Quite an adventure with a record waiting to be broken. I paddled against one of the previous record holders, Rod Price, in the first Yukon River 1000 mile race in 2009. By making some lucky successful and risky shortcut choices we out paced him by a few hours at the finish.
There are a few differences in the Y1K:
- We were allowed to paddle up to 18 hours/day (we timed it to the exact miinute) and were required to random location primitive camp for six hours each "night" to include the hours between 2315 and 0200 as officially verified by SPOT tracking. We paddled at our 6.5 mph pace some days as far as 190 miles/day in the average 6 mph current in the upper river.
- Absolutely no direct contact or support from any pit crew assistance was allowed at any time from start until the finish. But if you wanted to stop in Carmacks for an ice cream snack, or Dawson, for example for any reason, then as that option was available to any other team as well, but without taking support from or making pit crew contact. In 2010, one team spent the night in Dawson (and finished the race poorly).
- In this first 2009 race, each team was required to start with 22 Kg (44 pounds) of food/paddler on board, not including weight of water necessary to rehydrate the food. That was a lot of home dehydrated food for my seven paddler voyageur team (in six days to finish we consumed less than 1/3 of it). That ridiculous requirement was dropped in following year Y1K races.
- No WAG bags or special accommodations other than the guys using a (wide mouth) gator aid bottle, and the ladies on board brought various specialized contraptions made for their needs (met with limited success). Other than verbal warnings, there was no privacy. For more serious needs, we would stop on shore once, no more than twice a day, with total timing while stopped kept to no more than seven minutes.
-In the first few years, the entry fee was $250/paddler. More recently, with the race under new management organization, the fee has shot up to $2150/paddler! Carrying of cell phones or two way radios is no longer allowed as it once was. No stopping for self-support in Dawson or any place else outside of your primitive night camp. Originally, near-real-time online SPOT tracking for location timing calculation was made openly available to support crews and to the public waiting for a passing glimpse and encouraging cheers at the few observation points and at the finish line, but that is no longer the case under the new management rules. I used the data from each year's race to update and improve my own mapped best route for efficient planning in my future races.