cold living in Galena where temperatures like -40 C aren't unusual. In Korta's longest run of the year where he was out for seven hours the temperatures reached -40 C.

In colder weather there's less room for error in dog care.

On Monday night, Korta found himself sweating as he ran back and forth between the sled and the tangles in the dogs' lines he had to contend with.

'And I was a little bit concerned for a minute there because (the temperature) was really dropping and I was soaking wet.

'But like I say, you just got to be kind of careful when it starts getting cold because you're on your own. It's not like someone's going to come around the corner and help you,' he said.

Overall, it was a 'crazy' trail for the musher.

'Going over some of those ridges and going over Rosebud Summit, I mean you can't describe it,' he said. 'I mean, I read trail descriptions, but it was - you gotta do it.'

Korta said he would like to see more of the Quest trail in the coming years.

Quest 250 race marshal Wayne Valcaq noted the importance of mushers trying the smaller race to get a taste for the Quest.

Korta has been running dogs for eight years.

'We were pretty content to just do it recreationally and haul wood with them and just mess around with the kids,' he said.

A litter of puppies changed all that for the musher when he found they could do more with the pups.

'It's expensive though,' he said. 'It's a whole different ball game going from rec (reational) mushing to racing.'

It also takes a lot of sacrifice from the family, as well.

Korta pointed to his numerous sponsors from Galena who have done things like babysit his kids so he could train, as well as his grandmother who made a wolf ruff for his parka.

'It's just little things like that everyone just pitched in,' he said.

While the musher is now qualified to run the Yukon Quest, he remains unsure whether he will compete in the race next year.

'I'm thinking Quest or Iditarod,' he said. 'I wanted to get a qualifier out of the way. It's a first step and we'll go from there.'