FAIRBANKS — After looking at the powerhouse field in this year's Yukon Quest, Ed Hopkins admitted he didn't think he'd be able to crack the top 10.
The six-time Quest veteran ended up doing considerably better — his third-place finish was his best ever.
"It snowballed into something pretty good for me, I guess," he said after crossing the Fairbanks finish line at 8:02 p.m. Tuesday.
It's been a good week for the 50-year-old Tagish, Yukon, musher, who claimed about $14,000 for his third-place finish. His wife, Michelle Phillips, won the mid-distance Yukon Quest 300 last week, and was waiting at the finish line to greet him with a hug.
The race may also earn him some bragging rights at home.
Not only is Hopkins the top Canadian finisher in this year's race, but he topped Phillips' best run, a fourth-place finish in 2008. Hopkins has completed the Quest five other times, but never finished higher than eighth before this year.
"He's gonna pull rank," she said with a smile. "I'm gonna hear about it — it'll be ugly."
Hopkins owes his high finish to perseverance as much as blazing speed.
At various times he was running with mushers like Jeff King, Matt Hall, Cody Strathe, Ray Redington Jr. and Joar Leifseth Ulsom, but kept moving down the trail as competitors scratched from the race.
Hopkins said he's accustomed to training in the extreme cold that hampered many teams early in the race, when temperatures dipped to 40 below zero or colder.
Six of his dogs had never run a 1,000-mile race before, but Hopkins said he sensed that they were a solid group. Phillips plans to include the eight dogs that finished the Quest on her Iditarod team next month, and Hopkins declared "the future is looking pretty good" for their kennel.
"I knew they could do it," he said. "I've been working with these dogs for three years. I knew what they had under the hood."
He also persevered during a tough climb up Eagle Summit, where his team spun around and ran back down during the steepest part of the climb. Hopkins said he had to pull the team up eight feet at a time, setting the snow hook each time to reposition them. He figured it took three hours to go about 50 yards.
By the end of the race, Hopkins said he was feeling his age. He said a leg muscle was torn sometime during the final run, and he groaned as he hoisted himself up to the podium at the finish line.
His first Quest run was in 1993 when Hopkins was 28 years old.
"I'm a hurtin' unit now," he said.
Hopkins had the trail to himself on Tuesday, arriving nearly a day behind winning musher Brent Sass and runner-up Allen Moore, and at least six hours ahead of the rest of the pack.
British Columbia musher Damon Tedford nailed down the Rookie of the Year award with his fourth-place finish at 1:32 a.m. Thursday. Former champion Hugh Neff of Tok finished fifth at 3:11 a.m., with Normand Casavant of Whitehorse locking down sixth place four hours later.