Organizers of the Yukon’s famous Klondike Road Relay were forced to make some tough decisions ahead of this year’s race after a tour bus crashed at kilometre 52 of the South Klondike Highway in northern British Columbia on Friday — just hours before the event was set to start.
Tracy Bilsky is the executive director of race organizer Sport Yukon.
“[The crash] was a few kilometers past the suspension bridge, so around checkpoint 5, so smack in the middle of the race,” she said, referring to the Yukon suspension bridge in northern British Columbia.
The Yukon RCMP reported at 5 p.m. on Friday that the single vehicle collision had closed both lanes of traffic, though reported at 6:30 p.m. that the road had reopened.
The fire department in Skagway, Alaska shared more details about the crash, involving a 25-passenger bus, in a Facebook post on Saturday morning.
According to the post, The Skagway Fire Department responded to the emergency, with help from Yukon emergency services. The statement also said two Holland America Princess tour buses also helped respond to the accident, with medical personnel aboard the vehicles also tending to victims of the accident.
Bilsky says that there were no deaths in the accident. However, she says one passenger was airlifted to the Whitehorse General Hospital.
Bilsky and her team also made the decision to cancel the first three legs of the race because of road closures that resulted from the crash.
She says the decision had to be made swiftly in order to prevent “hundreds of people” from making the trip to Skagway.
Bilsky confirmed that prior to this year, no part of the race had ever been cancelled.
Tracey Bilsky is the executive director of Sport Yukon. (Liam Baker/CBC)
This year’s race was sold out, with runners coming from across North America to partake. The overnight race typically begins in Skagway, and follows the historic White Pass trail, before concluding in downtown Whitehorse’s Rotary Peace Park.
Initially, Sport Yukon had made the decision to forego tracking times for 10 person teams this year, continuing to track times for 8 person teams and youth teams beginning in Carcross.
However, they later reversed that decision.
Estimating that it typically takes teams four hours to complete the first three legs of the race, organizers decided to continue timing the 10 person teams, adding four hours to their overall times.
“Starting everyone at the Canadian border meant… we had just moved the start line,” Bilsky said. “So then we decided to award fastest team times for basically a seven person team.”
Teams can race in multiple categories including open men, open women, mixed mens and womens, and a youth division. Super SHEroes, a team consisting almost entirely of Whitehorse-based runners, won the open women’s class for the second year in a row.