Neff maintains early lead in Yukon Quest

Hugh Neff of Tok pulled out of the remote checkpoint of Stepping Stone on Monday morning with a 93-minute lead over hard-charging defending champion Hans Gatt in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

Ken Anderson of Fox was just nine minutes behind Gatt as the three frontrunners moved to nearly a two-hour lead over the rest of the field.

Neff, the 2009 runner-up in the 1,000-mile race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, had 13 dogs in harness as he headed toward Scroggie Creek, the next checkpoint some 70 miles down the trail. He's aiming to better his third-place finish of a year ago before heading to Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race next month.

Earlier, Neff told the Fairbanks News-Miner he was worried that the trail may be too good.

"It's a very, very fast trail so you have to be careful about pushing the dogs too hard where it's going to sap their energy," he said. "The trail's amazing, I mean really good. And the weather's nice. I don't think 30 below Celsius (20 below Fahrenheit) is that bad at all. You really only feel it when you get off the sled and you get into a checkpoint."

After Anderson, the runner-up in 2008, was Sebastian Schnuelle of Whitehorse, but the 2009 champion was almost three hours back.

Two mushers have scratched. Allen Dennis dropped out in Carmacks after conferring with race officials and Denis Tremblay dropped out because of a virus plaguing his team. Their departures leave 23 teams on the trail.

After Scroggie Creek, mushers head onto a 100-mile stretch of trail that traverses large rolling hills and a climb over 4,000-foot King Solomon's Dome before dropping into gold rush hub Dawson City. There, they have a mandatory 36-hour layover before heading down the Yukon River and over to the American side of the trail.

Fisherman's Choice Charters