DAWSON CITY, Yukon -- Minutes before he took off from the Dawson City dog yard on Wednesday afternoon, Brent Sass gave each member of his team a quick rub and a few words of encouragement.
When he got to his lead dogs, Basin and Sound, the instructions were more specific.
"You know what to do," he said. "Go to Fairbanks, guys."
Sass was the first musher to leave the halfway point of the Yukon Quest at 3:01 p.m., exactly 24 hours after arriving in Dawson.
He departs with a lead of more than six hours in the 1,000-mile Whitehorse-to-Fairbanks race, with two-time defending champion Allen Moore departing soon after 9 p.m., to be followed by 2012 winner Hugh Neff and Norwegian musher Joar Leifseth Ulsom.
On Thursday morning, Sass and Moore were across the Alaska-Canada border were bearing down on the next checkpoint of Eagle, about 150 miles from Dawson. Trackers indicated that Sass was about 30 miles ahead -- with Neff and Ulsom farther back.
Earlier, a second wave of competitors pushed into Dawson on Wednesday. Ray Redington Jr. was the first among them, arriving at 10:20 a.m., followed by Ed Hopkins, Cody Strathe, Normand Casavant, Damon Tedford and Mike Ellis. Brian Wilmshurst, the only Dawson City musher in the field, arrived to cheers from a hometown crowd.
After weeks of frigid temperatures of minus-40 degrees or colder, the weather warmed considerably Wednesday. Morning temperatures were at about 15 below zero, with snow falling.
The shift seemed to take some mushers by surprise. Casavant arrived in the checkpoint in jeans, chugging a Mountain Dew as checkers examined his sled.
The Whitehorse musher said he stripped off his coat and snow pants on nearby King Solomon's Dome while working hard to push his team up the slope. He deemed it the toughest portion of his race so far.
"I never, never got cold, except today because I sweat a lot today," Casavant said in a jovial interview that he provided in both English and French.
Strathe was also happy but more subdued, saying he had struggled with sleep deprivation during the first half of the race. His dogs, however, have had a strong performance, he said.
"They know what they're doing -- they're putting me to shame," the Ester musher said. "I'm the one making the mistakes out there."
Wednesday night, Nome musher Rolland Trowbridge's race-tracking device was activated, which indicates he's requested assistance by activating his race-tracking device. According to the Quest website, the race coordinated with the Canadian Rangers and a team was sent to Trowbridge's location to assess the situation. They discovered that while both he and his team were healthy, they were unable to continue in the race, for reasons not articulated.