Carrie’s Ramblings

Volunteering for the Yukon River Quest
Carrie posted in Recreation on July 2nd, 2007

I just had the best time ever helping with the Yukon River Quest! Oh it was so much fun!  In fact, I think I’m going to skip the working stage of my life and go straight to retirement just so I can have time to volunteer for things like this all the time!  When people asked me why I was involved (usually they’d ask which team I was waiting for and were surprised when I said I was just a volunteer and attached to no particular team) I’d tell them about wanting to get involved and being in Whitehorse to do research.  And they’d ask what about and I’d tell them and then joke that this was secretly an interview and everything they just told me was being recorded.  We laughed and had a great time!  Heaps of people kept volunteering to be interviewed but I’d have to gently let them know that since my research was about the community of Whitehorse, them being from Texas and just visiting the Yukon wasn’t really going to fit… But I made some great contacts both locally and internationally and I’ll definitely be fitting my return to the Yukon around the race next year.  I’d like to race in some capacity or another so I exchanged email addresses with a number of people. One girl who raced with her Dad this year said she was thinking of putting together a girls Voyageur team for next year and asked if I was interested.  If I can’t race then I’ll definitely volunteer again.  

I helped in Whitehorse for 2 days doing equipment checks and registration. There were 87 teams registered and we finished with 70 with only one scratching after Carmacks when his partner got sick and fell out of the boat at Five Finger Rapids. The race starts on Main Street with the gun going off and more than 160 people racing down 1st Avenue to the river and jumping in boats. Two Voyageur teams were off first and were leagues ahead of the pack by Carmacks. They were neck and neck until the bitter end when the Texas team widened the gap and team Kissynew couldn’t catch them. They almost beat the race record of 40 hours by coming into Dawson at 40 hours 2 minutes or something ridiculously small. They shattered the Voyageur record and have started a trend attracting highly competitive Voyageur teams. These guys were intense. Their seats were on rollers and they would paddle on one side for 30 seconds and someone would call out and they switched sides so fast they didn’t miss a beat. As we sent them away from Carmacks we watched them paddle off and when they switched sides this other guy and I looked at each other and said, “Did you just see that?!?!!?” Crazy intense. However one Voyageur team was the funniest story ever. Apparently there was more than a bit of tension in the boat between the bowman and sterman with the crew in the middle just wanting everyone to shut up and paddle. When they reached Carmacks the sternman got out of the boat and told them he never wanted to “$%#ing see them again” and proceed to walk down the highway. He hitched a ride back to Whitehorse wearing his wetsuit, paddle in hand. It was so funny for us but we felt bad because it meant that the whole team had to scratch. They continued on just as tourists anyway to finish the race and though they were too embarrassed to come to the closing banquet, the board was going to give them Finishers pins regardless just because it really sucked for them.

I drove a man from Anchorage’s car up from Whitehorse to Carmacks and was supposed to continue on to Dawson but plans changed suddenly. He and his Dad were giving the race another go (they had to scratch last time) but his Dad is 73 and was in quite a bit of pain after having paddled 30 hours straight to get to Carmacks. So they decided to scratch again and were prepared to head home. They offered to take me and Maya up to Dawson on their way through but I was still helping in Carmacks! So we thought about it and asked around and I found a ride with one of the board members up and back from Dawson so it worked out. I worked through the night (or as dark as it really gets) in Carmacks which was so much fun. Under the midnight sun we inspected gear, provided wake up calls and count downs for participants, helped them get their boats in the water and off they went to Dawson. I worked with some other great volunteers until about 3 am and then crashed for a couple of hours and got up to find the camp deserted except for those too sick or hurt to continue. Carmacks is a mandatory rest stop of 7 hours and people are really tired by the time they make it there. We would stand on the dock on the river and catch boats as they came by because the paddlers were so zonked that they couldn’t understand our instructions or what they should be doing other than paddling forward. I couldn’t believe some of their expressions as they landed. Sometimes it was relief but mostly it was this blank look of confusion and fatigue as if they weren’t sure if this was really the checkpoint or if it was just another hallucination. And there were plenty of hallucinations by both racers and volunteers. People saw tigers in the forest and old women doing their washing in the river or their partner was wearing a salmon as a hat or they could hear entire symphonies playing in the background. After spending the whole day on the dock I was convinced that the floor of the canteen was moving and was found looking underneath the deck trying to figure out the mechanics behind a swaying building. Some racers joked that they got more rest than the volunteers which in some cases was true! But it was so great to meet paddlers and their support crews from all over the world including Britain, Australia, Germany, Japan, Israel and heaps of Texans. I don’t know what it was with Texans and this race…I even found out later that 2 of the most active volunteers that night were actually just some hitchhikers that one of the board members picked up on the way to Carmacks! They talked about the race and offered to spend the night helping out! They were great and acted as the personal support crew to every single team that landed without their own crew. They set up their tent for them and did their laundry and cleaned out their boat while they slept!! It was fun!! Anyway, the next morning we cleaned up and headed up to Dawson.

Dawson City was creepy. It’s like a ghost town that people actually live in. The cute little tourist shop is squeezed in between the rotting stables and an abandoned brothel from the gold rush. In between the houses are log shacks that haven’t been updated since the turn of the century. In between volunteering at the finish line, I wandered the streets and checked out the shops. I am pleased to say that like Skagway and highly geared towards tourists at least most of the shops carry Yukon Made artisan souvenirs. Yeah you could get your cheap souvenirs still but there was a lot more authentic stuff. Like gold that was actually mined in the area and trade beads and paintings etc. However, the best part about my stay in Dawson was that I was rooming with a local and she knew where the real gems were. Off the beaten path is where I found some of the best shops and restaurants. I got to meet the locals and saw a whole different part of the city that the average tourist misses. That being said I did check out the museums and went to Diamond Tooth Gerties casino. I lost $10 playing Blackjack (Hey Big Spender!!) and only played because I got chips as change for buying a beer. Stupid tricky casino. I should have saved the chips to buy more booze. But I couldn’t believe how easily people threw away their money at the Texas Hold’em tables. Hundreds of dollars in the wrong card, in 2pair-Ace high whatever…I will never be a gambler. But I enjoyed the dancing show and afterwards went to the local’s bar known as the Arm Pit. This place was scary!! It’s the only surviving orginal building in Dawson and I was seriously concerned for the structural integrity of this place. I mean it had character but I could see where the ceiling was sagging and the floor was uneven because of permafrost. This honky-tonk local band of old guys was up playing and people were dancing and SMOKING! You can still smoke in the bars in Dawson: UGH! I left around 2 am and was stunned when I stepped outside and it was brighter than in the bar:) There were people wandering around the streets as though it were the middle of the day and I realised why young people kept telling me that Dawson is so awesome…it’s a party town. I wandered around for a bit and the whole scene reminded me of some of the staff quarters I’ve lived in. Drunks and drugs everywhere and an all night party. When the tourists are sleeping the students come to life and take over the dirt streets and wooden sidewalks. Amazing.

Anyway, the weather cooperated (it was unbelievably hot in Dawson!) and the race came off without any major problems. The final racer came in after 77 hours and 23 minutes of paddling over 740 km of river with only 10 hours of rest and he received the Yukon Stove award at the banquet. The stove is split in half because of the stories of frustration from the gold rush. Prospectors would come over the Chilkoot and build a boat on Lake Bennett and paddle down the Yukon but by the end of it would be so frustrated with the trials of the journey some partnerships were not salvageable. In the end they would have to split up their goods like a bad divorce and couldn’t agree on who got what so they would split everything down the middle. Everything included splitting whole boats and stoves in half! However, Joe was a solo canoeist and had no one to fight with so they gave him both halves of the stove to take home:)

I had such a good time with the River Quest and totally recommend it to anyone out there looking for a challenge and adventure. I’m in for next year!