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HEALY — The mission: Leave no duck behind.

That’s not so easy when there are 1,000 colored quackers and they are madly racing down the powerful and churning Nenana River.

This first-ever Denali Duck Race was more than a fowlish flirtation. It was a serious fundraiser in an unlikely venue.

As part of the longtime Denali Wildwater Festival, the plan was to raise about $8,000 for local youth programs in the Denali Borough.

The idea was hatched in mid-July by Jason Motyka and his partners Dave Coleman and David McCarthy at the Denali Park Salmon Bake, so it was a big project in a short period of time. Community partner and race sponsor Denali Outdoor Center dove right in to help make it happen.

Selling the ducks proved easy enough. Families and students from Tri-Valley School and particularly members of Healy Hockey and Kids in Motion, pitched in to sell ducks for $10 each, handing each purchaser a tiny souvenir duck as a thank-you.

On Wednesday night, each racing duck received a number. A handful of Healy Hockey volunteers wrote the racing number on the bottom of each duck.

Nine hundred sixty plastic ducks comes close to filling 10 5-gallon buckets — or one giant plastic garbage can.

The plan was simple: dump the ducks into the raging river, paddle alongside to monitor progress. Herd them toward the finish line, pluck out the winners and scoop up the rest of the flock.

Easier said than done, as organizers discovered during two practice runs in the weeks leading up to the race.

Once in the gray-colored glacial river, the ducks looked like tiny red, blue and yellow dots. They bobbed sideways, upside down, over waves and into deep sucking holes — over and over again. The current carried them toward shore, then back toward the middle of the river.

A flotilla of human-powered craft followed their progress carefully — and sometimes desperately — by raft and kayak.

These quackers kept the boaters on their game, trying to keep the ducks somewhat contained and headed for the finish line at Jonesville Bridge.

This was important because the owner of the first duck to cross the line would waddle away with $1,000. Second place $400, third place $300, fourth place $200 and the fifth and final duck $100.

The pressure was on. Carefully selected kayakers, members of the Denali Water Safety Team, were assigned to grab those first five ducks. Everyone else’s job: collect every duck. Leave no duck behind.

At the finish line, a crowd of Alaskans braved the wind and cold to line the foot bridge across the Nenana River, each cheering on their special duck.

In the end, the swarm of color passed beneath the bridge. Luckily for organizers, and the pickup kayakers, it was obvious which ducks were in the lead.

Once those were plucked out of the water, the fleet moved in to collect the remaining 955 ducks.

Mission accomplished.

The winners were:

Sue Isabelle of Anchorage, fifth place, $100. She happens to be Judy Hundrup’s sister. Hundrup is the treasurer for Kids In Motion, which helped sponsor this event.

BJ Keith of Healy won $200 for fourth place.

Ralph Mongold of North Pole won $300. Mongold works for Roadrunner Expediting and delivers mail to Healy on Saturdays. Postmaster Aleta Blanchard sold him the winning ticket. He promptly donated all his winnings back to youth programs here.

Maurice Welch, a dentist from Anchorage won second place, $400. He also indicated he wanted to return the winnings to youth programs.

The $1,000 winner was Marty Martsolf, a retired carpenter from Fairbanks who used to work in the Healy area.