Neff holds his huge Yukon Quest lead

Neff, a Tok musher who is seeking his first championship after finishing second two years ago and third last year, held onto his comfortable lead Saturday. He led second-place Dallas Seavey of Willow by almost nine hours.

Seavey seized second place late Saturday by zipping through the Slaven's Roadhouse checkpoint, about 300 miles from the finish line in Fairbanks.

Seavey was the eighth musher to reach the roadhouse, arriving at 8:53 p.m. -- about 14 hours after Neff.

But while Neff and his 13-dog team rested there for 5 1/2 hours before leaving at 12:25 p.m., Seavey spent all of 17 minutes there. He was back on the trail at 9:10 p.m. with 12 dogs in harness, still hours behind Neff.

Neff probably isn't ready to proclaim victory, though.

In 2009, Sebastian Schnuelle trailed the leaders by more than eight hours when he reached Central, about 160 miles away from the finish of the 1,000-mile race.

But frontrunners Neff, William Kleedehn and Jon Little all encountered a blizzard while climbing 3,685-foot Eagle Summit. Kleedehn needed 16 hours to make it to the next checkpoint and Neff and Little needed 13 hours. Schnuelle was far enough behind that he caught a break in the weather and made the run in five hours.

When he arrived at the Mile 101 checkpoint, Schnuelle was still 85 minutes behind Neff, the race leader. But earlier, on his way to Central, Neff's team had veered onto a road near the trail. Rules require mushers to return to the trail if that happens, but Neff stayed on the road for about five miles. When he reached Central, he was hit with a two-hour penalty.

Neff served the penalty at the penultimate checkpoint in Two Rivers, giving Schnuelle the opening he needed to win. Schnuelle's margin of victory was four minutes -- the closest in race history.

Two years later, Neff appears to be headed toward redemption.

He was the only musher at Slaven's for about five hours Saturday. At 5:34 p.m., Gatt and his 11 dogs arrived.

Schnuelle, a Paxson musher also driving 11 dogs, arrived eight minutes later. Ken Anderson of Fox, who is down to eight dogs, was right behind, pulling in at 6:05 p.m.

Gatt is leading the chase pack thanks to Brent Sass of Fairbanks, who is also involved in the race for second place.

Gatt survived a hellish night Thursday holed up on the Canadian side of American Summit, where howling winds and snowdrifts stalled almost everyone but Neff, who climbed the 3,420-foot pass ahead of the worst of the weather.

Gatt tried to make the summit, but the wind had blown in portions of the trail and his dogs were neck-deep in snow, he told KUAC radio of Fairbanks.

"I tried to punch a trail out for them but it blew in so fast it was almost impossible to keep it open," Gatt said.

Sweating from the labor, Gatt found a place to camp and crawled into his sleeping bag, wet with sweat. Later, feeling hypothermic, he decided to push the help button on his SPOT GPS unit, he told KUAC. But he pushed the reset button by mistake.

About four hours passed before Gatt peeked out of his sleeping bag and saw Sass and his dogs heading up the pass.

"Brent is known for being an absolute great sportsman," Gatt told radio reporter Emily Schwing. "... I knew it was gonna be OK."

Sass told Gatt that his lead dog, a 70-pound husky named Silver, could get both teams over the summit.

"So he attached his leaders to the back of my sled," Sass, who has a history of heroism on the Quest trail, told KUAC. "We weren't thinking about competition at all up there. It was survival."

Together the teams made it over the pass and into Eagle, the first checkpoint in Alaska and the most remote checkpoint on the trail from Whitehorse to Fairbanks. Gatt told KUAC he almost scratched in Eagle, but the town is so remote -- accessible only by plane, snowmachine or dog sled in the winter -- he decided to keep moving.

"There's not a whole lot of choices out here," he told the radio station. "I've gotta get to Circle and make a decision there."

So far, five mushers have scratched and one has been withdrawn, leaving 19 mushers in the 28th annual Quest. A winner should reach Fairbanks late Monday or early Tuesday.