A rookie musher from Fairbanks, Alaska, will be the first off the start line at this year’s Yukon Quest.

Jessie Royer pulled bib 1 at Thursday evening’s Start and Draw banquet, held at the Yukon Convention Centre.

The 40-year-old musher got her start with dog teams in Montana and has been running dogs for 25 years.

While new to the Quest, Royer has run multiple Iditarods and won the 2016 Race to the Sky in Montana.

Following Royer out of the chute will be Yuka Honda, the popular Japanese musher who now calls Yukon home.

The Yukon Quest Start and Draw banquet was a sold-out, pre-race event, the highlight of which was the mushers’ drawing of their bibs.

After an evening full of food and entertainment, the mushers lined up near the stage to draw their bib number from a large, autographed bunny boot, donated by Harry Kern.

Their bib number also corresponds to their start order when the race begins Saturday morning at Shipyards Park in Whitehorse.

The racers drew in the order they had signed up and British-Canadian musher Rob Cooke started the procession.

Cooke drew bib 4. This will be his fourth running of the Yukon Quest with his kennel of Siberian Huskies.

Last year’s champion, Hugh Neff, of Tok, Alaska will start in ninth place, chasing down two-time Yukon Quest champion Allen Moore, who is running his seventh Quest.

The start order really doesn’t hold any bearing on the results of the race as the racers’ times are adjusted at early checkpoints to account for the staggered start.

The YQ300, which also begins Saturday, will have its start order decided at a race meeting today.

As mushers took to the stage to draw their numbers, they thanked their sponsors and others who had supported them in their endeavour to race.

Ed Stielstra, the rookie musher from Michigan who missed his mandatory vet check last week, was a man of few words, saying only his bib number – 12 – before rushing off the stage.

Some bib sponsors prepared a gift for the musher who draws their number, such as Bear’s Paw Quilts’ Ruth Headley, who created a beautiful quilt for Mendenhall musher Gaetan Pierrard.

Headley said she has been making quilts for mushers since 2009 and has a collection of photos of the mushers with their quilts on the wall of her shop.

The last musher to draw was Kotzebue, Alaska rookie Katherine Keith, who was the last musher to sign up for the race.

She’d had her paperwork filled out first, she joked on stage, but it took her a long time to submit it.

“I’m sorry to say I took so long to fill it, and actually turn it in, because I didn’t just wait for the last day to sign up, I waited for the late entry on the last day of the late entry,” she said. “I had to figure out a way to try to convince the rest of my team home in Kotzebue that this really was a good idea.

“It took a little while to get the courage.”

While Keith, who drew number 19 wrapped up the evening’s events, they began with the Canadian Rangers marching the mushers into the room with a flag procession.

Representatives from the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council addressed the crowd, welcoming them to use the trails that cross over their traditional lands.

Jeanie Dendys, Minister of Tourism and Culture remarked on her experience growing up in Northern B.C. and seeing her mother run dogs.

She encouraged the mushers to reflect on the lands of the First Nations.

“Draw on the strength of the first people,” she said.

She also spoke of how mushing is a big part of winter tourism in the Yukon.

Mayor Dan Curtis lamented that he was addressing the mushers at the beginning of their journey, instead of the end, when he enjoys hearing of harrowing tales from the trail.

He said he had nothing but admiration for the teams competing.

“I look forward to next year, when you arrive in our beautiful city.”

In odd years the 1,600-km Yukon Quest is raced from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, while in even years it runs the opposite direction.

After dinner was served – a buffet of caesar and tossed salads, roasted vegetables, Yukon Gold potatoes, local Arctic char and roasted BBQ chicken – the audience was treated to a performance by players of the long-standing Frantic Follies Vaudeville Revue and musician Hank Karr, who opened his set with a rendition of Johnny Horton’s “North to Alaska” and had the crowd signing along to his “After Yukon” tune.

The 34th Yukon Quest will begin Feb. 4 at Shipyards Park at 11 a.m.

See the Yukon Quest supplement in today’s Star for more Yukon Quest stories and photos.

2017 Yukon Quest start order

1. Jessie Royer
2. Yuka Honda
3. Ben Good
4. Rob Cooke
5. Sébastien Dos Santos Borges
6. Jason Campeau
7. Paige Drobny
8. Allen Moore
9. Hugh Neff
10. Gaetan Pierrard
11. Laura Neese
12. Ed Stielstra
13. Dave Dalton
14. Brent Sass
15. Ryne Olson
16. Brian Wilmshurst
17. Hank DeBruin
18. Ed Hopkins
19. Katherine Keith
20. Matt Hall
21. Torsten Kohnert