Buy a copy of  Working Fire at: YUKON RIVER QUEST explore - Canada's Outdoor Magazine March/April 2008 I made my first trip to the Yukon to meet my wife's grandfather on his deathbed. It was February, dark all day long and exponentially colder than anyplace I had ever been. I stumbled into the hospital room, shedding mitts, hat and borrowed parka in order to shake old Hector's hand. He looked me over with a skeptical, half-blind eye and said to my wife, "So this is the guy you found for yourself in San Francisco, eh?" Yukoners are a breed apart: grizzled, hairy, tougher than you and eager to prove it. This is a place where if you get a flat tire in winter, you'll probably freeze to death before you tighten the last lugnut. I'm not exactly a milquetoast, but whenever I visit my wife's hometown of Whitehorse, I get the feeling that my in-laws are sizing me up and that under the glare of the Midnight Sun I'm coming up a little short in the manliness department. Hector spent his life building bridges and roads in 50-below weather without a word of complaint. He was hard on his many kids and grandkids, and in the end, most of them chose to stay right there in the frozen north rather than lighting out for someplace where the living is easier. Now they own hunting lodges and machine shops, they eat elk steaks for breakfast, and they lament the fact that global warming is making them soft since the average winter temperature has risen to &just" 20 below zero. My wife professes to enjoy the comforts of California living, but whenever I call a repairman instead of doing a job myself, or when I crank the central heating instead of splitting wood in a rainstorm, she gets that same dubious look that all my in-laws have, that look that says: This guy is much too weenie to have married into our family. All of which may help to explain why, one Wednesday in June, four years after the old man died, I find myself sprinting down Main Street in Whitehorse, starting out on one of the world's oddest adventure races, a contest I'm hoping will give me an honorary pass into this fraternity of frostbitten mountain men. And maybe even a grunt or two of admiration from the wife's family. The Yukon River Quest was started by people who realized that a true Yukoner can't be content with surviving the winter but has to perform feats of insane self-abnegation during summertime as well. The premise of the race is simple: Get in a canoe or kayak in Whitehorse and paddle like hell, round the clock, until you finish or drop out due to (take your pick): exhaustion, dehydration, hallucination, shoulder dislocation or grizzly bear attack. The 460 mile slog to Dawson City takes about three days, and when I talk to past participants, their descriptions of the race run the gamut from &horrendous" to "truly miserable." The river flows northwards through vast swatches of roadless wilderness. Steep banks bristling with trees crowd the shoreline and the river splits and meanders around thousands of islands. Experienced racers tell me horror stories about choosing incorrect channels, then wasting hours paddling out of slack backwater doldrums. The Yukon River became famous overnight in 1896 when a native fisherman named Skookum Jim found gold. Within a year, some 40,000 prospectors and hangers-on stampeded north to seek their fortune. The trip began with a hard sail to Skagway, Alaska at which point prospectors shouldered enormous packs for the brutal week-long hike over the mountain pass that separated them from their dreams. Wading through waist-deep snow, those lucky enough not to be killed by bears, avalanches or frostbite emerged at the banks of the Yukon River, where they built ragged wooden rafts for the desolate, 500-mile float to the goldfields. Modern Yukoners are fiercely proud of this pioneer heritage; events like the River Quest, now in its eighth year, are the way they prove to themselves that they've still got what it takes. I'm not much of a kayaker–I trained for a grand total of four hours prior to the race–but I am a world class insomniac and I take a beating well, so I figured an event like this would play to my strengths. How hard could it be? It's a river after all; if you do nothing more than float you'll eventually make it to the finish line. And until I heard the part about all the islands, I had figured that a direct downriver trip would fit well with my near inability to read a map. At the pre-race barbeque, people are packing their boats and sizing each other up. It's immediately obvious that I've been taking this thing much too lightly. My competitors range from bronzed, shirtless uber-kayaking deities to gnarled locals, the kind of guys who wouldn't consider going for a stroll without a couple of shotguns strapped to their backs. Whatever their background, though, they all look deadly serious and I find myself making up preposterous lies about the intensity of my training regimen. I sidle up to a massive dude who looks like the genetically engineered product of a Soviet kayaking gulag and ask him what he'll be eating. "I've got a protein drink in a bladder in the nose of my kayak. I just have to turn my head to drink&–he gestures to two tubes running up the neck of his life jacket–"and I can get my hydration and my nutrition without stopping paddling." A bearded local is tying bear spray canisters to the side of his boat and reminiscing fondly about the last time he faced down a "griz." Suddenly my survival gear–an mp3 player and a giant can of powdered Gatorade–is looking downright pathetic. The race starts with a sprint down Main Street, a jittery scrum of 150 people in lifejackets jostling for that extra second that can't possibly make any difference in a race of this length. But I run hard too, slam myself into the boat and shove off into the icy water. A glance at my GPS shows that I'm moving at twelve MPH. At this rate I'll make it to Dawson a full day earlier than I had planned. This isn't so bad- I'm a goddamned kayaking superstar! But six hours later it's a different world. I'm utterly becalmed, my wrist is making an odd popping noise and I'm cursing the day I met my wife. Don't other guys get to impress their in-laws by playing decent golf and buying expensive scotch? The river stretches ahead of me in unbroken lines of flatwater, the tedium of which is relieved only by the occasional gust-driven wave that threatens to swamp the boat. The racers have all spread out now, each of us locked in private combat with pain and exhaustion. I eat a Powerbar. I count 500 strokes, rest ten seconds and count 500 more. I scream out the words to every song I know by heart. I eat another Powerbar, then count 500 strokes. This is it. This is my life for the foreseeable future. 400 miles to go and I'm already a gibbering mess. As night approaches a stiff headwind picks up, doing nothing to improve my mood. But when the rain starts falling I realize that in the Yukon, no matter how bad things seem they can always get worse. I peel off my sweat-soaked underlayers, but my numb fingers fumble my dry shirt into the river. I wring it out and throw it into the hold of my boat, then dress again in the moderately drier clothes I've been wearing all day. The sky looks clearer downriver, so I put my head down and fire up a core-warming cadence with my paddle, grunting with every stroke as if I were on center court at Wimbledon. I think of my wife back home, tucking the kids in and making herself a mug of hot chocolate. She maintains that I'm crazy for even attempting this race, that I have nothing to prove, but the thought that I'm earning major points with every mile is about the only thing keeping me going. When I look up after several hours I'm in an otherwordly, gloomy kind of night, theoretically bright enough to read by if I was doing anything other than paddling. But gradually a fog descends in such thick layers that it's impossible to make out either bank. I'm on a tiny island made of water, with nothing but whiteout in every direction. If I thought I was on my own before, now I know what isolation really means. It's too damned creepy to keep going like this, so I forsake the fast water and hug the right bank so I'll have something concrete to set my eyes on. Islands emerge from the mist and I search in vain for the fast water before making blind guesses about the best course. I'm beginning to have the mild hallucinations of an all-nighter, so at first I dismiss the voices I hear as products of my overeager imagination. But when I see a fire on the left bank I make a beeline for it. A motor boat is moored at river's edge and along with the sound of laughter I smell bacon and hot coffee. There's no reason why I shouldn't stop–the race leaders are miles ahead of me and a nap by a roaring fire sounds like heaven. But when I get within a few feet of shore the idea of stopping suddenly becomes unthinkable. I came here to race, to get my butt kicked, to prove that when the going gets tough, this tough guy doesn't break for coffee. I'll be damned if I'll let another boat pass me while I'm resting. I float past without even yelling out a hello and let the river spin me deeper into the sopping fog. There's nothing lonelier than looking upstream to see a bonfire disappearing behind a bend in the river. Apart from the entrance fee, the thing that separates the Quest from a death march is the rest stop. Just before the midway point the river meets a rural highway in the town of Carmacks. Racers are allowed exactly seven hours to stretch, crap, make repairs, and if they're lucky, catch a few hours of sleep. Most years about a third of the racers come to their senses here and drop out. People who know what they're doing are met in the campground by support teams in RV's; once again I'm woefully unprepared. After 26 hours of nonstop paddling I make landfall where a burly Canadian soldier holds my boat as I unfold myself from the cockpit. "Need a hand?" he asks. I brush him off–I've made it this far by myself, haven't I? But as I try to stand, my legs collapse under me as if I'd just returned from a tour aboard the space shuttle. "Looking strong!" he lies as he drags my ass up the dirt path towards the campground. "Feeling strong!" I answer, collapsing in a heap at the base of a pine tree. Prior to the trip the thought of eating nothing but Powerbars seemed reasonable, but the last few have gone down like rancid sawdust. I'm ravenous for anything that doesn't come packaged in shrink-wrap, so I limp to the campground snack bar and devour a bacon cheeseburger in three bites. I buy five more for the road and set off to find a place to crash. But I'm not destined to be that lucky. I lie down on an open patch of dirt which is quickly invaded by two swarthy guys in buckskin pants. They set up a tent and proceed to make loud, guttural, Germanic love three feet from my head. The next place I move is an anthill and the place after that is home base for a pack of kids playing tag. Here I am in the Yukon, fifty million square miles of absolute friggin' nothingness and I can't find a sliver of peace and quiet. All around me people are dropping out of the race, hoisting beers and loading their boats onto trucks for the long drive back to Whitehorse. Quitting now would be so easy: no more wet clothes, no stabbing muscle cramps, a good night's sleep and the first flight out tomorrow morning. My left wrist is swollen to twice its normal size and my feet are twitching uncontrollably even after hours of stretching. Hell, I've already made it 200 miles and that's nothing to sneeze at. I stare at the hard plastic seat of my boat and the cheeseburgers already congealing in their bag, and start to convince myself that quitting now would really be the smart thing to do. But instead I imagine old Hector staring down at me from the backhoe he's undoubtedly driving in some rugged corner of heaven and saying "Yup. I knew it. San Francisco boy." Worse still is the prospect of calling my wife. Sure, she'd make the appropriate sympathetic noises, but the fact that I trekked all the way to the Yukon only to wimp out at the halfway point would hang over our marriage like a lead weight for the next 50 years. To hell with my broken body; it's my ego I'm worried about here. So I put on my spray skirt, drag my boat down to the river and sit my ass back down to face the next 260 miles. I come out of the rest stop feeling strong and, miraculously, the second night passes with only a modicum of misery. But by late afternoon of the third day, conditions inside my head are deteriorating rapidly. At one point I drink from my water bottle and say aloud, "that's great that you're staying so well hydrated, but what about Zac? I haven't seen him drink all day." I engage in vigorous debate with myself until I settle the issue by pointing out that there's plenty of water in the river for all of us. Fatigue doesn't begin to explain how I feel; I'm floating on the thin line that separates exhaustion from psychosis. Looking at my GPS I momentarily lose the ability to read. The word SPEED appears as gibberish, and I wonder whether you can even put two E's together in the English language. I conclude that the computer must have switched to Japanese and paddle on. Throughout the long hours of the third night I find myself in the constant company of Juan Valdez, the good natured coffee mascot of a few years back. I see him in trees, clouds, and even on an energy bar headed down my throat. He's not much of a conversationalist–maybe my shaky Spanish is to blame–but he offers me the same benign paternal smile he used to bestow on his plantation workers. Under the circumstances I'm happy for whatever companionship I can get. While I know my hallucinations will eventually make for good bar stories–Kermit the Frog breaking rocks chain-gang style at river's edge–my sleep deprivation is turning dangerous. I try three times to count to ten without falling asleep and three times I fail. My paddle falls into the river as I fade out of consciousness, and for a few panicky moments I stroke with my hands to catch it. The river must be a mile wide here, with dozens of channels, islands and back eddies recirculating to nowhere. If I fall out now I doubt I'll make shore, and it could be days before anyone finds my body. The Yukon is winning. Decisively. The finish line is tantalizingly close, probably less than twelve hours away, but my incapacitation is complete. It's been 67 hours since I've slept and I'm babbling madly, screaming into the wind and punching myself in the face to stay awake. Nothing's working and the odds of serious trouble are rising fast. Upstream I saw two bears patrolling the river bank, but I've simply got to stop. I pull over at a campsite only a grizzly could love: shallow gravel bar backed up to deep woods at the mouth of a side creek. There's bear scat and half-eaten fish skeletons everywhere and the fact that my pockets are stuffed with greasy cheeseburger debris only sweetens the pot for a bear coming out of hibernation. Nonetheless it's the loveliest place I've ever been. As a light rain falls, I bend at the waist and am asleep without even leaving the boat. Twenty minutes later I snap awake. The sky is a malevolent gray and I dry heave a few times before shoving off. But things are marginally better now; at least Juan Valdez is gone. Getting back on the water is the last thing I want to do so I tell myself that I don't have to paddle anymore, just let the river drag me to the finish line. It's a good plan, but after five minutes of drifting I feel foolish. After all, the Klondike gold rushers didn't come up here expecting the nuggets to fall into their laps, and Hector sure didn't count on the frozen tundra to magically transform itself into the Alaska Highway. If I want to have any claim on being a real Yukoner I'm sure as hell not going to let gravity be the force that propels my dead weight across the finish line. Screaming like a man possessed, I dig deep and break off fifty of the fastest miles I've paddled in the entire race. Around noon on the third day I see seagulls overhead, which means that there must be Dumpsters nearby. Houses appear along shore and finally, mercifully, I see a line of beached kayaks that can only mean the finish line. As I finish the race a ragtag bunch of fellow competitors cheer wildly and help me from the boat. Six toes are completely numb and my hands are so cramped that I have to ask a stranger to unzip my raincoat. My back is a solid red welt and I smell like something dredged from a sewer. Not that anything beyond surviving the race matters, but the first thing I do before finding a hotel is to check the results board and see that I'm the 36th boat out of 68. Not too bad for a San Francisco boy, eh? After a few blessed hours of sleep in Dawson, I hitch a ride back into Whitehorse late in the afternoon. As I unload my gear and hobble into a bar I imagine this must be what it felt like for the old miners when they came into town. I drain my beer and sit in semi-stupor as the bartender fries me a steak. I've got nothing but bruises to show for my labor, and in a way, that seems like the point. There's no gold left up here anyways, but the chance to continuously challenge oneself in such a monumentally difficult environment is the reason why old Hector came in the first place. You can pan for treasure or paddle a kayak or raise a family here; being a Yukoner is all in the attitude. I call home to tell my wife that somewhere during the race I cracked the secret code that should allow me permanent kinship with her frozen clan. I've got the stamp of Klondike approval for sure now, I tell her. "That's nice, honey," she says. "But wouldn't it be great if you did the race again next year so could improve your time a little?" Return to Articles © 2008 Zac Unger.  All rights reserved.  Site by Pixel Perfect Media.