Yukon native Jessie Gladish has finished this year’s Yukon Arctic Ultra endurance race in first place under extreme conditions.

She came in at approximately 4 a.m. this morning, pushing her fat bike over the finish line. She was all smiles as she arrived.

“I feel happy to be in Whitehorse, and that was a long way,” she stated.

Gladish described the trail as “awful. For the most part. Yesterday was great, and the first day was good. The other ones were pretty soft.”

The ending for her wasn’t without drama, as approximately eight kilometres of overflow forced the organizers to reroute the trail. The decision was made to bring Gladish to the Takhini bridge, where she resumed her journey to the end.

“There’s some pretty significant overflow on the Takhini River, so they decided to re-route it,” related Gladish.

Physically, understandably, Gladish was hurting.

“My knee’s hurting from pushing my bike in the soft snow.”

Gladish spent about 70 per cent of the time pushing her bike.

“A lot more than I would have expected.”

Gladish later remarked that pushing her bike was like “pushing a plow” and said it was exhausting.

“I’m going to get in my friend’s truck and they brought some food for me and I’m going to go home and have a shower and go to bed.”

Race organizer Robert Pollhammer was asked how he felt to see Gladish finally make it.

“Well, amazing. It’s been a very tough year this year for the Arctic Ultra. A lot of snow, more than ever I think for us. Wind on the lakes, so even without the snow, just windblown trails. It’s been fairly cold at the beginning, then way too warm at the end, and more overflow than I’ve ever seen.”

“And it’s all changed so much. We had bad trails, and we had good trails, and we had so-so, and then really bad again. It’s just all over the place.”

“The overflow’s what really messed us up, so instead of being able to go to Madanna (Lake) as we had planned, for the 300 mile turnaround, we had to turn the people around earlier, shortening the overall distance to 250 miles, and then today, we had overflow problems again on the Takhini (River), and had to take a distance off again. We did a restart at the Takhini bridge, that’s when Jessie then did the remaining part, and everybody else has to do the same.”

Pollhammer said despite the trials and tribulations, it was a fairly normal year as far as the amount of athletes that finished the race.

“For us, it’s normal that not everybody finishes it, so the percentage of people finishing it is probably pretty normal; it’s just the circumstances are a little bit different.

“It’s been amazing. I’m glad we did it. We learned a lot. Not just because of the pandemic, but also because of overflow, it’s something I think is going to happen more often in future years and that we get more snow, so we just have to learn to deal with it,” he added.

Pollhammer reiterated how happy he was to see Gladish reach the finish line.

“Seeing Jessie coming in is always exciting. She’s done our 430 mile race several times – on foot, on ski, and now for the first time she’s been here on bike– as always, all smiles.

“Today was emotionally a little bit tough. If you were thinking about your final stretch, you start to be really looking forward to this, and then we came and we had to interrupt it. It was like ‘no, sorry , we have to discuss options’ and that took a while, and ... the longer it takes, the harder it is for an athlete who’s just sitting there waiting for a decision. That was tough.

“I’m glad that she got to go that last 20 km again, because I think it allowed her to refocus and calm down a little bit and look forward to the finish line.”

Kevin Leahy of Ireland came in at approximately 6 a.m. this morning.

Germany’s Stephan Huss, Daniel Benhammou of the U.S and Ireland’s Aodh O’Currain were still on their way to the Muktuk Adventures checkpoint early this morning.

England’s Philip Cowell was on his way to Dog Grave Lake.