HALF BAKED FUN— Fairbanks musher Brent Sass, shown with his favorite trail snack of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, exchanged a mushing team and lessons for aerial documentation of his Quest run with the help of a two friends.

Brent Sass decided last March he wanted his rookie run of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race documented in words and photos, and he had buddies who could do just that.

The problem was, Sass lacked the 10 grand in cash such a venture would entail.

So with the race start approaching, his pilot friend Zack Knaebel found the solution: He would guide photographer Ken Tape on a two-week trip, and in return Sass would set up Knaebel, a mushing neophyte, with a team of sled dogs and instruct him on the basics of the sport.

No money changed hands in the barter, and the two signed a contract.

"I wanted to get into mushing in large part because of the incredible experience I had mush with Brent," said Knaebel, who mushed and caribou hunted with Sass for a week last spring in the Brooks Range and has joined him for outings in the Chena Hot Springs area, where Sass manages sled dog tours. "I don't know how I came up with the idea. It was a last-ditch thing to make it feasible. It's not like I would do this for someone off the street. It sprang from friendship and mutual needs."

The third piece of the puzzle was Tape, who is posting blog entries and photos almost daily on Sass' Web site (www.wildandfreealaska.com), as well as for Popular Mechanics online.

Tape had begun to doubt the trip would progress from concept to reality, and as a busy doctoral candidate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks wasn't sure it was prudent for him to make the commitment.

"(Sass) told me last March it's a done deal, you're going to fly the Quest, but as the day approached the odds of it looked more distant," said Tape, who has done aerial photography on glaciers as part of his biological sciences studies.

About 10 days before the race start in Whitehorse, Tape checked his phone messages.

I hit play and all I hear is 'Pack your bags, buddy, you're going to Whitehorse,' and I knew right away that I was," said Tape, who missed an important National Park Service meeting in Fairbanks while airborne in the Yukon wilderness.

Sass said last week the project is working out perfectly. Most days, he'll see Knaebel's bush plane overhead a few times and meet up with his documenters briefly on lakes, rivers or ridges where the plane, outfitted with wooden skis, can land.

"It's very uplifting," said Sass, who rested at Slaven's Cabin off the Yukon River on Saturday, the same remote place Knaebel and Tape spent the night.

"They're not following me around (all day). Sometimes I acknowledge them (in the air), sometimes I don't."

Sass reached Chena Hot Springs at 8:40 p.m. Wednesday in 16th place, and should reach the Fairbanks finish sometime this evening. His run has slowed since Sunday when a dog of his suddenly died; the cause was determined to be a piece of ingested fabric that perforated its intestine.

Sass sees the documentary project as an exercise in altruism, not narcissism.

"It's important for the fans," said Sass, 26, who added a message to the blog one day but will wait until the Quest is over to view the whole package. "That's one of my goals, to help dog mushing out, to promote the Quest and dog mushing in general. It's about the sport, for sure."

The feedback, so far, has been positive, with more than just friends and family logging on to read Tape's behind-the-scenes commentary and view, according to Knaebel, "the most incredible photographs I've ever seen of the race, bar none." That's saying something, considering Knaebel, who grew up in Fairbanks and now lives in Tok, has become a Quest junky both through guiding clients and volunteering several times for the Yukon Quest Air Force.

Tape's photography takes overcoming some challenging conditions.

For aerials, the door of the 1947 Piper PA-12 is propped open "DeLorean style" (using vise grips to hold it because the hydraulics broke in the cold) and Tape shoots through a tiny frame for as long as he can endure the cold, which at 25-below and considering the wind generated from traveling 50 mph is only two or three minutes.

"It's really cold," said Tape, who changes batteries every minute. "The window of time is half a second and I depend completely on Zack to line up a shot."

The single-engine plane is slightly larger than a Super Cub and great for landing on snow or ice but averse to pavement and gravel.

"It's the quintessential Alaskan bush plane," Knaebel said after and adventure-filled day last week chasing Sass between Braeburn and Carmacks.

That same day they relayed news to Quest officials about a dog death from Yuka Honda's team.

"It's a safety net for the Quest to have people out there in airplanes," said Tape. "We have a lot of information with us when we come into a checkpoint."

Their access to the race is unparalleled.

UP IN THE AIR— Pilot Zack Knaebel, left, and photographer Ken Tape, helped musher Brent Sass of Fairbanks by photographing much of Sass' Quest run from Whitehorse, Yukon, to Fairbanks.

"I don't care if you're a musher on the trail. You're not seeing mushers three times a day," Tape, 29, said. "You have that omniscient perspective."

Knaebel, 30, the owner and sole pilot of Outer Limits Alaska, admits the mushing venture is a bit daunting.

"I don't know how you can be a bush pilot and a dog musher, they're the two most expensive hobbies in the world," said Knaebel, who first took flying lessons from a family friend at the former Phillips Field airstrip when he was just 11.

"I hope to be able to use this dog team some day to run the Quest," Knaebel said from Central on Monday, while detouring from his guiding mission to help the Quest transport some dropped dogs from Slaven's — where it was 50 below zero — to the checkpoint on the Steese Highway. "Hopefully within the next five years."