June 2024

When news started breaking that the Yukon River Quest had been cut short at Carmacks due to wildfires our worst fears were being realised. We were days away from flying out to Whitehorse and the possibility was looming that the 1000 might be cancelled.

Returning to Australia after withdrawing from the 2023 Yukon 1000, we’d put a new plan in place to return to the Yukon and finish what we’d started. Top of the priority list had been dealing with my reaction to smoke. Through a long process of doctor’s appointments and tests, my doctor had determined that I didn’t have Asthma, but I did have an inflammatory reaction to smoke. This was confirmed by my reaction to some small hazard reduction burns while we were back training in Hobart. He gave me a prescription for an inhaler which would relieve the symptoms, and some stern advice to not go where there was smoke.

Six months later, we were watching news feeds from the Yukon where into the smoke was exactly where we intended to go.

We spent most of the week on the edge of our seats checking websites¹²³ that tracked fires and smoke plumes across The Yukon and into Alaska. The River Quest paddlers had come face to face with fires burning on the river banks and by some accounts jumping across the river in front of them. Two particularly vivid photos from the race sparked the most concern…

For the last 17 years we’ve lived and travelled in Australia, a country that burns with explosive energy almost every summer. I don’t think you’ll find an Australian – even adopted – who has a casual attitude to fire. Fire moves quickly, changes direction with the winds and destroys everything in its path. We’ve only had one close call with a fire that threatened to cut us off from our escape route, but that feeling of dread will live with us for a long time.

Now we were monitoring seven or eight major fires burning along the course of the 1000. For four of them, our concern was limited to the smoke they were creating. They were 30-50km from the river, burning unmanaged. In fact most of the fires we were looking at were unmanaged. The North is a vast area where fires are only fought when they threaten people or infrastructure. The rest of the time, they are left to burn themselves out. Part of the cycle of regeneration in The North. Also why you’re not allowed hammocks on the 1000. The trees aren’t big enough.

One of the fires at Pelly Crossing was close to both people and infrastructure. It threatened the only highway from Whitehorse to Dawson and was ultimately what had caused the River Quest to be stopped. The organisers had been concerned that a highway closure might prevent supporters getting to the finish line in Dawson or racers getting back to Whitehorse. Jon, had sent out comms that the 1000 was still going ahead because there was no dependency on the highway for supporters or officials.

While the smoke had us concerned, the red flags were four fires that were burning on the riverbanks between Fort Selkirk and Stuart River. Near Fort Selkirk and Coffee Creek there were fires burning on the hills overlooking the river. Watching them burn via satellite, they were both uncomfortably close to the river at choke points which would be uncomfortably hot if the wind caused the fire to jump the river.

When I’m not steering a kayak with Kate, I work with media photographers who are trained to work in active bushfire areas. When I talked to one of them, I got some great advice, which boiled down to “Don’t go downstream into something you can’t see your way out of. If the smoke doesn’t get you, the lack of oxygen will probably kill you before the radiant heat does”. Another bit of sound advice which didn’t sit well with the situation we were facing.

Further downstream even bigger fires were burning around the confluences of White River and Stuart River, but as long as they stayed where they were, their only contribution was smoke, lots of smoke.

And me with a heightened sensitivity to smoke…

There was a lot of hand-wringing and what-if discussions that week. One consideration was that if the race was being held in Australia, we’d have cancelled already, if the organisers hadn’t already called it themselves. Aussies may be nonchalant about snakes, spiders, crocs, and colourfully circled cephalopods⁴, but we take fire seriously. If the only difference was the cost of airfares and the entry fee, were we now making a safety decision on the basis of what we’d spent? The rules said the entry fee was now non-refundable, that point had been passed three months earlier. Trying to read Jon’s mind, was he holding off the decision to cancel the race until the absolute last minute?

In the end we decided that our best outcome was to turn up at the start line in Whitehorse and make the final decision at the start line. If we pulled out, everything we’d spent up to then was flushed down the toilet – the entry fees, provisions,  flights, accommodation. We’d bought a boat! This was our third attempt at the 1000 if we included a COVID-cancelled entry in 2020. We’d pulled out the stops on this final attempt, and there wasn’t going to be a 2025 entry⁵. No way.

A few days later a friend in Whitehorse let us know that there was a fire burning in Alaska which was threatening to close the road between the finish line at Dalton Bridge and our flights home from Fairbanks.

At the same time a new weather system was moving into the Yukon bringing some much needed rain to dampen the fires and some winds to disperse the smoke. Maybe our luck was changing?

---

1. Smoke plumes across Canada – https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/ ↩︎
2. Fires across US and Canada – https://firms2.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/ ↩︎
3. Yukon Fire Service – https://wildfires.service.yukon.ca/ ↩︎
4. Google Blue Ring Octopus ↩︎
5. I’m file this under comments that haven’t aged well. ↩︎