Despite frostbite, Gatt says he's in the Iditarod to win

Frostbitten or not, Hans Gatt said this week he plans to compete in the Iditarod before retiring from sled dog racing.
His team could have won last year and may be even stronger now, Gatt told Whitehorse radio station CKRW. “I will definitely try to win.”
Still, he has only two weeks to heal from second-degree frostbite that ended a Yukon Quest full of brutal surprises for the champion musher. Gatt, who scratched from the race after a dunk into three-feet of water on Birch Creek, called this his most difficult race yet.
Need proof? Here’s a scene from Hans Gatt’s Yukon Quest:

In the clip, musher Brent Sass is helping Gatt’s team out of American Summit, where he had hit a wall of wind and soft snow in the middle of the night, he said.
“I was very well aware that I was getting very hypothermic and there’s only so much time you have,” Gatt said of an hours-long stretch he spent wrapped in a sleeping bag and soaking-wet clothes.
The interviewer had asked if Gatt had feared for his life during the race.
Gatt, who talked about leaving competitive mushing after the Iditarod, said he had. “I was conscious enough and I just knew up there that I was approaching the point where I probably would just pass out.”
The interview, posted Tuesday on the radio station’s blog, is a must-listen for Iditarod and Quest fans. It’s a raw, 26-minute exchange between Gatt and interviewer Steve MacArthur that answers many of the questions that followed Gatt home from Fairbanks as the mushing world recovered from a dramatic Quest and began preparing for the fast-approaching Iditarod.
Gatt, who finished just more than an hour behind Lance Mackey last year, is looking for his first win. I’d hoped to reach him early this week after hearing conflicting and vastly different reports about the condition of his hands. No luck so far. I’ll update if I hear anything about changes to his condition or Iditarod plans.
The race’s ceremonial start is March 5 in Anchorage.
Along with Gatt, several of last year’s Iditarod top 10 – Ken Anderson, Sebastian Schnuelle, Hugh Neff – are coming off a Yukon Quest that race marshal Hans Oettli called the toughest ever.
“We had an incredible snowstorm. You could be standing in front of a (trail) marker and you wouldn’t even see it,” he said in a phone interview from Whitehorse.
Who looked good coming out of the Quest?
Oettli said he thinks Schnuelle, who finished second, has a chance to place among the top five at the Iditarod. To Oettli, Schnuelle’s team looked the strongest arriving in Fairbanks. Good fat reserves. Full of energy.
“They were totally alert, still barking in the finish line, ready to go,” he said.

Hugh Neff, who withdrew after his team stalled at Eagle Summit and a member of his 2010 Iditarod team, 3-year-old Geronimo, died.
“That was devastating for me,” Neff said of losing the dog. He plans to use 11 or 12 of his Quest dogs in the Iditarod. Annie, his leader, sat out the Quest and will likely be on his team out of Willow.
Neff said he doesn’t plan on “hanging out” with Mackey along the Iditarod trail as he has in the past, hoping instead to challenge the defending champ.
“We’re letting this guy win instead of making him reach and do his best. We’ve got to push the envelope and make it a competitive race,” he said.
As for Gatt's hands, the Whitehorse musher says the injury forced him to cut a recent training run short, but that there is still time before the Iditarod.
“I will make it," he told CKRW. "It will be a challenge to keep my fingers warm. But there is ways to do that.”
"It will get better every day," Gatt said. "I just right now have to be careful so I don’t refreeze them.”
I wonder if Mackey -- who was the first to win back-to-back Quest and Iditarods -- is glad he sat out the first half of the double-header this year.