DAWSON CITY – When Yukon Quest musher Rob Cooke and his team of Siberian huskies arrived in Dawson on Wednesday night, it was at a lightning pace and with a special passenger.

Cooke, a four-year veteran of the Quest, was carrying the ashes of a dear friend who passed away around Christmas.

Terry Boyes, a fellow Brit, first met Cooke at Meet the Mushers in 2013, at Cooke’s first Quest.

With his white beard and broad Yorkshire accent, Boyes stood out. Boyes announced that he and his partner Caroline would follow the token Brit team up the trail.

“They were just so friendly, and their personalities and sense of humour was just like ours,” Cooke said at his West Dawson camp Thursday, where he was preparing to pack his sled.

“My endearing memory of that 2013 race was looking across and Terry and Caroline stood right next to the front of the sled with big smiles to cheer us on.”

Boyes, 81, was a beloved member of the swimming community. His Union Jack swimming trunks were in the parcel that Cooke carried in his sled from Whitehorse to Dawson.

As Cooke’s headlamp floated along the horizon, just beyond the gazebo on Front Street in Dawson, Suzanne Guimond anxiously shifted her weight from one foot to another.

A friend of Boyes’, she was awaiting the delivery of the package, which she would keep safe until Boyes’ partner was able to make the trip to Dawson.

In love with the Yukon, Boyes and Caroline were fascinated by the yearly breakup in Dawson. They were engaged on the Yukon River in 2003.

In 1998, Boyes was nearly run over by an iceberg while filming the breakup.

“I was down at water level when it broke, filming it. A big piece broke into two and started to spin, and suddenly one piece started to push the other and I realized looking through my lens that it was coming straight at me.

“I threw the camera up over the bank, which was about 11 feet high, and scrambled up just as this great slab of ice hit the bank. It ripped out a tree right where I’d been,” Boyes told the Star in 2007.

“I was really smitten by the whole thing, by the whole tremendous power of it. So I’ve just kept coming.”

Guimond, who’s known Boyes for almost two decades, would meet up with him every time he’d visit Dawson, having him over for dinner and grabbing a few beers at the Pit.

“A very dear friend,” said Guimond of Boyes.

“I’m going to be really pleased to have him at home for awhile before he goes in the river, which is supposed to happen during breakup, but never knowing when breakup is going to happen, it’s a Terry thing.”

Cooke arrived in Dawson late on Wednesday, his team of Siberians trotting around the corner and into the checkpoint chute where a growing crowd greeted him.

After his equipment check with a race marshal, Guimond stepped in and introduced herself.

“Nice to meet you,” said Cooke, his voice gaining energy. “Would you like him?”

“I would love him,” she said.

Cooke had a minor scare as he took the package out of his sled.

“I looked at it and it looked like it was covered in ash, and I thought “oh God, the package has blown open,” said Cooke later. “It turns out it was just ice. We managed to laugh about that.”

Cooke arrived in Dawson a full day faster than the last time he ran the race from Whitehorse to Dawson.

“It’s going really well. Better than I probably could have hoped for. We got here... 24 hours faster than we did in 2015, and probably eight or nine hours faster than 2013, and the dogs are really running well,” said Cooke.

“I’m really happy, I was just saying to Chris (his handler) I’m a pessimist so I know something is going to go wrong really soon, so for the first half of the race I’m happy.”

Last year, Cooke had to battle a massive snowstorm before getting into Dawson in brutally cold conditions.

This year, his team of 14 Siberians: Psycho, Nutter, Skits, Loonie, Maddie, Dennie, Hitch, Ammo, Fram, Lady, Nyx, Redgrave, Bering and The Slug have a lot of experience running 1,000-mile races.

“They’re doing really well. They don’t seem very tired at all,” said Cooke as he arrived at the checkpoint. “I just hope we can hold it together for the rest of the race.”

Cooke arrive in Dawson with 13 dogs. He decided to drop Hitch in Pelly as a precaution.

Eleven members of his team have finished a 1,000-mile race and 10 have finished the Quest in this direction.

Cooke was having trouble getting any sleep before Dawson. He worked hard in the Black Hills alongside the team, but was struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I was having some real issues staying awake and seeing where we were going and they kept jolting me awake and that was really impressive,” he said. “They definitely remember the trail. They’re picking it up an hour out of the checkpoints.”

Cooke said that Psycho, a dog he’s had in lead for most of the Quest has been doing really well.

Some younger dogs have been performing as well.

“Slug is doing really well. He’s showing some signs of being tired running tonight, that’s the first time. He and Bering have just been cheerleaders for the team all the way through and have been making lots of noise for the team and bouncing and throwing themselves around and having a good time,” said Cooke.

“They both seem to be really enjoying it, both the young dogs, so I’m pretty confident they’re going to make it to the finish line.”

Carrying Boyes has allowed Cooke some time to reflect on their friendship.

“There’s obviously times when you wouldn’t think about it. There are other times particularly on the first day, I got dragged a lot on the first day, and there were times when I thought s---, he’s either laughing about this or he’s not very happy with me, but it was certainly a wild ride,” said Cooke.

“In some of the quieter times, when you’re on good straight trail, you can sit and think about it and it’s giving you a chance to think about him and Caroline and they’ve been over a couple of times and how sad it is he has passed away so soon.”

In his speech at the Start and Draw banquet last week, Cooke explained that Boyes had two wishes – to ride with a sled dog team and to have his ashes spread into the Yukon River at Dawson at breakup.

Guimond will keep Boyes’ ashes safe until breakup this year – whenever it might be.

Cooke took off from West Dawson this morning, following 36 hours of rest with his family and friends.

There’s some snow in the forescast, but Cooke isn’t focusing too much on that.

“A couple of the locals said that with 30 or 40 miles up the river we should be clear of it and it’s certainly not like last year,” he said.

“I guess we could run into those conditions at any time, but at the moment everything looks pretty good. It’s going to get colder, but that’s not a problem.”

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