Living intensely still

I thought about backing out. A 5:30 a.m. alarm jolted me back to semi-rigid legs, lips parched to the point of blistering, and shoulders aching from 130 miles of rough, high-altitude cycling. Beat had an ambitious plan for Sunday, the full extent of which I didn't know until I returned from a 98-degree pedal into Eagle and drive home while consuming 100 ounces of icy liquid and never once needing to stop to pee. I still felt like a sun-dried tomato. 

Beat recounted his plan, ascending 4,000 feet to a 13,300-foot summit, scrambling and boulder-hopping along a narrow spine to another 13er, descending a long boulder field to a reservoir, then more climbing, more descending, and a jog over to Beat's latest sanctuary: a gorgeous and relatively hidden high alpine lake. All in all, it was a big circumnavigation of a mountain that has been a favorite since we moved to Colorado, James Peak.

"That's going to go long," I replied. "Maybe past dark." 

He punched the plan into Strava's route builder. "No, it's only 23 miles. 9,000 feet of climbing. Just 7,000 feet if we skip Ute Trail and go through Tolland instead." 

The large parking lot surrounding Moffat Tunnel was nearly full at 8 a.m., setting the stage for a furious march out of the gate. Beat dislikes crowds. So do I, but they're hard to escape when it's a beautiful weekend morning in mid-July. I was ready to settle into the stream of humans for the privilege of moving slowly on tender legs. But Beat just wanted to put distance on everyone. He charged ahead, while I stumbled, faltered, and tried to keep up.


When people ask when, where and how Beat and I met, it can be a simple story. "July 2010. Columbia Falls, Montana. He was the only runner smiling at the finish of the Swan Crest 100." That was my first impression of Beat — he seemed deliriously happy for someone who had just emerged from a brutal beatdown in the Northern Rockies. I was a volunteer checking runners in at the finish line, and most of their demeanors ranged from nonplussed to shell-shocked. Beat alone was grinning from ear to ear. We struck up a short conversation. I told him I was an endurance cyclist but not remotely a runner. 

"You could run a 100-miler. You could do it next week!" he encouraged me. "In fact, I'm running another one next Saturday. You should come!" 


Beat charged hard the entire climb to James Peak. He stopped to wait for me at frequent intervals, at times playfully admonishing my slowness. He teased me about overdoing it on my bike trip, while I insisted that I was just naturally slower in the mountains, this was the best I was ever going to be, and after a decade, he really should know this by now. He stayed cheerful, but I was becoming frustrated and surly. The sun was fearsome at this altitude, and my breathing had become somewhat strained. I was pushing myself too hard, but it was difficult to pull back.


Our early courtship can't be condensed into a simple story. I was settling into my relatively new life in Montana after abruptly abandoning Alaska, and training for Trans Rockies, a mountain bike stage race. Beat, as I first described him on my blog, was "a Swiss-German software developer who works for Google and lives in the Bay Area — as in California. In his free time, he invents things, like a satellite-enabled remote control for his espresso maker so he can fire up the machine from a half-hour away. He also runs. A lot. He's completed seven 100-milers this year alone, eight if you count his last race twice. That one was more than 200 miles."

That race was the first annual Tor des Geants in Courmayuer, Italy. He mentioned it briefly when we met in late July. I was so struck by our first conversation that I guessed his name (which I had forgotten) from a list of Swan Crest 100 finishers and looked him up on Facebook. The first post I saw from him was a disgusting photo of his mangled feet going into the Headlands 100, which was his followup race to Swan Crest. We struck up an online conversation that evolved over the next few weeks. At one point, I asked him why he felt compelled to endure all of this abuse, month after month.

"I just want to experience the intensity of life," he wrote. 

In my 30-year-old, single, newly independent life in Montana, I realized this was also everything I wanted — to spend my short time on Earth riding the highest waves, to battle the troughs of hardship and drink deeply from crests of joy. Truly, I didn't want to float along in comfort and security. The hard edge is where life sparkled. 

Beat urged me to come run with him. He proposed the Bear 100 in Utah as a meeting place, less than a week after he was set to return from the Tor des Geants. The 200-mile race over the giant mountains of the Italian Alps sounded like the most intense experience imaginable — with the exception of the Alaska winter races I'd been talking up for as long as Beat had tried to sell me on trail running. There was no way he could run another 100-miler after TDG. I didn't believe him for a second, and made no real plans to join him as his pacer. Anyway, I was going to be away in Las Vegas at a bicycle retail convention until the weekend. Everything about the proposal was impossible. 

At the top of James Peak, Beat asked me how I was feeling. "Okay enough," I said. "I can probably handle Bancroft." Mount Bancroft is the next peak in this James group, at the crest of the Continental Divide. If you take a tumble while picking your way along the ridge, your blood could trickle toward the Atlantic or the Pacific, depending on where you landed. I've been intrigued by this line but intimidated by the committing terrain. James to Bancroft sounded doable enough. If it was still 2010, I'd have jumped at the opportunity without a second thought, but a decade of bruises and torn ligaments have made me leery. I scoured the Internet for photos, observed the boulder field, the shark teeth rock formations, the chokehold that supposedly held a few class three moves. Honestly, it was all straightforward and not that hard. But factor in fatigue and recent struggles with proprioception, and the traverse proved challenging.

Beat called me from his hotel room in Logan, Utah. Hearing his voice came as a small shock — both because it was our first phone conversation and because he was actually in Utah. I was still at a hotel in Las Vegas. My work at the Interbike was mostly done, but since I'd ridden down from Montana in a van with co-workers, I had no way to leave early. It was Thursday night. The race started early the next morning. Beat wondered if I could meet him at the mile 52 checkpoint by early evening. 

"Well," I replied. "Hmmm."

I asked him how he was feeling after the Tor des Geants, which he finished in a shell-shocked heap after five days on five hours of sleep, just days earlier. 

"Oh, you know," he said. His voice sounded quiet and a little defeated. We hung up. I looked up flights to Salt Lake. Nothing arrived in time. I looked up one-way car rentals — that was crazy expensive. I popped back on Facebook to message Beat — less painful than making a bad-news call — and saw a status update from a friend in Los Angeles, posted the previous day. "Trying to prepare myself mentally for my nonstop drive to Salt Lake in two days." That would be ... Friday. I messaged my friend. 

"My son has this dental appointment. I have to leave crazy early. But I could pick you up in Vegas at 5."

"Perfect," I replied. 

Beat and I picked our way down the south ridge of James. As is typical on the Divide, it was a jumble of car-sized boulders that were barely anchored in place. I teetered precariously, testing whether each step could hold my weight. Beat scouted a line and then pointed out a better one if he had any trouble. When we arrived at the shark teeth, he navigated a tricky downclimb, then directed my hands and feet toward solid holds as I shimmed down backward. He was kind and patient, not at all in the hurry he'd seemed to be in earlier. My frustration dissolved in a potent mixture of gratitude and trepidation.

My ride was late, but miraculously he showed up, pulling up to a random hotel in Vegas in the predawn darkness of 5:30 a.m. Because his son was late for his dental appointment in Salt Lake, he had to drop me off at an I-15 offramp, about two miles from my parents' house. They were gone that week, on vacation in Germany. So I shouldered my large duffle bag and hoofed up the hill. I broke into their house by scaling the fence and rummaging for the secret key in the garage, then rifled through the front closet for running gear: Dad's jacket, some cotton gloves, a knit beanie, bedazzled sunglasses that probably belonged to my baby sister. At least I had my own shoes. They were cheap white trainers for running on a hotel elliptical machine, but they'd work. My training, thus far, had amounted to one four-mile run and one eight-mile run. I was heading to the northern Utah mountains in late September with the most basic gear imaginable. My hydration was a cheap book-bag type of backpack holding plastic water bottles and snacks from a gas station. I found the spare key to "borrow" my dad's truck for the drive to Logan. I was as ready as I was ever going to be. 

After nearly three hours of rush-hour traffic with a stop at a gas station to buy the aforementioned water and snacks, along with REI to buy a headlamp and some reasonable socks, I pulled into Tony Grove in the late evening. The mile-52 checkpoint was staged in a granite amphitheater high in Logan Canyon. The rock walls were lined with aspen and bathed in the golden light of sunset. Beat had been carrying a SPOT tracker, but since this was the age before I owned a smartphone, I hadn't checked his status all day. I had no idea where he was, when he'd arrive, or whether he'd already passed through. And yet, as soon as I exited the truck, I saw his tell-tale smile flash from a large group of runners crowded around a table. I walked up to him, still wearing my jeans and a hoodie. 

"Well," he said sternly. "Are you running?"

"Uh," I stammered. "Uhhh." We hadn't made any sort of plan. I thought I'd meet him here and figure out where to start pacing him. We were at this point 50 miles and untold climbs and descents from the finish line. If I started running here, where would I end up?"

Another man, who I didn't know but would later learn was Beat's friend Harry, turned to me and said, "You know he came all this way for you." 

"Uh," I stammered again. "Give me five minutes to change my clothes." 

Beat and I reached the low point on the ridge and ascended a tundra ramp to Bancroft. Gray clouds billowed overhead, growing darker but not yet threatening. We scrambled up a steep talus slope to reach the broad summit. James had been crowded with hikers, but Bancroft was abandoned and silent, save for the shrill chirps of pika. I walked around taking a few photos as Beat sat next to a rock wall. The wind was stiff but not yet howling, and there was a chill to the air that felt more refreshing than biting. I pressed against Beat's shoulder as I sidled into the small wind shelter, pulled out a sandwich in a Tupperware container, and took a large bite. My mouth was full when Beat turned to me with a crooked smile. 

His eyes were watery and his voice cracked a little. "There's never really a right way to do this." He reached into his pack and pulled out a rock, a kind of quartz stone similar in size and color to one I first held in my hands ten years ago. "So do you want to get married?"

I gulped hard to push down the sandwich. I didn't want to ruin the moment like I sort of did the first time. "Yes," I spoke as clearly as possible. A cascade of tears filled my eyes. "Of course I do."

Together we ran into the darkness. We talked about particle physics and adventure cycling. We talked about Alaska and dreams for the future. The miles disappeared underneath my feet, and Beat ran as though all of the fatigue of past efforts didn't matter at all. Each mile came to us in a dream, as fresh and new as the previous. We reached a high point on the Bear 100 course, near 10,000 feet, somewhere around mile 75 and sometime in the middle of the night. Beat pulled a golf-ball-sized rock from his pack, shale with veins of quartz. 

"It's from TDG," he explained. "I picked it up on the second pass and carried it the whole way." 

I took the rock and cradled it in my palm, filled with warm-fuzziness. As a kid I was always picking up pretty rocks, carrying them home and stowing them in the bottom drawer of my dresser. How did he know?

Beat looked toward the dark horizon. "So do you want to go out?" he asked. 

"I thought we were out," I replied. The response was just what popped into my head, because I had been hoping this "pacing" gig was a date. 

Beat looked at me, perplexed. "No, I mean to do want to start dating?"

"The California-Montana thing is complicated," I said, apparently persisting in an effort to ruin this moment with awkwardness.

"We'll figure it out," he replied. 

On the summit of Mount Bancroft, sometime around 2 p.m. on July 12, 2020, Beat and I became officially engaged ... finally, most might say. The concept of marriage is a strange one. It's strange to me still. I've never been against marriage, I just hadn't seen it as a necessary step. It's wonderful to form a committed relationship to a person who can be a partner in every aspect of life — from the mundane drudgery to the exhilarating crests. But it's also satisfying to maintain a thread of independence, since ultimately we must travel through life alone. When my last long-term relationship ended, it was emotionally devastating but logically simple. We each took a cat and walked away. Beat was previously married, and it ended badly. Perhaps he and I were both gun-shy at first, and then complacent. But we work so well as partners. We have strong reason to believe we can be happy together indefinitely. It became a question of why not?

I was thrilled about Beat's proposal. It surprised me, how emotional I became. Even as the sky filled with gray clouds, a kind of verdant, vibrant color saturated the landscape. We started down Bancroft, hoping to make quick work of a tundra-ramp descent to Loch Lomond. But of course, the ridge was minefield of loose talus and boulders. I leaned on my trekking poles for support, hoping they'd help me make sense of this jumble. But I miscalculated, moved too quickly, put all of my weight on a pole pressed into a loose boulder, and toppled into the rocks. My hip slammed down first, and I also hit part of my upper leg and knee. Beat rushed toward me as I writhed on my side.

"You know how this goes," I said through gritted teeth. "I'm fine. I just need a moment."

As dawn approached, our conversation quieted. We were both sleep-deprived and delirious, him from the Tor des Geants and 85 miles of the Bear 100, and me from a long week and Vegas and this crazy adventure. I wondered what it would be like to date Beat, a European man who was ten years older, a California resident with an interesting career, impressively smart, a logical thinker next to my flighty artist personality, and an insanely prolific runner. I had yet to finish a 5K, but I was holding my own on this back half of this hundred miler. As dawn light appeared over distant mountains, the temperature plummeted to 23 degrees. We crossed streams coated in ice, and I shivered profusely as our pace slowed on climbs. I had a bare minimum of warm clothing, the kind of stuff my mom bought so we could walk to school in sixth grade. It wasn't enough, but it was enough. I was so amazed and grateful that this had all worked out.

Rain and cold wind found us as we crossed the dam over Loch Lomond and renewed a climb toward the east ridge of James Peak. My leg was throbbing with pain, with the bruise near my hip radiating down a quad muscle toward my knee. It felt like muscle soreness, although I'd characterize it as some of the worst muscle soreness I've yet endured.

"It's like mile 60 of the H.U.R.T. 100," Beat observed.

"Yeah, pretty much like that," I agreed.

The rocky singletrack and surrounding granite cliffs reminded us of the Alps, and we talked wistfully of memories from the past nine years. This will be our first year together without a visit to Europe. It's disappointing, like much of 2020 has been for everyone. But these home mountains hold their own unique intrigue — even favorites like James that we've summited a dozen times.


The trail veered closer to James, away from the direction we needed to climb toward Kingston Peak. Beat decided to take a direct path to the road, putting us in the thick of a brushy marsh. Our feet were soon soaked, and my leg screamed at the motion of stepping over knee-high bushes. Beat zig-zagged through the grass, searching for dry ground, but there was none. Overhead, the storm clouds grew darker. Flecks of rain felt almost like sleet, although the air was still warm. Beat apologized multiple times, but I wasn't bothered.

"I didn't know any better than you," I reasoned.

As he continued searching for a way out of the marsh, I thought, "The best relationship is the person you'll happily follow into the weeds."

After daybreak, I started to fall apart. Perhaps the spell had worn off, or perhaps 40 miles was all my untrained, nonrunner feet could endure. They felt like they were being stabbed with hot pokers while walking on broken glass. The pain was exquisite. With ten miles to go to the finish, on a remote mountain ridge somewhere north of the Idaho-Utah border, I could no longer walk. It was too cold, and I had too few layers to sit at an aid station and wait for a ride out. So I limped alongside Beat, who was as patient as a person could possibly be in such a scenario. 

"You have to leave me," I insisted. "This is your race. I'm supposed to be your pacer. I can get there eventually. You should go." 

Part of Beat's plan for this engagement hike was a side trip into the basin below James Peak, a gorgeous and well-hidden valley dotted with alpine lakes. The diversion wasn't trivial — a steep descent losing a thousand feet on chundery trail — also, in its own way, very Alps-like. But this was Beat's special spot, an alpine sanctuary he'd recently discovered and wanted me to experience. It sounded wonderful, but then I had to go and ruin the moment by injuring myself.

"I still want to go," I insisted as I limped gingerly down the rock-slide off of Kingston Peak. "It's worth it."

Beat didn't leave me behind. He followed at my excruciatingly slow pace as I side-stepped the trail and finally started walking backward down the final descent. It was the only way I could coax myself away from crawling — putting pressure on my heels was unbearable. Below us, Bear Lake sparkled blue and silver beneath the late morning sunlight. It looked close enough to touch, but it was still seven miles and 4,000 feet of vertical descent from the finish line. I inched backward, step after slow step. 

"Please," I said again, almost begging. "Go finish your race."

Beat just shrugged. "Steve and Harry haven't passed yet, so I'm still beating them."

James Peak Lake was indeed a magical spot. But I acknowledged, as the throbbing in my leg grew louder, that perhaps it was a step too far. You'd think, after a decade of "running," I'd have a better handle on my body's limitations. But I still want it all. Beat filtered water from the lake as I paced the shoreline, swatting at mosquitos and trying to calm the pulsing in the muscle — almost like a cramp that wouldn't quite go away. If I stopped walking for even five seconds, it would become stiff and immovable. We discussed our options. We could skip the climb back to Rogers Pass and take the Tolland way back, but it was still eight miles of mostly rough descending. It was runnable, but I didn't think I'd be able to run. Beat offered to race ahead and grab the car, which would allow me to skip the last three miles to East Portal. He said he didn't want to leave me, though, since this was supposed to be our shared moment.

"I think we'll both be happier if you go," I insisted.

I had tears in my eyes because I was so frustrated, walking backward down a road while the lake glistened and taunted me below. But I was laughing out loud, too, because you can't just expect to go out and run 50 miles without consequences. It was an amazing thing — running 50 miles on a whim. There was too much serendipity in the sequence of events to be random. This was meant to be. Beat probably didn't believe in fate, but I couldn't help but let my imagination run wild.

About four miles from the finish, he finally agreed to run ahead, acknowledging that he could still get in under 30 hours, and I could take an easier way to the road. I hobbled into the finish almost an hour after he'd collected his buckle and found a nice, shady spot by a tree. He congratulated me on finishing my first ultramarathon. I hadn't quite thought of it that way before, but he was right. In my blog entry, I wrote, "It was still before noon and the shuttle bus wasn't set to leave the finish line until 7 p.m. There was nothing for us to do but wait, so we settled into a shady spot on the grass, where the lake glistened and gold and green leaves rustled in the wind and wisps of clouds streamed through the bright blue sky. The pain in my feet faded into the background, my mind settled into a pleasant fog, and the only thing I understood was that I was in Fish Haven, Idaho, and I could scarcely comprehend how I got there, but I lived every mile of it, intensely."

As I hobbled toward Tolland, I frequently stopped to look back at James Peak. The colors and light continued changing, from blue to gray to an early evening silver. I listened to my iPod and clutched at every song with happy nostalgia. My leg throbbed and it didn't matter, but every so often I'd hit it just wrong and surprise myself by yelping out in pain. The pain did nothing to dampen the joy. James Peak was so beautiful. There was still so much possibility in the world, so many more miles to live intensely.

Beat was already waiting in the car by the time I reached Tolland, and I teared up all over again.

"You're the best," I said as I leaned toward the driver's seat to kiss him.

"No, you're the best," he said through his ever-illuminating grin. He turned on the engine and we headed home. 

Every day is like Sunday

In one of the better exchanges on my recent social media feeds, someone made a common observation that life in the spring of 2020 is a lot like the film "Groundhog Day." She was trying to remember how exactly it was that Bill Murray extracted himself from the purgatory of reliving the same day for eternity.

"He got out when he decided to stop being a selfish asshole and help others," was one response.

I was tempted to post the photo of that lockdown protester's painted windshield sign — "Your health is not more important than my liberties" — with my own response: "Then we're doomed."

I did not post this. I try to keep a lid on my cynicism about American culture, that our toxic combination of individualism, exceptionalism and division means we're going to weather a long and painful storm, and there's not a lot any of us can do about it. We donate to local causes while lamenting our loss of income amid a simultaneously fractured and flooded freelance economy. We try to "stay productive" while questioning if anything we do has any meaning. We try to connect with people but feel a strangeness about watching life happen behind a screen. We're grateful for safe spaces, but we also feel smothered by limitations. We're anxious about the disruptions, but also hungry for more lasting change.

It's a mess. I am braced for many more months of this storm. Something that drove it home this week was an expectation that most Google employees will keep working from home for the remainder of the year ... at least seven more months of the current routine. This brought a visceral flashback of being 16 years old, grounded to my bedroom for "sluffing" (skipping school), lying on the floor and listening to Morrissey sing about a coastal town so forlorn that only a nuclear bomb could jolt it from its stupor. My teenage mind embraced this as an anthem for the paradox of life: Expansive imagination, limited freedom.

"Every day is like Sunday. Every day is silent and gray."

Memories of this scene sparked a smile about all of the layers of relevance. If we (I) continue to act like a grounded teenager, we're just going to keep spinning our wheels, never getting anywhere. I recognized this attitude in myself this week when I felt overly exuberant every time I let myself out. The outdoors have become my personal shelter from the storm. Now more than ever, I need this break from my wild imagination and runaway ruminations. Seeking respite in anything, whether it's Morrissey or long bike rides, is briefly satisfying. But in the quieter hours, when despondency creeps closer to the surface, I realize I need to work toward a better balance.

All of this is a long way of saying that I enjoyed my physical activities but struggled with most everything else this week, which I suspect is the case with a lot of folks right now. My inner teenager is telling me the answer is "MOAR RUNNING" and I admit to giving in to these urges. It sure beats writing bad poetry, which I'll also admit that 40-year-old me is dangerously close to trying.

My stats for this past week ended up similar to the week before: 20 hours, 40 miles on foot, 90 miles on a bike, boatloads (20,000 feet) of climbing, but with two rest days to break it up nicely enough that I didn't feel physical effects until Monday, with similar complaints (Achilles tendon tightness, stiff calf muscles and some residual allergy symptoms.) Every May, as summer closes in, I go through a sort of seasonal mood slump that resembles what a lot of people experience in early winter. The allergy flare-ups, fierce solar glare and lip sunburns serve as a reminder that outside is becoming a less hospitable place. I know this sounds insane to sun-lovers. We all have our challenges.

May in Colorado usually provides some respite to smooth the transition. After a particularly wintry April, this May has been mostly a bust on the snow front. Disappointing. We did receive a dusting and temperatures in the high-20s on Friday morning, which just happened to the morning I planned an ambitious road bike ride. Unwilling to be deterred by winter weather on the one morning I wouldn't have wished for it, I just stuffed a few more layers in spare pockets and kept an eye out for black ice. It was a lovely misty morning and I felt fantastic, zipping up Lefthand Canyon and enjoying being the only cyclist on the road. Amid the brisk pace I simultaneously sweated and shivered for most of the climb. The sun came out just in time to melt the road ice for a long descent along Peak to Peak Highway and St. Vrain Canyon. The amazing effect of this route is that the 20-mile climb is not all that hard, and yet it affords a nearly uninterrupted 30-mile descent. It's an incredible ride beside sheer rock cliffs and a roiling whitewater creek, as thrilling as any amusement park rollercoaster, in my opinion. The only payment for such fun day out is the 12-mile grind from Lyons to Boulder on Highway 36, which on this day was a particularly hard slog into a rare southeasterly gale.

 My other notable outing this week was a long run with Beat on Sunday. He put together a route to leave from home and link the far-flung peaks of Twin Sisters and South Boulder in a perfect loop, with only two short out-and-back spurs to tag the peaks themselves. It was a rugged route with a lot of rocky trails and some overland 'shwhacking, demanding 8,000 feet of climbing in 28 miles (and 8,000 feet of descent, which on foot demands a whole lot of effort, unlike descending St. Vrain Canyon on a road bike.) I guessed it would take us nine hours to complete, and temperatures weren't supposed to climb much out of the 40s with a potential for afternoon rain. Still, my brain has shifted to summer mode. I packed a small hydration vest with two 16-ounce bottles of frozen-solid electrolyte drink, two liters of ice water, a water filter, a tiny 3-ounce wind jacket, thin gloves, thin beanie, and various electronics. The night before, I pre-packed each side pocket with an assortment of snacks, but then emptied one of the pockets to make room for my phone in the morning. I never re-packed these snacks or my phone. Subsequently, I had to appeal to Beat to let me carry his phone (I'm not sure I could mentally endure a nine-hour run without a camera.) I also realized that I was going to have to ration my food.

 We made our way around the backside of Twin Peaks and summited around mile 10. This photo shows our destination for many hours later, the two peaks in the middle — South Boulder on the right and Bear on the left. To get there, we would descend Eldorado Canyon (notch to the right) nearly all the way to the valley floor, then ascend 3,000 feet to the peak with close to a marathon on our legs already. Good fun!

 While scoping out satellite images, Beat discovered a faint old jeep track through Walker Ranch that might allow us to bypass paved road running altogether. I dislike 'shwhacking, especially during green-up season, but I was open to trying something new. The faint track quickly petered out, but the initial overland hiking through the old burn was easy enough. Then we started to descend into a gully. We crossed a small creek and ended up in a tangle of thorny brush and stacks of deadfall, and I was quick to lose my patience. Beat wanted to hike right of that rocky outcropping in the center of this photo, but having observed the hillside while taking the photo, I thought left looked far easier. He relented, we went left, and it wasn't all that bad. We spent close to 45 minutes hacking out this "shortcut" to avoid 1.5 miles of paved road running. Was it worth it? Yeah, it was probably worth it.

Beat has also recently discovered alternative trails around parts of the Walker Ranch loop, so we were able to get through much of this section while avoiding crowds.

 Descending toward a raging South Boulder Creek. Now about 19 miles into this route, I was beginning to feel bonked and particularly wobble-legged here. My inventory of remaining snacks, which I had rationed well so far, was one package of peanut M&Ms, one small package of fruit snacks, and half of a ham sandwich. I had hoped to save the fruit snacks for last, but faltered enough on the climb out of the canyon that I popped them like energy pills, in two big gulps.

This is the start of the long, rolling and bouldery descent into Eldorado Canyon. I was listening to the audiobook for "Labryinth of Ice," a gripping account of the Greeley Polar Expedition of 1881-1883. I had reached the chapters where the men, with food stores dwindling and a third winter closing in, staged an escape with small boats and sledges. The crumbling shelf ice swallows most of their gear, and they ultimately end up riding an ice floe to the northern coast of Greenland. There they build huts out of stone and moss, and attempt to hunt seal and walrus in anticipation of hunkering down for the entire Arctic winter.

As Beat and I loped easily if wobble-leggedly down the canyon, I contemplated this scenario — wiling away months of darkness and unfathomable cold in a seal-skin sleeping bag, moving as little as possible to conserve energy. I reflected on the last night of my last adventure, with its hours of 40 below and deep snow in the hills outside McGrath. It's difficult to understand the oppression of 40 below until you've experienced it. You're surrounded by a world capable of freezing flesh in a matter of minutes, and your only protection is a bubble of artificial insulation and the energy you burn to generate heat. As energy levels diminish, it feels like this sinister world is closing in on you. You understand fully just how fragile you are, and just how indifferent the world is to your needs. When I awoke to those crushing temperatures outside my sleeping bag in March, I swore I'd never take my warm bed for granted again. Only two months have passed, and that perspective is already fading.

Here in the present, on a cool but cloudless Sunday in Eldorado State Park, we encountered a crush of weekend crowds. We'd expected this. We've done well to avoid these popular spots. But after two months, and with no end in sight, we decided we were tired of staying away from our favorite trails just because they're crowded. I descended carefully with my buff pulled over my face. I thought I was ready to face the crowds, but it was disheartening to see just how little a seeming majority of people appear to care about anything. Maybe 1 in 20 were wearing face coverings, and people who were clearly not related to one another were crowding switchbacks in large groups, blocking passage in a way that required either sketchy off-trail scrambling, or simply busting straight through the crowd.

It's frustrating. Covering our faces in public and limiting social contact with people outside our households seem like simple acts that nearly everyone can accomplish. Common sense plainly shows how such distancing and blocking can reduce the exchange of respiratory droplets. That so few seem willing to do so, and then accuse those who do of blindly following politics, is baffling. I feel like grumbling, "This is the way biology works, people. It doesn't care about our affiliations." But this is the way things are, so we won't be returning to Eldo anytime soon. Shame. It's such a lovely place.

 We climbed out of Eldo through the greenest field I've yet seen. We live at 7,200 feet, and staying at home means I haven't spent much time at lower altitudes. It was lovely to see a place where spring is in full swing. Pasqueflowers were in full bloom, and cute little yellow blooms were popping up across the hillside. Unfortunately, there is something here that ignites my allergies, and my airways tightened as I climbed. Also unfortunately, my multiple switches from cycling to running packs this week resulted in accidentally leaving my inhaler at home. I had to deal with low-level asthma symptoms and breathing difficulties for much of the long climb up Shadow Canyon. Limited oxygen on top of low glycogen made for a hard battle up those final 3,000 feet of ascent.

 I was stoked to finally make it to the top of South Boulder Peak, a place that had looked so far in the distance just a few hours earlier. A day of exploring new trails with Beat, standing at the top of mountains, listening to a fantastic audiobook while reflecting on Alaska experiences, and drawing inspiration for our current challenges, all within the vicinity of home, made for a gratifying day.

Looking back at South Boulder Peak from the summit of Bear, which we hit for good measure before wrapping up the 28-mile loop. This was a great Sunday, and I wish every day could be like this Sunday. But when a tight Achilles tendon and creeping fatigue demanded a rest day on Monday, I all too quickly fell back into dark ruminations and moodiness. Striking a balance seems increasingly difficult right now, but I think I can take a lesson from "Groundhog Day" and the importance of finding ways to be both productive and helpful. It's difficult, because in other ways, our current plight feels similar to that of the forlorn Arctic explorers in the Greeley expedition, piecing together moss and stone huts as meager shelter from a brutal winter. And yet they must have survived, because somebody went on to share their story. I'll have to plan another long run so I can listen to the rest of the book and find out what happened. 

A dozen months go by as you wait for a sign

I knew stay-at-home life was starting to get to me when I planned a grocery run on Friday and anxiously anticipated it all week. Don't get me wrong; I dislike shopping on a good day. The current social distancing mandate nearly doubles the amount of time and discomfort in these tasks — wearing a breath-obstructing mask, standing in long outdoor lines under the hot sun, stacking a cart full of groceries twice so I can bag them in my car, wiping down everything I touch, and seriously why are the toilet paper shelves still empty? 

However, this week was the first I didn't need to get a catch-up allergy shot, which meant I'd have the stamina for some sort of adventure. Since I returned from Alaska, every outdoor activity I've embarked on has started from my front door. This would be the first time in weeks that I ventured a bit farther, so even the prospect of setting out from town was exciting. I pulled the road bike down from its wall mount, pumped up the tires, lubed the chain, and checked the top tube bag for the same light rain layers I was using last spring (so that's where that hat ended up!) Nearly a year has passed since I last rode this bike. Grit from the sudden storms that frequently washed through the canyons in May 2019 still clung to the frame. I brushed off the sand as I wistfully remembered those rides. How simple things were back then. I had such big plans for summer 2020. Training for the Silk Road Mountain Race called for big days in the saddle, and I schemed wide-ranging road rides like double passes over Trail Ridge Road, climbing Mount Evans from Evergreen, maybe even a multiday nostalgia tour (riding up to Wheatland, Wyoming and tracing my 2003 route back to Salt Lake City.) So many possibilities! 

 That was then. Now I live in a world where a grocery run feels like an adventure. It's not necessarily a bad thing. When we adjust expectations to match reality, perspective quickly follows. A three-hour blitz from North Boulder was excitement enough — especially with the potential for an up-close view of the mountains.

After what felt like a prolonged recovery from the Iditarod, I've rapidly rebuilt strength and stamina in the past two weeks. This surge of energy has weakened my resolve to keep things easy for a while, and I'd already logged a reasonably tough week of runs and rides before Friday. My legs were rubbery and the 85-degree heat felt oppressive. I pulled my buff over my face, intending to keep it up the whole ride — mostly for optics —but I'd forgotten how terribly difficult it can be to breathe through hot, saturated polyester. I managed ten miles before I cracked, and then just pulled it up when passing other cyclists. But I was passing other cyclists, an admittedly exhilarating feeling. Soon my rubbery muscles loosened and the heat faded behind a stiff but cool headwind. The road bike became an undetectable feather underneath me, and I felt like I was running on air with turbo engines strapped to my legs.

 The climb from Boulder to Brainard Lake gains a cool vertical mile — 5,400 feet with minimal rolling. Just beyond the gate I encountered far too much snow to continue, although I fantasized about slicing the narrow road tires through slush, "just like a hot knife in butter." I was less than two miles from an incredible mountain vista, and I realized then how much I wanted that — just to sit on that solitary bench near the shoreline and gaze upward.

But on this day, I did not have the tools to gain access to such a paradise. I only had a featherweight bike, so instead I turned around and gobbled up a 20-mile descent, complete with one short climb, in 45 minutes. The bike hit speeds of 44 mph, which is a little recklessly fast for a squirrely rider such as myself, who only hops on a road bike a handful of times each year. It was pure bliss though, as close to flying as any sensation I've felt. Road biking probably is the most risky activity I engage in, and yet I didn't feel unsettled until I pulled back up to my car, changed into street clothes, and switched out my snot-soaked Buff for a cute patterned facemask that I purchased from a Boulder woman who typically makes bike-commuting gear. What was this strange dread?

A recent Tweet from Joe Simpson, who narrowly escaped death during a mountaineering accident in the 80s and wrote a brilliant book about it, "Touching the Void," summed it up well: "It's quite odd driving to a supermarket idly and wondering if this is the moment I pick up a fatal disease and die. Never thought I'd have that thought process again."

I've wondered why I feel so rundown after these trips to town. In earlier weeks I blamed the allergy shots. Perhaps this week I can blame the vigorous road ride. Either way, "town day" is often my most draining part of the week. I'll slump home, feeling vaguely out of sorts. I'll develop a headache, and become convinced my throat is scratchy. I'll pop a bunch of vitamin C and check my temperature and SpO2. Nothing's out of the ordinary. Just hypochondria again. Or is it? 

Consciously, I don't feel like I'm irrationally scared of COVID-19. I take it seriously, both because I want to be a good citizen, and also because I suspect I have a fair chance of serious complications. I contracted a simple case of pneumonia in 2015 that took me down several notches; things haven't been the same since. Now I'm a person with underlying conditions, asthma and Graves Disease. Still, I've spent years teaching myself how to embrace fears. I also believe the science that shows how most of us will likely be exposed to this eventually. I'm capable of acceptance and an "it will be what it will be" sort of attitude. As I move toward accepting that this is going to be with us for a while, however, despondency creeps in. If going to the grocery store feels this weird and arduous, how can travel happen again? Or racing? Riding and running with friends? Visiting my parents? I maintain a great deal of freedom and movement, and I relish these simple joys still. But it's difficult to let go of anticipation and future dreams that so recently were just an ordinary part of life.

Saturday dawned misty and gray. It was nice to see some proper spring weather, something I've missed since we skipped directly from winter to summer. Beat and I had a long run planned for Sunday, and I intended to rest up beforehand. I spent the morning cleaning the basement and chipping away at a writing project that currently feels like hammering a flimsy nail into stone. Malaise was building and I decided to combat it with a bike ride.

"I'll be gone an hour, tops," I told Beat. Heavy thunderstorms were forecast to hit at 4 p.m., and I was leaving at 2 p.m., so the motivation was there to keep it short. But as I pedaled into the cool afternoon, my legs felt amazingly peppy. With limited effort I could fly up the hills, feeling strong enough that I checked my watch near the start of a coveted 2.5-mile Strava segment. In four years I've posted 75 rides through this segment, so PRs are not easy to come by these days ... I haven't cracked the top ten since 2018. But I decided to for it. At mile two I dabbed in a muddy mess of ruts. I thought for sure I'd lost it, but my watch was still showing reasonable progress. I charged all the way to the top of the hill only to encounter a truck inching up the final pitch. The vehicle stalled on a sand-covered slab and stopped, blocking the entire road. There was no way around. After wavering a few seconds I threw my bike over my shoulder and sprinted up a side slope. The driver probably thought I was nuts. I was tempted to yell "STRAVA" as I ran past, but did not.

I missed my PR by two seconds. But I snagged a few other long-standing segments. I felt so pumped that I just had to continue riding. I descended the rutted county road and pedaled toward a usually quiet forest road that winds toward the reservoir. The road was still gated, and there were only a few cars at the trailhead on this cool and gray afternoon. Despite sandy conditions I managed a few more PRs on lesser-traveled segments. In doing so, I turned my relaxing one-hour ride into 20 miles of tempo with 3,000 feet of climbing. Beat said if I crapped out on Sunday, he would have no sympathy. I replied that it was worth it.


Beat and I have missed long runs. Even with potentially nothing to train for this year, we still long for a proper beatdown on rough and interesting terrain. We schemed a run that would allow us to both leave from home and explore new terrain. The route linked a couple of trails that until now had been dead ends to us, tracing remnants of social trails and old roadbeds. We try to avoid trespassing, so Beat cross-checked his track with a property map to ensure we stayed on county and national forest land. Even close to home, we can still find some lovely trails that see little use.

 "Little use" sometimes means lots of slogging. This shaded traverse held onto a lot of snow, and it took us a while to bust through. Shortly after I took this photo, Beat lost a shoe and bloodied his knee.

 Connectors also require some road running. Jogging toward this pasture, I thought, "those people sure have a lot of horses." As we passed by, I realized it was a herd of elk.

 We ran toward the trailhead for the forest road where I rode my bike the previous day. I was amazed at what an out-of-control zoo it had become on this sunnier and slightly warmer Sunday. Vehicles were parked up and down the county road a half-mile away in both directions, blocking driveways and obstructing the traffic lanes so much that it was barely passable one way. Cars passed constantly, and we occasionally had to jump onto steep side slopes to let them through. Thanks to a 4WD-only connector, this spot is essentially located on a dead-end spur off of a secondary dirt road — about as far from the beaten path as you can find in Boulder County. To see it so crowded, after years of appreciating its relative emptiness was ... strange. This scene also had a somewhat dystopian feel, like dodging a zombie mob with off-leash dogs. I'm not afraid they're going to pass around a virus; I'm afraid they're going to run us over in this seemingly blind rush to fill a void of time.  I concede that I can't criticize people recreating if I am also out recreating in the same place. It's just strange, that's all. Where do all of these people go when it's not the end of the world? Theaters and stores, I suppose. It's just as well that they're enjoying the great outdoors, but I wish it could be done in a less noxious way.

Anyway, we were grateful to leave the busy road and veer onto an empty trail, where we hiked and scrambled to the top of Twin Sisters Peak. The altitude of this peak is 8,700 feet, making it one of the highest in the region. It seems to be seldom visited. Access is limited by several miles of road walking on either side (or a decent 4WD vehicle) so even I don't come here often. This was Beat's first visit. He was impressed. The panoramic views here are incredible, stretching from the plains to a vast mountain skyline, from Longs Peak to Mount Evans.

Our original plan had us descending Flagstaff Road and returning via Walker Ranch, but we wanted to stay away from the inevitable crowds. Instead we made our way down a faint jeep road to another social trail, quickly reconnecting to the traverse to Meyers Gulch. Despite having to climb around frequent deadfall, wade deep snow and bash through thorny bushes that ripped my shins to shreds, we agreed this was an ideal sneak and vowed to return.

This detour lengthened our overall route just enough that we started talking about tacking on four more miles to round out the run to a 26.2-mile marathon. We did so in the hardest way possible, marching straight up a long-neglected old road behind our neighborhood. But we got it done, and I felt reasonably energetic and loose the entire time, despite the lack of long runs in recent weeks, and despite riding my bike a little too hard for two days prior. I did become dehydrated, having carried only three liters of water for seven hours in the hot sun (the transition from winter to spring always throws me for a loop, because with a seemingly minimal shift from 35 degrees to 65 degrees, I go from needing a liter of liquid to a gallon.) My payment for indulging in a long run has been a mild headache and a tight Achilles (argh, how I abhor my right Achilles tendon. This "touch of tendonitis" has been an ongoing issue for two years now. I can drag a sled 300 miles over deep snow with no problems, but will it let me climb hills or run a couple dozen miles? No!)

Also, today — Monday — I have been feeling emotionally down ... more so than I have in weeks, when I first began to come around from the shock of March. I could blame the latest headlines about bursts of new cases and deaths as states collectively decide to just get on with it ... that's part of it, sure. But I also need to consider a likely tipping point when I become a little too zealous with physical activity, especially after so recently recovering from such a hard Iditarod.  I took a rest day today, but I still feel down. That's just the way things are right now — such a rollercoaster of emotions, trying to balance wildly undulating uncertainties, even as day-to-day life slows down.

So it's funny, and maybe just a little bit sad, that when I ponder what might cheer me up, I immediately turn my thoughts to my upcoming trip to town, and where I might ride my road bike when that exciting day comes. 

Last days of innocence — day six

March 7, 2020. Rohn, Alaska. 12 degrees and overcast. 

I don't enjoy winter camping. There. I've said it. What I enjoy is moving through wintry landscapes, feeling powerful against the cold, absorbing beauty and wonder while generating my own bubble of comfort and warmth. Sleep is one of the biological necessities of being out for days on end. And of course, after long hours of sled-hauling, it feels incredible to remove the weight from my sore limbs and temporarily fade from consciousness. But once I crawl into a sleeping bag, movement ceases and my personal bubble of protection bursts. Suddenly I'm dependent on these inert materials that I don't quite trust. I smother myself in nylon and down until it's difficult to breathe. Then I open the bag ever so slightly to allow a tight funnel of air. The feel of this frigid air is sinister, but I crave oxygen so I must ignore an innate sense of danger. In order to shut out the anxiety and get some sleep, I need to be fully exhausted. 

In Rohn, exhaustion and mild dehydration let me remain unconscious in my bag for nearly five hours. When the 2 a.m. alarm sounded, I felt disoriented and desperately thirsty. I sat up, let the cold slap of air jostle me into awareness, then jumped up quickly to generate heat. I jogged in place to thrash away the grogginess and then fumbled through packing up my gear. My fingers tingled as I worked. The thermometer informed me that it was 12 degrees, which is pretty warm. I smirked and shook my head at my own ineptitude. 

"If I liked winter camping, I would probably be better at this," I thought. 

After packing I jogged a few hundred yards to the Rohn cook tent to collect the things I'd hung to dry overnight — shoes, socks and waders — and quickly gulp down coffee and instant oatmeal before refilling my thermos with hot Tang. Amber had chosen to wake up at the same time. We shared the groggy minutes with Kyle, who seemed to have taken on the job of 2 a.m. checkpoint watch, but mostly sat on the straw and stared blankly into space. The rest of the tent was crowded with sleepers, as I'd expected, which is one of the reasons I opted for the peace and quiet of an outside camp. 

As I packed up to leave, a few flurries wafted through the air, but there wasn't any new snow on the ground. The InReach weather forecast offered an hourly assessment that predicted the snow wouldn't begin until 2 p.m. I believed this, and hoped to make good mileage before the blizzard began in force. I struggled to start moving. Grogginess remained and I hadn't rehydrated as well as I should have in Rohn. Still, as soon as I hit the glare ice of the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River, I dug in my studded shoes and marched with purpose. The South Fork is another volatile mountain river that I fear, but it did feel incredible to move across a hard surface, hauling a suddenly weightless sled as it glided effortlessly across the ice.

After two miles of river ice, the trail veered onto the shoreline, where it would roll in and out of steep drainages for the next 15 miles before wrapping around Egypt Mountain and descending toward the Farewell Lakes. The trail through the forest was soft and punched with moose tracks. Moose-a-noia kept me in silence for a couple of hours, but my consciousness began to flag, and the sleep monster demanded that I find a distraction. I chose music — specifically Grimes' latest album, "Miss Anthropocene" — and fixated on an upbeat song that spoke to the surreal time of day and place through which I moved, "4ÆM."

"I'm out late at 4 a.m.
He says, 'How's the weather, baby? How've you been?'
You're gonna get sick — you don't know when
I never doubt it at 4 a.m. ..."

As the chorus repeated itself again and again — because I'd put the song on repeat — I became more reflective. It seems prescient now, only because I'd been so distracted by my own adventure, but I had been thinking about this issue earlier. On the day we flew from Denver to Anchorage, which was Feb. 27, I'd come across a long essay published in Smithsonian Magazine in 2017 that I spent much of our layover at the Seattle airport reading. It described in captivating detail the 1918 flu pandemic. From that article I followed links to another long essay which drew parallels to the novel coronavirus. This author speculated that eventually 40 to 70 percent of the global population would contract this virus, and the implications were unknown but almost certainly devastating. I remember shutting my laptop as we boarded our plane and thinking, "Wow. It's coming."

Of course, on Feb. 27, the notion of a global pandemic was still abstract. There had already been an outbreak in Washington state, so we knew the virus had arrived in the United States, but it still seemed plausible that it could be contained. I thought about the article on and off as I went about my pre-race preparations. Still, it was easy to put it out of my mind. I had my own immediate concerns to address. By the time the race started on March 1, I wasn't thinking about the issue at all.

Now, as I traversed a landscape devastated by recent wildfires and surrounded by stark mountains and ominous skies, Grimes' heart-pumping beats and nihilistic lyrics stirred up week-old reflections about a vague, unknowable future that was probably closer than it seemed. I still thought about the issue in abstract ways. My trains of thought were frequently fractured and my intelligence was undermined by fatigue. I remember thinking about my experience with pneumonia in 2015, which I contracted in part because I was headstrong and reckless during the Tour Divide. One takeaway during these abstract reflections was, "We need to be strong. Right now I'm not strong."

Indeed, any illusions of strength and energy were elusive. I was struggling to hoist myself up every hill. As I write this post exactly one month later, memory has already scrubbed some of the specific pains I was experiencing. But I can still recall one particular hill, climbing away from the Post River. At the time I was following closely behind the Italian cyclists. From the top of the previous hill, I watched as they shimmied up a vertical-looking slope, precariously perched almost underneath their bicycles as they pushed. Witnessing this, I resolved to get a running start, and bounded recklessly down the slope as my knees locked with each impact and my sled weaved erratically. Near the bottom, I was distracted by a massive gut pile left behind by bison hunters, and lost momentum before hitting the wall. My quad muscles seemed to give out as my back strained against gravity. The sled yanked me backward and I lost my balance, briefly flailing as though I might tip over backward, before lunging forward and slamming my bruised  knee into a wind-scoured patch of frozen dirt. This pain I remember, along with the cause of it — I was too weak to boost myself up a hill, so I had to use my injured knee as an anchor. When I recount this moment it sounds trivial, but at the time it felt like I was slowly losing control, and it was unnerving.

Endurance racing is a paradox. We pursue these challenges to prove to ourselves that we have strength and resilience, that we can rise above weaknesses and overcome difficulties. But the act of pushing limits requires exactly that — venturing close to physical and mental edges. Tumbling over the precipice is always a risk. My experiences in 2015 and beyond have proven this to me, beyond doubt. And I admit, even as I continue to enthusiastically pursue endurance racing, I have pondered consequences and costs I might no longer be able to afford. I do so while acknowledging that a life scrubbed of risk and uncertainty, a life of bland inertia and unimaginative stability, a life as void of joy as it is of pain, is the last thing I want, for anyone. Life — forever a paradox.

I'm prone to existential crises in the best of times. One reason among many that I pursue endurance efforts is because intense activity forces me into a more focused plane of existence, where I must direct my usual overabundance of mental energy toward immediate concerns. Once my motivating Grimes kick lost its effectiveness, my immediate concern was flagging energy. I switched off the music and returned to an audio book of "The Sun is a Compass," but I wasn't listening. Instead I watched gray skies deepen as snow flurries picked up in intensity and began to accumulate on the trail. For the rest of the day I no longer thought about the abstract future or even walking to Nome; I only thought about my next steps into a snowy wilderness that might as well be eternal.

Along a five-mile-long flat stretch crossing the Farewell Lakes, some 25 miles into the day, I was finally caught by Greg the skier. He was badly hungover from too much whiskey in Rohn, and provided some comic relief with a lighthearted attitude about his sorry physical state. He'd already reached his goal — Rob's Roadhouse in Rohn — and now was just slogging through the mandatory victory march to McGrath. Motivation was low but spirits were high. He said he was going to stop soon for a meal or an eight-hour nap; he hadn't quite decided. My plan was to not stop at all until I reached Bear Creek Cabin. Not even one of my thirty-second sled slumps, because with my own level of fatigue and flagging motivation, I couldn't trust myself to not let one of those short rests turn into minutes or hours. Snow was coming down hard and it was warm, 28 degrees. These are some of the most difficult camping conditions, because it's almost impossible to prevent gear and shoes and stoves and pretty much everything from becoming soaked. I was determined to reach that cabin.


Near the end of the last Farewell lake, I told Greg I expected eight more miles of rolling hills to the former site of Bison Camp, where the trail finally drops from the foothills onto an expansive river plain. It turned out to be closer to ten miles, which became a frustrating miscalculation when each small hill renewed a demoralizing struggle. A persistent wind whipped the accumulating snowflakes into a frenzy, prompting me to don my hated goggles for a few hours. I was grumpy, and that was before I connected with Beat on his satellite phone. He told me no one had broken the mile-long offshoot trail to Bear Creek cabin, and the snowpack was so deep that there was no way to access the shelter. Now I understood that I'd be camping in the wet snow, whether I liked it or not.


Sullenly, I descended into the Farewell Burn, a place that long ago was barren and dry, but now hosts an impossibly thick spruce forest and many feet of snow. For the first ten miles beyond Bison Camp it's difficult to even find an open spot to camp among the practically interlocking tree branches. More swamps begin to open up around the Bear Creek intersection, so that's where I planned to camp. I restarted "The Sun is a Compass" because I hadn't been listening, but I still wasn't listening. Instead my staccato thoughts jumped through past memories of the Farewell Burn, both distant — the barren, frigid wasteland — and recent — the snow-choked leg-trap.

At least five inches of snow had accumulated by the time I heard the whine of a snowmobile for the first time all day. I assumed it was race director Kyle and Craig, but in fact it was the Iditarod Sled Dog Race trailbreakers, a team of six high-powered snowmobiles dragging massive trailers. Where they caught me, the trail was so narrow that I had to stop, unhook from my harness, lift my sled onto a chest-high berm, and them climb up there myself so they could pass.

I was overjoyed to see them. I'd had some suspicion they'd pass, since Iditarod trailbreakers had caught me near the same spot in 2018. That year, I had been banking on a quiet night at the cabin and was annoyed when I realized I'd have to share with six loud-partying men. This year, however, I acknowledged that the trailbreakers were my ticket to shelter. They presumably were heading out tho Bear Creek, so they'd break in the trail and I'd be able to follow. I knew they wouldn't be thrilled to share the small space with freeloaders like me, Greg and likely others, but such is the way of public shelter cabins in Interior Alaska.

After they passed, I also enjoyed the still-soft but much smoother trail that they'd broken. A mile later, Asbjorn skied up from behind as though I was standing still. He glided to a stop beside me and offered a piece of chocolate, which I declined, then proceeded to relax and munch on his chocolate for several minutes before zipping past again. After another mile Greg passed, and then I caught up to a walker, Robert. It was going to be tight in that cabin, but I didn't mind. It was dry in there. The trailbreakers were hauling a sled full of firewood, so presumably it would also be warm. Just unbelievable luxury.

Around 9:30 p.m. I arrived at the intersection, where it was clear the path had been recently plowed — the trench was nearly neck-deep in spots, and the trail surface was choppy. It took me nearly a half hour to make my way down to the cabin. By 10 p.m., snow was coming down so heavily that I could barely see a few meters away. Much of my upper body was caked in this wet snow. The buckle on my sled harness had collected so much ice that I couldn't release it. Eventually I just wriggled out of the shoulder straps and stepped over the harness, forgetting that I was still wearing my snowshoes, which caught on the straps and sent me tumbling headlong into a five-foot-deep drift just off the cabin's porch. I thrashed out of the drift, spitting and swearing. Powder had found its way into my ears and up both nostrils. My clothing was now fully saturated in wet snow. Yikes.

"Thank god I'm not setting up camp right now," I thought.

The interior of the cabin was stiflingly hot. The trailbreakers had gathered around the small table with playing cards, beers, and a giant bag of fun-sized candy bars from Costco — dinner, they told us. The four ITI folks set to a flurry of activity, melting snow for water and spreading out our wet clothing across the cabin. The trailbreakers watched us, bemused.

"You guys sure have to work hard at night," one observed.

Another pointed out that all of their water — 16-ounce plastic bottles also from Costco — had frozen solid. But hey, they had plenty of beer.

Cognizant of the many hazards in the crowded cabin, I slipped outside to fire up my stove so I could heat water for freeze-dried chicken and noodles. My initial instinct had been to just plop down in my sleeping bag and pass out. But my blood sugar had dipped so low that my hands were shaking, and given my struggles with strength, I knew I couldn't afford to skip a meal. It was quiet outside, the kind of saturated silence that accompanies falling snow. My toes tingled. While stumbling around the newly broken trail to collect snow for melting, I managed to break through into some kind of overflow, and now both of my down booties were soaked. I figured I could dry them overnight, and just let my feet remain sopping wet as I dangled my legs over the edge of the porch, softly singing a random Roxette song that had plopped itself in my head.

Lay a whisper on my pillow 
Leave the winter on the ground 
I wake up lonely, this air of silence 
In the bedroom and all around.

 And then, more loudly, knowing the commotion inside shielded me from judgement:

"It must have been love
BUT IT'S OVER NOW
It must have been good
But I lost it somehow ..."

My voice was ragged and hoarse, my singing terrible, and I don't think I remembered these lyrics quite correctly. But the comic relief was worth it. I felt better already, and I hadn't even eaten yet. Since I'd arrived less a half hour earlier, more than an inch of powder had already accumulated on my sled. Based on the forecast I'd checked a few hours earlier, there was a good chance it wouldn't let up until morning.

"There could be a foot of new snow by then," I thought.

Back in the cabin, I joined Asbjorn, Robert, and two of the trailbreakers as we squeezed together into the small loft, which was designated for gear only and probably not designed to support five full-sized humans. Robert asked when I planned to wake up.

"Whenever they get up," I replied, nodding toward the trailbreakers. "The trail is probably going to be buried by morning; seems pointless to leave early and have to break trail, when we know they'll pass by eventually."

The temperature in the loft must have been 90 degrees. I cracked a small window and sprawled on top of my bag. My earworm — more comforting than annoying — lulled me to a sweaty sleep.

"And it's a hard
winter's day. 
I dream away ..."