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The toughest dog-sled race in the world is run between Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and Fairbanks, Alaska. It covers 1,023 miles over the most forbidding winter landscape. Temperatures of -70 degrees (Farhenheit) are normal, with wind gusts of 90 mph. One recent year saw thirty-four men and four women plus more than 500 dogs start in Whitehorse on Feb. 8 at 1:00 pm sharp. The Quest takes 10 days to complete and it is never called off due to weather conditions.

Eagle is one stop-over on the 10 day race, about 700 miles from the starting line in Whitehorse. The 1905 school house and yard is the Eagle check-point and rest stop. Our RVs, and the tens and trailers of other volunteers and FEMA staff, are camped in the school yard. We use the old school house as a meeting place every night. The walls are covered with team stats and times, posters, banners, and thank you notes from past racers. The names of local people, many of whom we are helping and serving with, appear on the 24 hour monitor schedule.

The book Yukon Alone: The World’s Toughest Advunter Race by John Balzar details the celebration at the school house to welcome mushers and prepare them for the next leg to Biederman’s Cabin, about 100 miles away. I’ve picked a few quotes to share below.

We are here in +50 degree weather and 14 hours of daylight and can’t imagine what this hardy group endures in 2 hours of twilight and -50 degree temperatures as they pass through this check-point, our temporary home away from home.

-Ron Young

from Yukon Alone:

Now our destination is Eagle, Alaska, the next checkpoint on the Quest trail. A pint-sized village with a population of 180 [down to around 140 pre-flood] on the Yukon River, just downstream from the Canadian border, Eagle can be reached during the brief summers by taking a rough gravel road 160 miles north of Tok. In winter, the road is impassable and Eagle is wholly isolated except by bush plane, snowmobile, or dogsled.

Eagle is the most welcoming village along the Quest trail. There are two inns with a few rooms each, a small cafe that specializes in doughnuts and burgers, a general store with free hot dogs, and a couple of living-room craft shops-but otherwise, it is an elemental bush community of whites and natives. Much of the village celebrates the Quest as a winter festival, and children gather with their parents around a bon-fire that roars all night in front of the one-room schoolhouse that serves as the official check-point. …

In an unheated outhouse behind Eagle’s one-room school, I unpack my duffle and dress for the trail.

The author raced some legs of the trail and the book offers an accounting of his experience. More than that, it gives a rich history and some insight into the people and culture of this region for whom mushing dogs is not merely for sport but is an integral part of their survival.

It also should be noted that since the book was written in 1999, the town population pre-flood was down around 140. Also, one of the inns he described closed before the flood; the other inn and the cafe – the only thing that would resemble a restaurant or town gathering place – were destroyed by the ice.