“All great ideas in the North – or most of them, I think – are germinated in a bar setting,” says Jeff Brady, one of the co-founders of the Yukon River Quest.
He remembers sitting in Skagway’s Red Onion Saloon one winter in the early 1990s – “back when the Red Onion was open in the winter” – talking over ideas for the upcoming centennial of the Klondike Gold Rush. Ultimately Brady and the others settled on the idea of a hiking and paddling race that would retrace the route the Stampeders took from coastal Alaska to the gold fields. Racers would hike over the Chilkoot Trail, jump into canoes on the shores of Bennett Lake, power through the flat water on Bennett, Tagish, and Marsh lakes to Whitehorse, and then follow the Yukon River all the way to Dawson City.
“The first year, in ’97, we made it for Alaskans and Yukoners only,” says Brady. The inaugural Dyea to Dawson Centennial Race was open to a maximum of 50 two-person teams. “We had that race, and the top five teams were free to enter the next year’s race, and then we invited the world. And that’s when it really took off.” World-class paddlers turned up for the second edition in 1998, including Michigan’s legendary Steve Landick, who would go on to win it with his paddling partner, Solomon Carriere of Saskatchewan.
Dyea to Dawson had always been planned as a two-time event only, to mark the 1897-98 centennial. But there was a desire to keep the momentum of a paddling race going, Brady remembers. “So that’s how the Yukon River Quest was born, in 1999.” (This year’s race marks the 25th running of the Yukon River Quest, even though it’s been slightly more than a quarter-century since the race began. Blame Covid!) For the first few years, the River Quest was formally an offshoot of the Yukon Quest dogsledding race – the mushers were experienced race organizers, the routes had substantial overlap, and the canine Quest was looking to run a summer event – but soon the Yukon River Marathon Paddling Association was formed, and took over the running of the event instead.
The new race was shorter and more streamlined. There was no hiking component, no international border to cross, and no paddling on the Southern Lakes. Instead, racers would begin in Whitehorse, and head straight downstream for Dawson City. The event has stayed basically the same ever since, with occasional changes to the length and location (or, sometimes, locations) of any mandatory stops. The field has also expanded over time, both in overall numbers of racers and in the types of boats allowed. Dyea to Dawson had featured exclusively tandem canoes, and the YRQ had followed that rule at first. But very soon, kayaks were added, and the voyageur class (the beloved Paddlers Abreast team appeared on the scene right around then), and then the solo boats, in Brady’s recollection. The latest additions are the stand-up paddleboard, which had its first entries less than a decade ago, and the C4, which entered the fray even more recently.
“The one thing I know that we resisted was rowboats and outriggers, because we didn’t think they would carry enough of the required gear,” says Brady. “That was always the rules discussion on those kind of craft.”
Since the founding of the race, Brady has spent long stints on the YRMPA board (though he’s not a current member) and has also run the race enough times to earn a Great River Club membership, paddling more than 5000 kilometres worth of races. In that time, he says, he has seen the field get faster overall.
“I’d say more and more teams are getting under that 50-hour mark,” he says. “Unless the river’s super slow, you’ll have probably a quarter of the field hit that. Whereas maybe twenty years ago only a handful of teams could hit that.” He notes that a lot of regular but recreational racers have been quick learners over the years, absorbing lessons from the professionals who also show up to race. And knowledge about marathon paddling techniques is widely available now, from sources like YouTube and elsewhere – that wasn’t the case when the race began.
(“I’m very proud of the one record I hold in the race… the slowest time ever,” Brady adds. In 1999, in the inaugural YRQ, he and his wife Dorothy finished last in a field of 12 finishers, making it to Dawson in 103 hours and 57 minutes including their mandatory eight-hour rest. “After that they started making cut-off times.”)
Still, while paddlers may have gotten savvier, the challenge remains unchanged. “The river can do anything to anybody,” Brady says, remembering a year when one of two dueling lead teams hit a massive boil around the Rink rapid. The lead team dumped, and their rival team stopped to help them – and in the end, the paddlers who swam wound up winning the duel, and the race. But whether you’re fast or slow, “all kinds of things can befall you,” says Brady.
As part of the 25th anniversary celebrations, Brady and Whitehorse author John Firth have put together a book that will document the Yukon River Quest’s first quarter-century. “[Jeff] called me and he said, do you want to work on it together? And I said sure, why not?” says Firth. He raced in both instalments of the Dyea to Dawson, and in 2004 he published a book, River Time, that is partly about his experience in that event. But, he adds, “I haven’t had a whole lot to do with the race over the last number of years,” beyond following along from the shore.
Working on the book has been a process of discovery and re-discovery. “When you think you know something, you read something else and you go, oh, I never knew that! You always learn,” Firth says. “It took me re-reading notes from back in 1998 and 1999 to remember that it was myself and Yvonne Harris and Derek Engles who sat down at my kitchen table and figured out what this race was going to look like. Because we had the Dyea to Dawson, but this was a different race. We had to figure it all out. We picked a hybrid of the rules between the Dyea to Dawson and the Yukon Quest.”
“This book has been a deep dive into probably close to a thousand photos,” says Brady, who focused on the visuals while Firth took point on the text. It’s nice, he says, to have a record of the early years of the race, and a document of its first quarter-century.
(Brady and Firth both donated their time to create the book, as did long-time Whitehorse Star editor Jim Butler, who is editing the manuscript. It will be available for pre-orders soon, and printed and ready for distribution by the end of November.)
Twenty-five years is a long time, but those early races aren’t ancient history yet. The winner of the second Dyea to Dawson, Steve Landick, also went on to win the YRQ in 2001, 2004, 2005, and – did I miss any? Anyway, the point is: Landick is back in the field this year, and though he no longer holds the current course record, which he set and re-set multiple times in the race’s early years, nobody is likely to count him out.
Long live the Yukon River Quest. Here’s to another twenty-five years!