Neff holds 3-hour lead on Gatt going into Dawson layover HALFWAY POINT: Gatt and Anderson will take off after Tok musher Thursday.

Across the rolling hills of the Yukon Tuesday, Tok musher Hugh Neff kept urging his team forward, knowing that a long rest awaited in Dawson City.

Along with some shut-eye, Neff and his 13 dogs own a considerable lead in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race between Whitehorse and Fairbanks.

Neff, who finished a close second two years ago, arrived in the town that once was the heartbeat of the Klondike Gold Rush at 3:35 p.m. PST (one hour later than Alaska).

When he leaves before dawn Thursday after a mandatory 36-hour layover, he'll have a three-hour edge on second-place Hans Gatt, the defending champion from Whitehorse.

Gatt didn't finish his 100-mile run from Scroggie Creek, the previous checkpoint, until 6:36 p.m. Former runner-up Ken Anderson arrived at 8:30 p.m. and Brent Sass at 10:05 p.m.

Eleven other mushers were on the trail between the remote Scroggie Creek checkpoint and Dawson City, as of Tuesday night. It's a section of trail on rolling hills that includes a climb over the 4,000-foot King Solomon's Dome.

The daunting distance leaves mushers out of touch for hours and hours on end.

"I train by myself all the time," rookie Jodi Bailey of Chatanika told the Fairbanks News-Miner before setting out. "But it's a lot different when you know that it's just a one-day thing or an eight-hour thing, whereas this is more like a 20-hour thing.

"And there is a hospitality cabin halfway that I will be stopping at and hopefully there will be humans there who talk," she said.

In Dawson, the halfway point, mushers must complete a 36-hour layover before continuing towards Alaska.

Head Quest veterinarian Alan Hallman told the News-Miner the hard trail of this year's race can be tough on dogs' joints, but that the number of dogs dropped so far is normal.

"We're seeing happy dogs," he said. "Some look like they just started."

Among the mushers on their way to Dawson City are 2009 champion Sebastian Schnuelle, and a pack of impressive rookies -- Dallas Seavey of Willow, 23; Wade Marrs of Wasilla, 26 and Joshua Cadzow of Fort Yukon, 23.

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