Cordova

There's a little town in Alaska I had always wanted to visit. I couldn't even tell you why I picked this specific town, for there are lots of little towns in Alaska that would be fun to visit. But Cordova, a fishing village perched on the edge of the Prince William Sound, always stuck out. I think it started when I first learned of an old railroad grade that left this isolated village and followed the Copper River all the way to the main road system, in Chitna. I used to wonder if it was partially passable with a bicycle, until I learned that the railroad fell into disuse in the early 1930s, and I'd be lucky to find a few scattered nails among the thick alder tangles and rushing, unbridged streams. What remains is a 50-mile-long gravel road to nowhere that passes several glaciers. How could that not be a fun overnight ride?

I started the trip by taking the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage to Whittier. I always thought that blue-and-yellow double-decker rail car that rumbled next to the Seward Highway was a strictly tourist-only deal. It only recently occurred to me that I could use the train as transportation, and felt a little conspicuous doing so in my bike clothes with a book as camera-toting sightseers migrated like birds from one side of the train to the other, depending on what animals somebody reportedly saw. I sat across from a very nice older couple from Albuquerque who had just arrived in Anchorage late the night before, and had never before visited Alaska. The woman must have taken at least 200 digital photos through the window. I did my best to point out the attractions and smile with satisfaction as they gasped around every scenic turn. There is something so rewarding about seeing a place you love through the eyes of newcomers.

From Whittier, I got on the ferry, and it was my turn to play the role of a gawking tourist, leaning against the outside railing to watch far-away orcas and rolling sea otters as the boat crossed the Prince William Sound. The ferry arrived in Cordova just before 9 p.m. I rode to the city-owned campground, which was a real pit - full of tightly-wedged RVs and trailers all clustered in a circle around a battered old bathroom like a pioneer wagon train. I rode back to town and asked four different people at the grocery store about "tent camping." They all looked at me like I was speaking Dutch, except for a jovial Hispanic woman who just laughed and said, "Don't ask me; Mexicans don't go camping." I headed out the road until I was a ways out of town, and ended up finding a really sweet spot on a gravel bar of a tributary below the Scott Glacier.

The next morning, it rained. I had to wait around in cell phone range to take a scheduled call at 12:30, so I laid on my thin strip of foam and read "The Living" by Annie Dillard. The call came and went, and it kept on raining. I took short glances outside to the completely-soaked-in grayness. My elbows started to ache, so I turned on my back, until my shoulders ached, and still droplets pounded the rain fly. I started to remember why I never used to go camping when I lived in Juneau. It is one thing to ride in the continuous rain, and quite another to try to live in it, with only a single change of clothing, a single change of socks, a down sleeping bag and a small nylon tent, in a climate where once things get wet, they are never going to dry outside. Even if you stay put, the dampness seeps in anyway, smelling of cold earth and accumulating like mildew. I knew if I packed up and headed down the road in the rain, my body and all of my worldly belongings were going to be a dripping mess by the time the cold night rolled around again. But by 3:30 p.m., I was going stir crazy (I'll never understand how mountaineers huddle in tents for days on end and manage to keep their sanity.) I finally relented to going for a short afternoon ride to break the monotony, thereby soaking one set of clothing but keeping my sleeping bag and the inside of my tent mostly dry.

Hitting the road, my demeanor was somewhere between "moderately irritated" and "grumpypants." The rain pelted my back and I stared down at the wet gravel, which cut an eerily straight line across the shrouded expanse of the Copper River Delta. I knew I only had two days in town, and by leaving my camping gear behind, I was ruining my chance to do the overnight tour I had planned. But I didn't care. I just wanted to get in a 20 or 30-mile ride so I could strip off my wet clothes, crawl into my damp sleeping bag, shiver away the chill and hope against hope that the sun came out tomorrow.

But as I pedaled, my core temperature began to heat back up and my outlook improved substantially. It's a little startling to realize how closely connected emotions are to simple physical states such as body temperature, hunger and fatigue. In a matter of an hour, I swung wildly from woe-is-me sourpuss to enthusiastic reveler of all things Cordova. The previously flat and dreary Copper River Delta suddenly became infused with a Great Plains mystique, and as I looked east toward the mountains, the green cliffs shimmered behind wisps of silver mist. At the time, I was still soaked to the bone and pedaling through drizzle; really, the only thing about my situation that had changed was that I was finally moving warm blood through my system. It's a strange revelation, to realize a person actually can't separate their body from their emotions, even though bodies are easily manipulated and emotions are supposedly more substantial connections to one's soul. It makes one inclined to take themselves a little less seriously.

And then, the sun did start to poke through the thick clouds. Actually, it was still raining on the Delta, but I had ridden far enough down the road to curve inland, toward the glacier-studded mountains. I didn't even really notice the miles going by, and then suddenly, 25 had passed, and then 35. And then I thought, well, might as well go all the way.

As I moved inland, the temperature fell and the snowpack grew substantially, from a few patches here and there to a couple feet of solid snow. It was interesting, because I hadn't gained much if any elevation, and it was strange to see so much snow so close to sea level in June. This is a region dominated by glaciers, where cold wind blows off the ice field year-round, driving back summer's surge even as green pops up regardless.

And then, after 44 miles of near-total isolation (I only saw three cars go by), I reached the Million-Dollar Bridge. It really is quite the spectacle, a massive steel structure, flanked by two glaciers, that rises several stories out of a wilderness no one uses anymore. It was constructed at the turn of the century, at a cost of $1.5 million back then, to support rail shipments from a Kennicott Copper Mine that operated until the '30s.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to build this thing, in the 1900s when Alaska was a frontier of a frontier, using 1900s technology, fighting extreme winter weather and the terror of calving glaciers, which I'm guessing used to be even closer to the bridge a century ago than they are now. I love stuff like this: things that stand alone as living museums to a very intriguing era - the era of Alaska's gold rush, the bicycle boom, burgeoning mountain exploration, and Shackleton.

The Childs Glacier remains thrillingly close to the bridge, close enough that every few minutes I heard a thunderous explosion of cracking ice and erupting water (I only heard the glacier calving; I never turned my head fast enough to witness it happening.)

The only sunlight in all of the wide region seemed to be centered over the river, slowly drawing away the dampness that had dogged me all morning.

I negated the sun's drying effects by venturing on the snow-covered route beyond the bridge. As far as I could tell it was still a road, just not maintained in any way, and I was curious to see how far it continued. I only made it another mile or so of postholing before I decided the snow was only becoming thicker, not fading out. Wherever this route goes, it must only be clear a couple months out of the year. The Million-Dollar Bridge partially collapsed in the '64 earthquake and the state actually fixed it up a few years ago. I can't imagine why they went to the trouble, nor do I understand why they bother maintaining the Copper River Highway (as the gravel road is called) and its many bridges across the Delta. I guess it's just one of those things.

As I crossed back over the Million-Dollar Bridge, I passed a U.S. Forest Service employee who was hauling sonar equipment out of the river. I must have really startled him, because he jolted up from his perch and asked, rather loudly, "Are you OK?"

"I'm great," I said. "It's such a beautiful evening."

He looked a little confused. "So you're just biking around here?"

"Pretty much," I said.

"OK," he said. "It's just that we don't see many people out here on bicycles this time of night."

"Oh, yeah; I got a late start today," I smiled. Then sun still lingered above the mountains and I had no idea what time it was. It was actually nearly 9 p.m.

"You're not going all the way to Cordova tonight, are you?" he asked.

"Not all the way ..." I said, trailing off. "My camp spot is a few miles down the road." (I left out the detail that it was more than 40 miles down the road.)

"Ok, well if you need anything, our camp is just over there," he said pointing to a bank across the bridge. "Anything at all - food, water, flashlight. Just stop by."

"Thanks," I said. "I'll be fine."

I did head down past the USFS camp to get a better look at the Childs Glacier. I sat on the bank of the rushing, silty Copper River and made a tuna sandwich for dinner, which I nibbled on slowly as I waited for more exciting glacier eruptions. It was 9 p.m. and I was in no hurry to get back to camp (although I was sincerely wishing I had just hauled my wet camping gear out here into the beautiful sunlight, so I could spend the whole night.) I had a headlight, red blinky, food and a water filter. I could pedal to stay warm. I had everything I needed.

The road back was quiet and reflective, with nothing but the whir of gravel and a light breeze to distract from the slow separation of my body and my emotions. I fall victim to being cranky in the rain, just like everyone else, but I also recognize that down the line it doesn't really matter. Through the peace of the darkless night and the slow buildup of fatigue, 90 miles all too easily slip away, the world rolls sunward, and life goes on.

I woke up late Thursday morning to more continuous rain, to start the grumpypants cycle anew. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with the day. I had already pedaled out to the end of the Copper River Highway and back, and while I wished I'd had more time to spend out there, I wasn't about to do the 86-mile round trip again. I decided to spend the day in Cordova. While I travel to visit towns, I always end up spending the majority of my time in places outside of town, and end up having no clue about restaurants and music venues and things to do in town. So I pedaled back to the small strip of buildings and walked down Main Street in my rain gear, visiting the museum, sampling local Chinese cuisine and wandering the harbor. The cold chill began to creep back in, and with it my resentment about my lack of real shelter. It was time to get back "out."

I pedaled to the end of town, parked my bike and started hiking up Mount Eyak. I reflected on my trip to Cordova, which I embarked on a whim in my mania to do as much as exploring as possible before I move away. It was too sporadic and last-minute to find a traveling companion, so I went alone. Traveling alone used to bother me, a lot, but it doesn't any more. In fact, I often prefer it for many of the same reasons I used to fear it - it forces me to be self-reliant, makes me accountable for all of my decisions and urges a quiet reflection that I'd never otherwise experience. Of all of my travels in the past few years, my solo travels still stand out the most in my memory. It began first time I did an overnight backpacking trip by myself outside Idaho Falls and realized that I could set up my own tent, and make tuna sandwiches for dinner without anyone complaining about the lack of a hot meal, swim naked in the lake and hike 24 miles from camp if I wanted to. That was only five years ago; these days, I see that the horizon is limitless.

The solo trip also gave me a lot of time to reflect on how I really feel about leaving Alaska. Years from now, when people ask me if I lived in Anchorage, I'm not sure I'd really be able to say I did. I spent an incredible two months traveling around Southcentral Alaska, but the drifter feeling never really wore off. After a while, drifting starts to wear a person down. In many ways, I've felt aimless and drifting for more than a year, ever since I boarded the ferry boat out of Juneau in April 2009. I traveled and rode my bike all summer. I never really settled back into Juneau when I returned. I never even unpacked my boxes in Anchorage. I am ready to anchor myself to a more solid purpose and a place. For this reason, among many others, I really am excited to make the move to Montana. After all, I was born in the Rocky Mountains. In many ways, I am going "home."

I clawed through crusty snow to the Mount Eyak saddle and halfway up the face, but stopped about 200 feet shy of the peak when I decided that the face was too exposed and the hard, icy condition of the snow too unforgiving to go any farther without an ax and crampons. Behind me, scattered rain showers drenched the inlet and its surrounding islands, cast in soft pink light by the setting sun beyond. I caught my first glimpse of the Gulf of Alaska and breathed out a sad sigh for all of the beautiful and wild places I would never see. There are too many to comprehend, and their inaccessibility reminds me that I am only a subatomic speck perched on the face of a yawning universe. I thought about Cordova, with its green cliffs and glaciers, sweeping mudflats and mountains towering over the sea. It was perhaps the most beautiful place of all; but they all are, in their exhilerating moments of discovery. "I could live here someday," I thought. "When I am done riding my bicycle and climbing mountains, and I am ready to settle in a small cabin on the edge of the sea and wait for the universe to come to me."

I came down from the mountain with only about five hours to kill before I had to pack up and catch the ferry out of town. I've become such a night owl that I was just going to stay up and perhaps explore a few more side roads, but then I stumbled across the most awesome camp spot on the muskeg above town. I set up my tent on the soft tundra, where I read, dozed on and off, and occasionally got up to gaze over the panoramic view. The mountains cut dark shadows behind me and the calm inlet shimmered below, so still in the morning that departing fishing boats left white trails that were miles long. At 1 a.m. the sky had almost completely cleared, ever so briefly, and it occurred to me that if it were dark, I'd be able to see stars.

The dark will come again, soon enough - first to me, as I venture south, and eventually to the rest of Alaska. In five short years this state has trickled into my heart; for as much as I've seen and as little as I've experienced, I love every part of it deeply. I dream of a future that's impossible to establish - one that includes a house on the hill in Fairbanks, a winter camp outside Nikolai, a yurt above Homer, apartments in Juneau and Anchorage, a fishing shack in Cordova and regular trekking trips to the Arctic. I want to live everywhere but I know what I carry in my heart are memories, not physical places. I can bring these memories with me wherever I go. I tell myself they will carry me through my time away from the North. I tell myself it won't be forever.

As the ferry churned west, I bid a silent goodbye to Mount Eyak and the rest of Cordova. I knew there was a good chance I would never return to the beautiful little fishing village perched on the edge of the Prince William Sound, and that was OK. Life ebbs and flows like the tide; what it leaves behind is what I keep.

2010 Tour Divide

While I was interviewing with the good folks at Adventure Cycling, one person expressed his concern that I seemed to be very mountain-bike-centric, while the bulk of their organization was dedicated to road touring. I pointed out that my roots in bicycle travel - and, indeed, my roots in cycling itself - were firmly planted in the pavement and panniers culture of the open road. And today, while sorting through a box of old photos in my latest effort to purge, I found picture proof: Standing on the banks of the Colorado River near Moab in September 2002, just before embarking on a 600-mile loop tour of Southeastern Utah and Southwestern Colorado. I love finding (and making fun of) old photos of myself. For starters, I have no recollection of owning that jersey and can't fathom where I obtained it, but I do hope it went straight to the trash can after that trip. Secondly - zip-off pants? Really? Thirdly, I bought that Bell handlebar bag at K-mart and I still own and use it. Fourthly, four panniers and a tent and tarp strapped to the rear rack? Who needs all that stuff? Fifthly, that was the first time I had ever traveled fully loaded and I still vividly recall the 35 miles we pedaled out of Moab as one of the toughest days of riding in my entire life. Seriously. It's still right at the top in terms of end-of-day shock and fatigue. But the fact that I managed to rally for the next 565 miles proved to me that determination runs deeper than physical strength.

On that note, I'm taking off for a short tour of my own on Tuesday, but I wanted to write a quick post about this year's Tour Divide before I go. This year's race begins Friday morning in Banff, Alberta. Forty-eight people have committed to starting this year, including four women. I'm sure at least one of those women is going to absolutely shatter my TD race record, but it was fun to hold it for a year. Many people have asked me if I feel envious or sad that I won't be lining up for the Tour Divide this year. My answer is a genuine "no." Even before I started planning this huge move and job change, my head has been far away from the needed discipline and desire it takes to embark on a long, solo grind across the Divide. I have really enjoyed my unstructured time to have random adventures, and not having a big event on the horizon gives me the freedom to do what I want - go for a hike or join a group for a leisurely ride, rather than put in hours and hours of necessary training miles. I'm not saying I'm never going to train for anything epic again, and I'm not saying I'd never ride the Divide again. It remains one of the most incredible, self-affirming experiences of my life. But for now I'm content to do my small stuff and enjoy an armchair-adventurer stance in this year's race.

Race updates will be posted starting Friday at www.tourdivide.org. If you're interested in reading more about the experience of riding the Divide, Eric Bruntjen put together a collection of Tour Divide stories, interviews, poems and photos in a book called the Cordillera. I actually have not had a chance to order it yet, but I contributed a chapter for the project (full disclosure: it's an excerpt of a book I am working on.) The proceeds from the Cordillera actually go to Adventure Cycling, which I'm all for, since I'm going to be joining the payroll soon.

And just in case AC is still worried about my dedication to the organization, look what else I found:


It's a vintage Adventure Cycling map, from my Salt Lake City-to-Syracuse, N.Y. tour in fall 2003. We actually only followed a small portion of this particular map, dropping into the route about 100 miles west of the Missouri-Illinois border. Finally joining Adventure Cycling's TransAmerica route basically saved me from calling it quits on the cross-country tour, because in northern and central Missouri we found nothing but narrow roads, nonexistent shoulders, heavy traffic and belligerent drivers - i.e. "Misery." The TransAmerica route took us to our saving grace of farm roads and bicycle-friendly towns. I finished that trip happy and hooked on bicycle touring. Now I have a whole set of Great Divide Mountain Bike Route maps still caked in mud. Adventure Cycling really does do good work.

Sub-48 hours on the Kenai Peninsula

I am officially in manic mode. Never mind that I've dangled near the precipice of exhaustion since my second day of six hours of mountain biking in the Fairbanks heat ... and that was before the 140-mile gravel grinder and before staying up until 2 a.m. every night and before the big hikes and rides and runs and whatever else I did last week. It's all blurring together now. One churning mass of summer sickness. No matter! There will be time to rest when that ferry and/or plane turns south. Time is finite and demands the bender to end all Alaska benders.

My friend Sharon has a cabin off the Seward Highway, so on Friday a small group of friends met up for an overnight mountain bike trip. I didn't have time to shop for groceries beforehand so I frantically scooped up piles of calories at the gas station on the way out of town, the way I used to when I was riding the Great Divide. I checked the clock as we left Anchorage city limits: 6:11 p.m.

We settled in at the cabin and then took off for an evening ride on Johnson Pass, whose trailhead is only a couple of miles from Sharon's cabin. My mountain bike is still in the shop, so I had to ride my 37-pound Pugsley. It was a real grunt to keep up with three fresh, fit, experienced mountain bikers with a fat bike on singletrack, coping with sluggish steering, wide tire clearance, jarring descents and general engine fatigue. I think we were all expecting a short "night" ride, because we thought we would hit impassable snow lower on the trail. But 10 miles and two hours later, we had only seen short patches of snow. Instead, the low-light twilight was chasing us. Even though we had nearly reached Johnson Pass at that point, we opted to turn around before dark came. We returned to the cabin just before midnight.

The next morning we were up at 7:30 a.m. and making giant blueberry pancakes and copious cups of coffee in preparation for the Saturday fun, Resurrection Pass. Again, we didn't know how far the snow or weather would let us climb.

By some stroke of amazing luck, a small patch of sunlight seemed to follow us up the pass. The mountains were encompassed by blurry streaks of rain showers, and we later learned that it rained the entire day at Sharon's cabin, but we managed to creep through a sunlit window with hardly a sprinkle for more than five hours.

Two of the riders split off early and Sharon and I continued on to see how far we could make it up the pass. We talked semi-jokingly about pushing our bikes over the pass and descending into Hope, where we would have ~65 miles of road riding to get back to the car, or we could "shortcut" by just climbing back over the pass for a 90-mile singletrack ride. And the best thing about Sharon is, if we had actually brought enough food for such an endeavor, we probably would have talked each other into it. I love Sharon. She's just like me, only faster and crazier.

There really was still a fair amount of snow at the pass, though. We had already committed to at least making it to the high point, so we pushed our bikes through at least a dozen large snowfields. (I was really hoping Pugsley could take on the June slush, since that would at least give me some reward for powering the beast up there. But, yeah, not so much. Big wheels = slower pushing.)

Pugsley poses at the trail junction just below the pass. There was lots and lots of snow up high. Probably a good thing we didn't psych ourselves up about dropping into Hope, because we would have spent half the day pushing our bikes.

Dropping back into Swan Lake was more scenic, anyway. My shoulders and back felt pretty wrecked during the last few miles to the trailhead. I am truly not a fan of rigid bikes on rooty singletrack. Something has to absorb all the shock, and eventually even the tiniest bumps shot electric waves into my upper body. We ended with about 38 miles and ~3,500 feet vertical.

We returned to Sharon's cabin in the pouring rain. I took a brief respite to shower, drink tea and eat chips and salsa, and then I was off again, driving toward Seward. I planned to camp in the Kenai Fjords National Park, so I went for an evening stroll to Exit Glacier. I was hoping to hike to Harding Icefield the following day, so I decided to walk a little ways up the trail to see what the snow conditions were like.

But it was such a beautiful evening, I just kept climbing. It was one of those things where I was wearing jeans and a cotton hoodie, a cheap pair of running shoes and carrying only a bottle of water (I had my small water pack with me, but the bladder was empty. I was simply using it to carry my bear spray.) And suddenly I was traversing up a snowfield, climbing a few thousand vertical feet, and still the siren call of the unknown horizon drove me forward.

It was so peaceful up there, standing on the shoreline of an ocean of ice, bathed in the soft glow of sunset and eternally silent. There wasn't even a breeze, no flowing water, no birds ... a place where it is always winter. I reached a point where the terrain along the side of the glacier began to level out, and in the flat light it was difficult to tell whether the route forward was the snow-covered mountain ridge I had been following, or the icefield itself. I didn't want to wander out on the icefield and its threat of crevasses. Plus, it was 10 p.m. and, while it never gets completely dark here, I also wasn't carrying a headlamp or important warm clothing or, well, anything. I admit it was a reckless way to hike. I wasn't particularly proud of myself for poor planning (Really, I was the worst kind of national park cautionary tale cliche, wandering around in the snow in wet shoes and jeans.) But I also knew what I was doing, and I knew the snow conditions were awesome, and I knew I could be back in less than an hour. I sat down on my butt and ripped down the slush, a controlled fall punctuated with uncontrolled laughter.

Since I had already hiked Harding Icefield on Saturday night, I had to think of something to do with my Sunday morning. I drove into Seward and had a nice leisurely breakfast at a coffee shop, then came up with the idea to climb up Mount Marathon before I left town. Mount Marathon is the site of a famous Alaska race held every July 4. The race gains something like 3,500 feet in a mile and a half. The craziest racers can go up and down the mountain in less than an hour. I admit in a moment of madness I signed up for the Mount Marathon race lottery this year, but my name wasn't picked. I've heard the race route is brutal beyond belief, so I decided to hike around the back way, i.e. the 5-mile scenic route, which wraps around the mountain and climbs into the Mount Marathon bowl. The best part about the long way is that nobody takes it. The route is still mostly snow-covered, and I didn't see another person until I reached the peak, which was quite crowded.

The weather, which had been rainy all morning, really started to clear as I climbed. It's almost as though Alaska knows I am leaving, and so it is putting on its best face as a fond farewell.

I decided to take the race route back into Seward. And it really is as brutal as everyone says - a horrible, leg-sucking scree field that plummets off the face of the Earth. People run down this? All I will say is there is one lottery I am truly glad I didn't win. Mountain running races? What was I thinking?

The afternoon was blue-sky gorgeous by the time I drove back over Turnagain Pass and around the Arm, crossing into Anchorage city limits at 5:34 p.m. for a sub-48-hour trip. What a great two days on the Kenai Peninsula! Did I mention I'm exhausted? Better eat a couple of peanut butter cups so I can rally for tomorrow. I still haven't decided what to do. If I can get out of bed, though, I'm sure it will be great.

Bucket list

I am moving to Montana. I can hardly believe I just typed those five words. That plan was nowhere on my 2010 list of goals, but such is life. Sometimes it whips you around in a flurry of G-Force in a way that's both sickening and thrilling, like a rickety old amusement park ride. You can't wait to get off and then you can't wait to get back on, even as your head spins and stomach churns, somewhere beneath it all, beyond the warbled music and flashing lights, you feel the spark that drives you onward.

I am excited to work for Adventure Cycling. It's a great organization, and there will be many chances to develop my editorial voice while working for the magazine. They're taking a chance on me and I'm ready to prove that I have much to offer to the realm of bicycle journalism. Although I keep a blog that is mainly about my hobbies, the truth is I really value my career. I can't be entirely happy unless I can productively contribute to the swirl of information out there. I came to Anchorage telling myself that I could be happy even if I had to work at Wal-Mart to support my Alaska adventures, but the truth is, I wouldn't be. I'm a journalist at heart, and to combine outdoor adventures with journalism is the dream. So I'm taking a chance on Montana.

There is much I will miss terribly about Alaska: the Chugach, Denali National Park, the Alaska Range, Fairbanks, the Kenai Peninsula ... but even more than the places, I will miss the people. They say people come to - or stay in - Alaska for a reason. These are people after my own heart - people who don't just enjoy the landscape; they love the landscape, in a deep and lasting way that connects us intimately even if we live many hundreds of miles apart and see each other only a couple of times a year. I hope to still visit Alaska at least that often. My family in Salt Lake City is so excited that I will finally live "close" to home again. They don't yet realize that I'm going to spend all of my vacation time up north. ;-)

Since the decision has been made, my mind has been inundated with a panic of details and logistics. How will I move my cat and my belongings? What am I going to do about the 1996 Geo Prism? Take the ferry? Purge, ship and fly? Take a chance on the old car and the Al-Can, knowing the financial backlash will be huge if it gives up along the way? Where will the cat and I live? Where will I ride my bike? How will I make new friends? And what will I do before I go? My time in Alaska is now quite short. I wish I could do all I had hoped to do this summer, but the truth is I won't have the time or space. I have to start thinking up my bucket list now, knowing I won't get to do a fraction of what's on it. This week I mostly had to deal with annoying logistics. I had to spend nearly all day Monday and Tuesday moving from my old apartment into a new one, something that had been planned before the move to Montana cropped up. I did manage to get out for a hike with my friends Dan and Amy. The couple moved to Alaska from Colorado about a year and a half ago. They both urged me to go to Montana. I was a little incredulous. "How come no one up here is willing to tell me to stay?" I said. "Don't any of you people like me enough to try to keep me around?"

It's all in good fun, though. Dan is a freelance photographer and took this awesome photo of me prancing down the snowfield beneath False O'Malley Peak. (I already received Facebook criticism for holding my ice ax in my hand while running down a steep hill. I will just say that it was much less likely to impale me there than it would be when dangling off the side of my Camelback, which is where I usually store my ice ax when hiking.) Anyway, Dan and I had a good discussion about self-employment and freelancing. He does great work! His Web site is http://www.danbaileyphoto.com/.

On Wednesday, another fun group of women who call themselves the Trail Tramps invited me out for their "Bikes and Bangers" Wednesday night ride (Some singletrack, much intake of meat byproducts.) They showed me around the Hillside trails, a network of singletrack that is right in town that I had not yet explored, because I have been so busy getting out of town since I arrived in Anchorage. I finally took my Karate Monkey into the shop for an extensive overhaul, so I had to ride Pugsley (my snow bike). On the bright side, everyone gave me an automatic handicap for powering a 37-pound rigid bike up the steep hills (and for being fresh off a 140-mile mountain bike ride, from which I'm still feeling the effects.) But the real difficulty was the downhill trails, clogged as they were with thick tree roots and hairpin turns (Pugsley has the turn radius of a tractor.) I took a solid beating. Oh well. If you return from a group ride with bleeding legs, everyone knows you earned your hot dog.

Then on Thursday, it finally rained. I went for a run on some of those same Hillside trails (I was looking for the Wolverine Peak spur, but got lost in the looping trail network and never found it.) I was loving the weather - the cool, moist air and intense smell of wildflowers and fresh grass. Since I moved from Juneau, I have honestly missed the rain. May and June are dry months throughout Alaska, but this early summer has been particularly dry, and after those 90-degree days in Fairbanks I have been feeling a bit sun-baked. It was refreshing and gratifying to see one day of 53 degrees and raining - almost like being "home" again, wherever home is.

I guess home is wherever I go. And that's OK. Life is a wonderful, wild ride.

The World at Large

Thunder rumbled from the north as I neared the crest of Cleary Summit. A dust-swirl of wind drove a mass of indigo clouds toward me, so I pedaled faster. I ignored the buzzing from my cell phone, indicating it had found reception from the outskirts of Fairbanks. I glanced over my shoulder to the north and the looming thunderstorm, the low rolling hills of the White Mountains, and beyond that, the great wild unknown that is northern Alaska. "This is as far north as you've ever been," I said to my bike, "Kim" the Karate Monkey, who I spend a lot of time with and admittedly sometimes talk to. "Last summer it was all south to the Mexican border. This summer, who knows?" Hard rain started to fall as I rolled into the highway pullout. I ducked into my car to check my voice mail. Violent raindrops pounded the windshield as I listened to the message. The voice was muffled. I held my breath, as though my own stillness would create clarity amid the clatter. I hit repeat and listened again. Rain and thunder continued to fall. I felt my own hot tears begin to roll down my cheeks. I couldn't help it. It was the best and worst news I had received in a long time. And it meant I faced one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make.

In early April, right around the time that I was moving from Juneau to Anchorage, I received an e-mail from Kent Peterson with a link to a job ad. "Look at this; this is your job!" he wrote. I browsed the job description and he was right. It had everything ... journalism with both editorial and design elements, plus writing and photography, for a magazine that highlights bicycle travel: Adventure Cycling. The only drawback - a drawback that most cyclists would consider a perk - was that the job was based in Missoula, Montana, which is a wonderful place, but it's not Alaska.

I agonized over the decision to even send Adventure Cycling my resume. I consulted my family and friends in Utah, where I was visiting when I actually went through the process of applying. I finally relented to their consensus that it was worth a try. The job seemed like a long shot anyway. I was a small-town newspaper journalist - an unemployed small-town newspaper journalist - and this was a national magazine. Still, I was perfect for the position, and I knew it. If the company recognized that fact, they would offer it to me. And if they didn't, well, I didn't have anything to lose. It was nearly the end of April before I sent off my resume. I spent the next month - this wonderful, perfect-weather month of May - building a new life in Anchorage. I made new friends. I explored new places. I wrote a few articles and made quite a bit of encouraging progress on my book - not only in polishing up my initial draft, but also in garnering the interest of a couple of agents. But I recognized that my fantastic summer-in-Alaska lifestyle wasn't sustainable. I also realized that I did not have a desire to be self-employed. Eventually, I would have to return to the real world of income, taxes and health insurance. When I did, would I seek out my dream job regardless of where it was located? Or would I cling to my location regardless of what I did for a living? Somehow, I knew I would have to make a choice. So I spent a month bracing for it.

"Ice-age heat wave, can't complain.
If the world's at large, why should I remain?
Walked away to another plan.
Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand."

It seemed fitting that I was riding my bicycle in the boonies north of Fairbanks when I received the job offer. I had spoken to several people at Adventure Cycling during a series of interviews, and I had become more and more excited about the job opportunity and the company. They made it clear that it wasn't my newspaper experience that helped me stand out as a candidate, it was my hobbies - my avid cycling, my Tour Divide ride, and my blog. It was becoming a perfect example of "Do what you love and the rest will follow." I could be a bicycle adventurer AND a journalist AND live in the mountains AND make a living. But how could I leave Alaska? A huge portion of my identity is wrapped up in Alaska. My blog is called "Up in Alaska." Even my extended family members now refer to me as "Jill from Alaska." I've lived here five years and hardly scraped the surface of the landscape and lifestyle. At the same time, I'm anchored to nothing and I could drift away with ease. But much would be left undone. Much would be left behind.

I move on to another day,
to a whole new town with a whole new way.
Went to the porch to have a thought.
Got to the door and again, I couldn't stop.

I left Fairbanks late Friday evening, whirling with the overwhelming prospect of it all. It was 10 p.m. and the sun burned hot and high behind a film of wildfire smoke. I wasn't yet ready to return to Anchorage. I needed time; I needed space to process the swirl of thoughts storming through my head. I remembered reading online about an Alaska Endurance Association ride scheduled for the next day, a 140-mile gravel grinder on the Denali Highway called the Denali Classic. It seemed perfect - a day to spend pedaling through my thoughts, and night in camp with other crazy cycling Alaskans, who might help me understand why leaving the state was so difficult. It seemed a little reckless to pull a 140-mile self-supported mountain bike ride out of very little planning, with whatever food I had in the trunk of my car and a bicycle in severe need of a tuneup (after a seemingly exhaustive series of adjustments, my brakes were still rubbing, and on top of that my bottom bracket was loose.) Luckily, my friend Eric had expressed interest in coming up to the Denali Highway for a weekend fishing trip. We agreed to meet up Saturday night in camp, so at worst he could serve as my safety net. The plan was in place.

You don't know where and you don't know when.
But you still got your words and you got your friends.
Walk along to another day.
Work a little harder, work another way.

The drive seemed to drag on forever and it was after 1 a.m. by the time I rolled into the Brushkana Creek campground. Twilight cast the valley in blue shadows, and the campground was eerily quiet. I crawled into my tent and tossed and turned for a while; hours, maybe. The sun came back up. I opened and closed my rainfly, blinking against the golden light. I had a vague, sleepless sense of time passing, and then the sun was hot and high. The AEA organizer, Carlos, walked up to my tent and announced there was a riders' meeting in a half hour. It was 8:04 a.m. Carlos's wake-up call made me chuckle because I arrived late and had never indicated that I planned to ride the Denali Classic. The was no reason he should have known I was there. I decided he must have recognized my car, which I hadn't taken to an AEA event since the 2006 Soggy Bottom. It filled me with a warm sense of community, a feeling of belonging. It reminded me of something I recently read in a book called "Born to Run" - "We don't race to beat each other as much as we race to be with each other."

Well uh-uh baby I ain't got no plan.
We'll float on maybe would you understand?
Gonna float on maybe would you understand?
Well float on maybe would you understand?

Still, alone time was important. I dawdled away the first half hour and walked over to the pre-race meeting in my jeans with a bagel in my mouth. The pack of 12 or so riders took off and I finished packing up my stuff. I feared thunderstorms so I packed warm clothing and rain gear. I feared heat so I packed a full Camelback of water, iodine tablets, and food. I feared bike breakdown so I packed the bulk of my tool kit, spare spokes and chain links, zip-ties, duct tape, electrical tape and a pocket knife. Several of the riders had sag wagons and carried almost no gear, but I didn't mind the disadvantage. I needed to be self-supported. I needed to be alone with my thoughts. I took off 20 or 30 minutes later.

The days get shorter and the nights get cold.
I like the autumn but this place is getting old.
I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast.
It might not be a lot but I feel like I'm making the most.
The days get longer and the nights smell green.
I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave.

You could say it was a beautiful day. I would say it was a hot day. The sweet stink of wildfire smoke swirled in the air, and Memorial Day traffic kicked up long clouds of dust. The Denali Highway is rugged and fairly empty, even on holiday weekends. The road stretches 135 miles across the wide river basins beneath the Alaska Range, and connects the tiny towns of Cantwell and Paxson. It's as close of a road to nowhere as roads get, but the state maintains it because it's a good route for hunting and wildlife viewing. The Denali Classic ran from the campground at mile 105 to McClaren Pass at mile 35, and back. So even though we weren't riding the entire highway, we still had to ride 140 miles of jittery gravel on a dusty road that included more than 8,000 feet of climbing. It was an intimidating ride. I spent the first 25 miles feeling lousy but gradually brought myself around by stuffing my face with Sour Patch Kids. By the time I began the long climb out of the Susitna River valley, I felt a sweep of new optimism. It was a beautiful day! The green blaze of spring was emerging everywhere - alder buds, sprigs of grass and tiny white flowers fluttered in the breeze along the high, dry road. "This is so much like the alpine regions of Wyoming," I thought even as I wondered why I am always connecting thoughts and sights to pieces of my past, no matter where I am in the present. "I'm not in Wyoming, I'm in Alaska," I reminded myself, but still my mind flickered through vivid memories of Wyoming.

I like songs about drifters - books about the same.
They both seem to make me feel a little less insane.
Walked on off to another spot.
I still haven't gotten anywhere that I want.
Did I want love? Did I need to know?
Why does it always feel like I'm caught in an undertow?

The pursuit of introspection with a bicycle is a paradox. The time to think is there. The space to think is there. There is no better way to connect with both body and environment, but mental clarity remains elusive amid the physical strain. On the Denali Highway, beautiful images and memories of Alaska flickered between gray blips of fatigue and pain, like an old-fashioned silent filmstrip. My Camelback pressed hard into my lower back and no matter how I adjusted or loosened it, the pain cut deeper. Pretty soon all I could think about was my back, even as I strained to enjoy the scenery and remind myself that I otherwise felt good. But the loathing shouted louder. I wanted to throw my Camelback into the woods, but I couldn't because the temperature was pushing 85 degrees and I needed water. I wondered if my pain was even the Camelback's fault, or if my back simply hurt because I hadn't exactly trained to ride 140 miles of chunky gravel. My back didn't care whose fault it was. It blamed me for not stopping and screamed every time I launched my bike over a pothole. I stood up for every climb; climbing was my back's only relief, but I was tired and couldn't fully appreciate the brief release of the pressure valve. I knew it was fruitless to focus all of my attention on my back. I had already climbed the pass and turned around. The other riders and their sag wagons were in front of me. I was going to have to ride until I finished. And that was fine. With struggle comes satisfaction; as soon as it's over, there will only be another, and another. Life is still beautiful and good, not in spite of struggle, but because of it.

The moths beat themselves to death against the lights.
Adding their breeze to the summer nights.
Outside, water like air was great.
I didn't know what I had that day.
Walk a little farther to another plan.
You said that you did, but you didn't understand.

I had a vague, sleepless sense of miles passing. Every so often I'd experience moments of clarity, moments to look out slack-jawed across the sun-dusted tundra and snow-capped Alaska Range and ask myself, "Is that why I love this place? Is that why it's so hard to leave?" My back ached and the answers didn't come. I reached the campground after 10 p.m., more than 13 hours after I left. It suddenly felt like an instant. I met up with Eric and we joined the others around the fire. I greedily slurped up soup and cobbler as the group discussed bike geek topics - gear, calories and wattage. I smiled knowingly, because I both related to the obsession and understood the triviality of it. The fire crackled and everyone was laughing, talking, drinking. It seemed like we were in a place far away from the 140-mile gravel grinder, and the Denali Highway, and Alaska.

But Alaska was still there. It will always be here.

I know that starting over is not what life's about.
But my thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud.

(Lyrics from "The World at Large" by Modest Mouse.)

The Great Hot North, part 2

Cyclists are prone to wedging themselves into groups. I am not immune to this tendency, this need to define myself as a cyclist. Am I a mountain biker? Well, not entirely; I ride a lot of pavement. Am I a snow biker? Only in the winter, and even then, only part of the time. Am I a bike commuter? No; I do use my bike frequently to do errands. When I had a job, I rode it occasionally to work; but I still own a car, and I don't make a lifestyle out of commuting. Am I an endurance racer? No; I enter races because they make for fun rides, and train for them because I like to ride, but I haven't been in structured training since I stumbled off the Great Divide nearly a year ago. So what am I? I am a cyclist. This I know.

I often refer to myself as a "bicycle tourist." To me, this means I travel around on my bicycle. Sometimes I travel overnight, sometimes I travel long distances in a day, and sometimes I travel short distances to somewhere completely new to me. I prefer places off the beaten path, places I generally know very little about beforehand, places remote and rugged that require a mountain bike or its even burlier cousin, the snow bike. I like to define myself as a "bike explorer," even if I am only discovering things for myself.


So when I am visiting a new city, like Fairbanks, I like to sniff out unique and therefore interesting routes. This is a strange practice, because all of the biking in Fairbanks is new to me. There are tons of great established singletrack trails here. I have even dabbled in some of them during my short time here (Skarland Ski Trail, Secret Trail, and the UAF trail system.) But when I am alone and have a few quality afternoon hours to spend exploring, I like to set out toward something like the Circle-Fairbanks Trail. It's an old Athabaskan overland route to the Yukon River. I learned of its existence while scanning the Alaska gazetteer before my trip north. It is listed as a "hiking trail, unmaintained." It runs many dozens of miles partially parallel to the Steese Highway. Is it marked? I don't know! Is it still a distinguishable trail? I don't know! Is it overgrown? Boggy? Bikeable at all? I don't know! Let's go find out!

I started at Cleary Summit on the Steese Highway because I learned online that there was an access point near there. I try not to make a habit out of too much online research beforehand, lest it kill the surprises. But I admit I found and downloaded a partial GPS track before I set out. After all, I'm in the far north, and it's remote out here! I don't want to get totally lost. I climbed to the Skiland ski area and rumbled down the steep tundra of a ski slope (brutal on a rigid bike, believe me) before connecting with the trail. For miles I followed a smooth ribbon of doubletrack as it rippled over hills and through charred black spruce forests. Thunderstorms rumbled from the east and I couldn't stop grinning, because this wasn't just bikeable - it was great biking.

Unfortunately, many four-wheelers discovered this trail before I did and ripped it to shreds. The surface went from rough to rougher, and on the swift downhills it was all I could do to keep the rigid, rattling Karate Monkey rubber-side-down. Meanwhile, the thunderstorms crept ever closer and I couldn't help but fret about what a nightmare the trail must become when the dirt turns to mud. I had already bogged down in several low spots, and I knew if it rained too much, I'd be walking. I kept glancing into the tundra for possible bailout points, but there were none. So I let off the brakes and took the horrible beating that was a full-charge descent, knowing that hands and arms will eventually recover from numbness, but the horror of mud slogs lasts forever.

The trail came to a T; the right turn led to more Fairbanks-Circle discovery, the left veered toward the highway and its merciful pavement. The right turn was tempting but I wasn't about to tempt the weather. I turned left, found the highway, and powered the last six miles and 1,400 vertical feet up the road shoulder. The sky opened up just as I arrived at my car. I took a picture to document my satisfaction at my own impeccable timing.

Who knows? The Circle-Fairbanks Trail may be a great spot for a multiday bicycle tour. Or, as the new wave of bike explorers like to call it, "bikepacking." I may never know, but it was fun to discover a small piece of it. John and I went for a short singletrack ride in the evening. Fairbanks trails are rooty and my hands have just about had it with the rigid fork (I finally broke down and took my leaking Reba shock in to be serviced. No new mountain bike for me this year, but hopefully I can bring my Karate Monkey back to a more tolerable level.) We passed by the UAF muskox farm and spotted a day-old, newborn caribou calf. Isn't it cute? I love being a bike explorer.

The Great Hot North

I am in Fairbanks for a brief biking and lounging trip. I was hoping to do a three-day combo dirt/pavement bikepacking trip, but other obligations require that I stay within cell phone range. I decided to come up to Fairbanks anyway to visit some friends and check out the riding around town. My friends think it's a funny destination. "No one in Anchorage comes up to Fairbanks to ride bikes," they told me. It's true that Fairbanks has large, rolling hills instead of craggy mountains, and it's either dusty or boggy with great black clouds of mosquitoes. But then thunderstorms roll in from the south and fill the expansive sky with color, and the rich green birch leaves flutter in the breeze, and the hills roll toward the remote and wild horizons of Alaska's deep Interior. It's a beautiful place. It reminds me of my time riding the Great Divide through southern Montana. I like it here.

The first night I arrived in town, my friend and I sat near the deck chatting away for hours. The sun drifted lazily toward the horizon, casting streaks of bronze light over the tree branches in the yard. A bright sort of twilight followed and then, in an unnoticed span of time that felt like an instant, the hints of light returned. I glanced at the clock. It was well after 2 a.m. Night is a vague dream here, a nearly forgotten place, somewhere far away. It's summer in the North.

On Wednesday I headed out for what was to be a "short" afternoon ride. The temperature was well over 70 degrees, climbing toward 80. I wiped a layer of sweat from my forehead and smiled at the dramatic climate of this place. The last time I visited Fairbanks, it dropped to 25 below zero F, more than 100 degrees colder. That was only two months ago.

I coasted down the long hill from my friend's house and found the trail marker for the Equinox Marathon, a trail marathon that's held every year in the beginning of autumn. I followed the root-clogged doubletrack as it began to climb steeply up the Ester Dome, a deceivingly large "hill" that actually rises nearly 2,000 feet above town. I reached the rounded crest and noticed the rough jeep road dropped down the other side of the dome. I wondered if it connected to the developed road I could see in the far distance. I bounced and swerved down the loose, heavily eroded track, losing an enormous amount of elevation but hoping the road somehow went through to Goldstream Creek, which I envisioned myself crossing in a rush of cold, waist-deep water before reconnecting with the road on the other side. Instead the jeep road dead-ended a ways back from the creek. I pedaled over the berm and began to follow an ever-so-faint hint of singletrack that wended through the trees. The ground was carpeted in dry leaves and strewn with deadfall. After hopping over a minefield of dead birch trees and creeping around alder tangles, I knew that whatever I was following was nothing like a trail, at least not any kind of a summer trail. Still, it was exciting, riding my bike through the woods, letting my GPS make a digital bread-crumb trail to follow back as I pressed deeper and deeper into "uncharted" wilderness. I felt like a biking explorer. I held onto the dream of making my ride a loop for quite a while. But the woods thickened and the ground became more mushy and I was doing a lot more walking than riding. GPS showed that rather than cutting a straight line toward the creek, I had made a big, meandering S back toward Ester Dome. So I surrendered to the out-and-back, and turned to face the looming climb in front of me.

It was a rugged beast of a climb, much steeper and harder than the marathon side of the dome. I sweated and wheezed and really felt like I was somewhere back on the Great Divide, somewhere hot, dusty and difficult, and nowhere near cell phone range. I reached the peak and rocketed down the other side, because I was already running late for the "real" ride that I planned to do with my friend, an evening singletrack ride along a ridge above town. By the time I returned home, my face and arms were crusted in salt, my three-liter Camelback bladder was empty, my GPS had recorded 4,500 feet of climbing over 34 miles, and the sun was still hot and high on the horizon for the two hours of strenuous singletrack biking in front of me. It's manic time. It's summer in the North.