DAWSON CITY – The toughest sled dog race in the world is certainly living up to its billing this year.

Yukon Quest musher Thorsten Kohnert entered the race halfway point in Dawson City on Thursday, describing a brush with an angry bull moose along the trail.

The 44-year-old Swede and his 13 dogs entered the checkpoint at 5:44 a.m., holding down sixth place in the 1,600-kilometre sled dog race.

A massive bull moose provided Kohnert with a massive adrenaline rush near FortyMile, between Eagle, Alaska, and Dawson.

“A big bull charged right for the dogs, went by the whole team,” he recalled. “I could just have reached and touched him.

“I yelled at him and then he came towards me and by just a foot passed by the sled. … It was a pretty good wakeup call.”

Kohnert finished eighth in last yearʼs Yukon Quest. He trails fifth-place musher Ed Hopkins by more than 10 hours, and he acknowledged he may have lost his chance at cracking into the top five.

“Iʼm not sure if I can come in any striking distance to the top five, but weʼll see,” he said.

Kohnertʼs incident wasnʼt the only one causing a stir at the Dawson City checkpoint.

This morning, Red Lantern favourite Hank DeBruin scratched from the odyssey after being forced to turn back from American Summit due to blizzard-like conditions.

It wasnʼt the first incident the Haliburton, Ont., musher endured on the trail. Earlier, he dropped his eight-year-old lead dog, Charlie, after she came close to losing her life just outside Central, Alaska.

Despite using his SPOT tracker to request assistance, DeBruin was allowed to continue racing thanks to a special allowance granted to him by veteran race marshal Doug Grilliot.

Early this morning, the 53-year-old DeBruin turned back from American Summit after being forced to don his snowshoes to break trail ahead of his team.

“Basically they got to the top of American Summit around 4 a.m. and he said it was so bad, he couldnʼt see where he was going,” DeBruinʼs wife, Tanya McCready-DeBruin, told reporters in Dawson this morning.

“There was two feet of snow and he was breaking trail in front of the dogs for two miles and it just kept getting worse.

“He said: ʻThis is stupid. We have 80 miles to go.ʼ

“It was a blizzard,” said McCready-DeBruin. “He said it was snowing like a bugger and blowing hard. He said he couldnʼt see anything and it didnʼt make sense to keep going.”

DeBruin returned to the small fly-in community of Eagle in hopes of making another attempt after a rest, but ultimately decided to scratch due to gnarly trail conditions.

“Heʼs never scratched in 10 years of racing,” McCready-DeBruin said, noting her vote was that her husband withdraw. “Our teamʼs has had a lot of challenges.”

DeBruin is the second musher to scratch following a scratch, earlier in the race by J. Jay Levi of Durham, N.C.

Grilliot acknowledged racing at the back of the Yukon Quest is a difficult task.

“When youʼre back there by yourself without anybody going ahead of you … the trail can get blown in in 30 minutes,” he said.

“We canʼt have machines leaving in front of every team. Yeah, it makes life more difficult when youʼre travelling by yourself back there.”

Yukon musher Yuka Honda acknowledged tough conditions between Eagle and Dawson City after entering the Klondike in eighth place. The 43-year-old is the second-ranked Canadian behind Hopkins.

She said the fresh snow, combined with drifted-in trail, slowed her team of 10 dogs.

“Me and (Fox, Alaska musher) Mike Ellis broke trail with snow up to here,” Honda said, pointing to her knees. “Some parts were OK, but most parts … oh boy.”

Added race rookie Seth Barnes, currently ranked ninth: “Thatʼs what the Yukon Quest is about though, right? Some people might not like it, but I like it cause thereʼs snow. Itʼs not ice and rock and dirt.”

The 35-year-old Alaskan is mushing a young team for Iditarod legend Mitch Seavey.

Since race leader Brent Sass arrived at the race halfway point early Wednesday afternoon, mushers have continued to trickle into Dawson City.

Fairbanks musher Tony Angelo, 56, is now in the Red Lantern position, and remains a ways out of the Gold Rush town.

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