Yukon Alone: The World's Toughest Adventure Race (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Yukon Territory, Canada: latitude 61 degrees north-so far north that only a tiny skullcap of the planet exists above us..." (more)
Key Phrases: Yukon Quest, Bruce Lee, Yukon River (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Twelve dogs, a sled, and your wits versus 1,023 miles of danger, snow, ice, and wilderness. The Yukon Quest is possibly the toughest race on earth. Held earlier, farther inland, and at a more northerly latitude than its famous cousin, the Iditarod, mushers on the Yukon Quest routinely experience temperatures dropping to 40 below zero, with 50 below not uncommon. Winning isn't everything; just finishing is an achievement in itself. John Balzar tells the story of the Quest, the dogs, and the mushers in Yukon Alone.

Balzar, a roving correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, volunteered to act as the press liaison for the 1998 Yukon Quest. As such, he traveled the length of the trail, sharing cabin floors with resting mushers, shivering as temperatures dropped to 50 below, and becoming somewhat delirious from sleep deprivation. Balzar does an excellent job of capturing the frozen feel of the race:

The visibility worsens and now Bruce cannot see his leaders in the swirling merger of snowpack and wind. He searches anxiously for a glimpse of a wooden stake that will tell him that his dogs have not wandered off the trail, perhaps to the edge of a cliff. Bruce is not conscious of time or of distance, but only of the wind in his face. The dogs appear to be moving forward, but there is no way to measure progress.

He also paints warm portraits of the mushers--men and women like Mike King, a 37-year-old biker with a Harley-Davidson patch on his sled bag and a tattoo of the Quest trail covering one third of his back; William Kleedehn, who finished seventh in the 1998 race despite his prosthetic leg; Aliy Zirkle, a rookie musher who recovered from losing a dog to finish the race.

Balzar describes the Quest as "a mixture of celebration and ordeal"; Yukon Alone will inspire a mixture of envy, admiration, and relief. Envy of the free-spirited mushers, admiration of their strength and dedication, and relief that they're the ones fighting their way up American Summit in a blizzard with a 70-below wind chill. A gripping read. Mush on! --Sunny Delaney

From Publishers Weekly

Enthusiastically communicating his love of Alaska's captivating landscape and his attachment to the rugged eccentrics who make it home, Balzar introduces readers to the rigors of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race. The Quest, as it's natively called, is colder and more dangerous than the more renowned Iditarod. Covering 1023 miles and taking more than two weeks to complete, the Quest offers Balzar a vehicle for exploring the varied richness of Alaskan culture. Along the way, as he profiles trappers, bush pilots and others who come to test their mettle in the race, he returns to the question of what makes these people mush. He hitches along not only for the adventure of a lifetime but for a taste of an earlier, primordial state of being. Between profiles of the racers and others associated with the Quest, Balzar muses on what it means to pursue a wild life at the end of the 20th century. "The trapper and the vegan," he writes in a passage about fur trapping, "both live in constant awareness of animals and their suffering. The rest of us worry about getting rain spots on our suede jackets and complain because the people who package hamburger meat these days are always trying to make you buy a little more than you need." Throughout, Balzar remains somewhat of a detached observer. He enjoys the company of the mushers he meets, but he is always somewhat apart from them, too much a part of the civilized world even as he celebrates the ways people can, at least briefly, separate themselves from civilization and follow their own demons wherever they may lead.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (January 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805059490
• ISBN-13: 978-0805059496
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,728,158 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Real Scoop on the Worlds Most Challenging Dogsled Race, February 9, 2002

By	"naia1" (HI, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yukon Alone: The World's Toughest Adventure Race (Paperback)

John Balzar is first and foremost a reporter, with a reporter's unerring nose for news. So it should come as no surprise that word of the Yukon Quest, a 1,023-mile dog sled race through some of the coldest and most challenging terrain in the world, would capture his attention and get him started on the trail of a good story. What was a surprise, as much to Balzar as to his readers I suspect, was the degree to which the race and its participants came to matter. Quirky, devoted to a sport that doesn't translate well to television, and immersed in a way of life that 90% of the population can't begin to fathom, the people Balzar meets when he first heads north have "the power to fascinate."

Following the advice of George "Skip" Brink, a construction worker who volunteers at the race, Balzar stops taking notes, sets aside his writing tools, and asks what he can do to help out with the race. Thus begins his stint as a pooper-scooper and veterinary assistant at the race, in which he slowly comes to realize that he is there to learn as much about himself as about the race.

Yukon Alone is full of Balzar's characteristically insightful and amusing observations on life as he sees it, but it is not as polished or self-assured as some of his other work. In fact, the reader gets the distinct impression that Balzar is flying by the seat of his pants, figuring things out as the story progresses, which lends an immediacy and intensity to the writing. We are there, for instance, when he loses control of his dogsled team and ends up in a heap on the side of a trail with a nasty gash in his head. We stand by and watch with embarrassment as he asks a friend to fly him to see a woman friend, even though he knows he is risking both their lives. Here is a story that has much to say about what motivates and sustains us, and the importance of meaningful relationships with other creatures and the land. No doubt you will be amused and disgusted, shocked and dismayed, thrilled and touched by this book. The one thing you will not be is bored, which is one of the highest compliments I can pay Balzar.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read, March 25, 2000

By A Customer

This is a good and compelling, but not a great, book. The author needs a little bit more polish in his writing style. As another reviewer points out, he swears a bit too much. The parts of the book about drug abuse among dog sled racers, the insensitivity of reporters to native Americans, and the coming end of frontier life in Alaska were also a little disheartening (although these are not the author's fault). Nevertheless, the author does a great job of taking us into this amazing race. His description of the absolute dedication that dog sled racing takes was excellent. He does more than just talk about the race and the racers; he really uses the race to show what life is like in rural Alaska and Yukon. The author does a particularly good job of describing what cold temperatures do to the body (his "walk down the thermometer") and the sleep deprivation that sled racers experience. His analysis of animal rights and dog sled racing was also quite good, walking the fine line between the opinions of animal rights activists and the dog sled racers. I'll also never forget that one of the main goals of dog sled racing is carrying as little as possible on your sled (the author uses a curse word to describe this, by the way). I also appreciated this book because it describes the sub-arctic experience, as opposed to the many books on arctic and antarctic expeditions; you really come away from this book thinking of those two different climates as being distinct from one another.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent escape from the busy city, February 2, 2000

By	"zwanziger" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

I really enjoyed the book. The emotions this book brings out make it well worth the read. My puppy "Rugby" may soon have some siblings on the way, siblings that pull sleds.

A must read for anyone who likes dogs and/or travel/adventure.