Tell The Raven Archives

The Yukon Quest

Hi I'm Polo I am doing a report on the Yukon Quest. I did a lot of research and this took me a long time, because I changed this whole story around into my own words so this is what I got so far:

The Yukon Quest was started by two guys named LeRoy Shank and Roger Williams. They gave there vision of gold to all the people in the north. The race was started in 1984 with 27 teams taking up 1,000 miles/ 1,600 km of dangerous paths of Whitehorse and Fairbanks, Alaska. This race always begins in the middle of February when it is extremely cold out. The starting place switches every year, when Fairbanks has even years and Whitehorse has odd years. The race always starts on time and will last from 11 to 14 days.

The race does not let more than 50 people join. The people who are in the race split $100,000 with 20 teams. To be in the race you have to be at least 18 years of age and you can't have less than 8 dogs and no more than 14 dogs. After the race has started you cannot add any more dogs. There is 9 checkpoints in the race. Yukon started to be a checkpoint in 1996. The teams cannot leave a checkpoint until they have rested for a while and the dogs are great conditions. All mushers need to follow the rules or they will receive fines, time penalties, and disqualifications. All bags of food and equipment must be put into cloth bags with the drivers name on it and it can't weigh more than 60 pounds. Straw is also required at each checkpoint.

All things that the mushers need have to be sent to the checkpoint. Each musher has to carry at least 8 booties for each dog for every 50 miles. If any of the dogs get injured or tired they must get put into the sled bag. Damson city just recently became a checkpoint. Now is a checkpoint in odd years and in Damson the mushers can get outside help.

I really thought that this was interesting to learn about. I got this idea from a friend that was doing a story on the iditarod