Pierre-Antoine and his Siberian Huskies leaving Fairbanks

Pierre-Antoine Heritier is well known by La Grande Odyssée Savoie Mont Blanc fans. He took partin the first edition and has been improving every year since 2005. His multiples participations to the toughest stage race in the world has prepared him and his dogs well to enter the toughest long-distance race in the world.

The Yukon Quest is run on the trails used one century ago by the adventurers of the gold rush made famous by Jack London. For those who have read his books, names like Dawson, Whitehorse, Forty-Mile, Scroggie Creek, pelly Crossing are familiar. These are the names of some of the Yukon Quest checkpoints. The teams have left Fairbanks in Alaska heading towards Whitehorse in Canada through deep forests, on frozen rivers and over passes like Rosebud or Eagle Summit

Pierre-Antoine wears a La Grande Odyssée fleece jacket at the Two Rivers checkpoint

This race is known as the toughest because there is a lot of distance between the checkpoints, sometimes up to 250 kilometers. It takes a lot of accurate skills to be able to cmap in the wild and take care of your dogs and you. The famous Mont-Cenis bivouac of La Grande Odyssée Savoie Mont Blanc, at an altitude of more than 2000 meters (6500 feet) is one of the place were Pierre-Antoine got the opportunity to improve his skills.

His siberian huskies and him have already travelled more than 500 kilometers. There are not too far from Dawson where they'll have to take a weel deserved 36hour-mandatory rest. Pierre-Antoine is still running a full team on the lien (14 dogs).

Another LGO friend is on the Yukon Quest 2010: Geraldine Sgro is a memeber of the veterinarian team. Geraldine has been a veterinarian on La Grande Odyssée Savoie Mont Blanc 2008.

The favorite contenders of this Edition are Lance Mackey (Yukon Quest Champion 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008), Hans Gatt (Yukon Quest Champion 2002, 2003, 2004), Hugh Neff (2009 runner-up), Zack Steer (2004 runner-up) and last but not least Ken Anderson (2008 runner-up), who took the 2nd place of La Grande Odyssée 2006. It's no surprise as those 5 are at the present time leading the race. Apart from Anderson, all of them are running on the same run/rest schedule: 8h run / 6h rest. We shall see after Dawson some of them doing some daring shots to try to get a bigger lead.

We'll keep you updated.

Visit Pierre-Antoine's website.

Photos: Nicolas Dory