CENTRAL -- For Phil Joy and Bill Pinkham, a successful navigation of Eagle Summit was far from just another dog sled ride.
Each had past traumas to overcome.
Joy, of Fairbanks, was among the six mushers airlifted off Eagle Summit during a vicious storm in the 2006 Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race. Pinkham, a Colorado native, had demons of his own. In 2001, he was separated from his team for more than five hours; a dog of his died there the next year.
"It was scary sitting and waiting in (Mile) 101," said Joy, who prepared to take off there Sunday into a stiff headwind and temperatures of about 10 below. "More than half the team was the same dogs that spent the night with me up there last (time). I think some of them were having second thoughts too."
Joy didn't care to relive in conversation the 2006 drama, focusing instead of what went right on Sunday. He is not a big fan of Eagle Summit being part of the Quest, however.
"Now that I've done it, now that I've got it out of my system, no, never again," Joy said of his desire to return. "I mean it's dangerous. There's rocks and no snow. Nothing I would ever take my dogs over by choice. But after what happened last time I kind of needed to do it."
And he and 13 dogs did it well, taking three hours and 46 minutes to approach and then climb Eagle Summit, drop down a steep pitch on the north side and finally overcome some tricky frozen overflow and make it to the checkpoint at Central.
"Every time there's something sketchy, I fake it. I pretend like it doesn't bother me and hope that the dogs can't tell that I'm faking it," Joy said.
Pinkham has not been on Eagle Summit since losing a dog named Friendly in 2002.
"It was on my mind," Pinkham said. "Fortunately it was not eventful today. Everything went very, very smooth."
Not so six years ago, when his foot slipped through the brake and got caught there and he could no longer control the team's speed.
"I had to flip the sled over to slow the team down. By the time the team got stopped, some dogs were tangled," Pinkham said. "One wasn't breathing anymore. I tried to revive it and had no success."
A year earlier, Pinkham was climbing Eagle Summit from the Central side when he lost the trail in a blizzard. He stopped the team and tried to rest but got cold and decided to look for the trail on his own.
"Twenty steps was 40 steps was 50 steps. I tried to figure out how to get back to the team and I couldn't find them," Pinkham said.
He walked around for four hours to no avail, then waited another 90 minutes for the sun to come up. Then he finally spotted the dogs and sled.
"They were a quarter-mile down the mountain," Pinkham said. "They were fine."
A dog in Pinkham's current team, an 8-year-old male named Maverick, was with him in 2002. He joined 12 others in completing the 28-mile run Sunday in two hours, 57 minutes -- faster than anyone else.
"I was not sure if (Maverick) was going to be up for this, but he's been doing incredible," Pinkham said.
By MATIAS SAARI
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner