CARMACKS — Hugh Neff shunned sleep and defied the cold to make it to Carmacks first out of the 26 mushers in the Yukon Quest on Sunday, beating the best of the competition by more than two hours.

“It’s 40 below — at least — but out on those lakes it’s windy too,” he said after feeding his dogs around 10 a.m. Sunday.

“I thought if anything, once I came up off the river and got up into the trees that it was going to be warmer; it was actually colder.

“I could tell because the sound was getting louder, the fog was getting thicker — and there was no open water,” said the 2012 Quest champion.

The frigid temperatures prompted Neff to stop nearly every hour to check his dogs between his Whitehorse kickoff at around 12:20 p.m. Saturday afternoon and his Sunday morning arrival in Carmacks.

“In the cold weather, you actually do have to stop a lot more and just make sure everything’s OK.

“It’s kind of gross but you’ve got to do it: they’ve got penis flaps, and when they’re peeing it’s caking up the urine — clean that off,” he explained.

“It’s really not a speed game; it’s a maintenance game.”

As for equipment problems: “That’s just at my house, water freezing up at my cabin.”

Neff, who has run the Quest every year except one since 2000, lives in Tok, Alaska, “so I’m accustomed to cold weather.”

Nonetheless: “It’s young man’s weather,” as he told Brent Sass earlier in the week.

“I haven’t decided yet if I’m old or not.”

Neff added he was feeling good physically.

“I’m on a diet. So I’m losing weight fast.”

He said he saw little exciting on the trail, aside from the northern lights that daubed the cloudless sky between Saturday and Sunday.

“To be quite honest, you’re so caked in ice that my view was from the top of my eyes to the bottom of my eyes.

“You enjoy the scenery, but we are so intent and focussed on our dogs that we are looking for anything off … I’m always looking to see if a dog has a gait or something that doesn’t look right.”

Brent Sass, who arrived third into Carmacks at 12:15 p.m., five minutes behind former champion Jeff King, was upbeat as always.

“It went really well out there,” he said, icicles clinging to his moustache.

“I kind of like these extreme conditions. I’m embracing the cold weather and the dogs are as well.

“I have fury dogs, so that it’s way better than warm weather for me,” he added. “It’s been a few years since we’ve had a cold Quest. And I usually thrive in the extreme weather.”

He said the frigid, hard-packed snow on the trail allowed a swift pace.

“Usually when it’s this cold, I feel like the trail is really slow, but I feel like it’s been pretty fast overall, actually.”

Like Neff, Sass chose to do his mandatory six-hour stopover in Carmacks, breezing past Braeburn.

Unlike Neff, he camped out twice on the trail, the first time with Cody Strathe, Mike Ellis and Rob Cooke, the second with Strathe and Matt Hall. Each stop involved a campfire and some chatter.

“That’s the beauty of the cold weather, it really justifies having a nice big fire to huddle around and talk,” Sass said.

As for Neff: “I don’t like to be around tons of other teams at the start of a race. It’s just too much chaos, too much stress.

“For me dog mushing is all about avoiding stress,” he added.

Hall, a 23-year-old from Eagle, Alaska, who won rookie of the year in 2014, did not fare as well.

On arrival in Carmacks, two of his dogs were off the tow line and in the sled, their heads poking out of the basket as Quest officials inspected his ride.

“They’re just not up for running at the moment, so a pretty heavy load. Each one of those guys is about 60 pounds,” Hall said.

He would drop both dogs from the race. Koyuk and Shaggy had been onboard the sled for five hours.

Joar Leifseth Ulsom and Strathe slid into the Carmacks checkpoint at 12:15 p.m. and 12:45 p.m., respectively.