New Zealand Kayakers Win Yukon 1000

Kiwi kayakers Ian Huntsman and Wendy Riach took on the world’s longest kayak race the Yukon 1000 for the adventure and ended up taking home more than the memories but also outright victory in the 1000mile challenge, against men’s teams.

“We knew we would do well but we didn’t think we could win, just finish on the same day as the winner,” said Huntsman.

The Canterbury kayakers completed the third edition of the great race in a double kayak in 6 days, 3 hour and 47 minutes.

“Sometime during the first day we thought something strange was going on and we shouldn’t be in the lead, we are a little bit more competitive than we though we would be.”

The Christchurch pair share an impressive history of wins at the prestigious Classic River race on the Waimakariri river to the Brass Monkey winter series…and more.  They will certainly cherish the Yukon win.

“In New Zealand terms we kayaked the whole length of the Clutha River everyday.”

“There are a lot of things you have to think about as you are eighteen hours on the go in the boats each day. There was a lot of tiredness as well and Alaska is extremely cold, freezing fog for four hours with visibility down to 30 metres and hail.”

“You have to take a lot of food and eat a lot. We took our adventure racing kit with thermals and have now learnt a lot and brought warmer Canadian clothes.”

“We led from start to finish, no one overtook us in the whole race.  You just don’t know if people have overtaken you during each days racing.  The river is big and so braided, with it being 4kms wide in places; you don’t know if someone’s got past you down a braid.  We were looking over our shoulders and also especially on the last day when we finished checked that there we no other kayaks on the finish line.”

The kayak adventure is held every two years from Whitehorse to the Dalton Highway Bridge, northwest of Fairbanks with this year’s runners up Jaakko Soivio and Heikki Hihnala from Finland just over two hours behind.

“It’s really enjoyable; it’s like adventure racing in a kayak,” commented Huntsman.  “You have to be happy to be in the wilderness on your own, very much on your own as there is nobody looking after you, there is no body anywhere.  If you like that, it’s great”.

“We saw three bears, one grizzly, which scared us to death as it was only about 20 metres away, as well as beavers and moose.”

“The scenery in Canada was fabulous everything was beautiful.  Into Alaska is was very cold, there was permafrost every where, everything was stunted by the cold.  During it all we were only sleeping 3-4 hours a day so it was very tough.”