So much white

Less than 24 hours after we arrived in Anchorage on the winter solstice, it started snowing and hasn't really stopped. What looks to be at least three feet of new fluff has fallen at our friend's house near Hilltop Ski Area. Combine that with temperatures in the teens and single digits, December's dearth of daylight, and the fact that all of this new snow has fallen on a base of what appears to be a solid sheet of ice. Our friends around town greet us with a partly sympathetic, partly gloating "welcome to winter."

I reply with a smile, "We came here for winter." But I don't mask the fact that this has been an adjustment. This kind of winter makes even small efforts feel huge. On Christmas Day we went out for a "run," breaking trail with the snowshoes. We covered about six miles in a little over two hours (and yes, we did "run" some), did a lot of sweating in our minimal layers at 11 degrees, and came home exhausted. Some of that exhaustion was caused by heavily working a lot of muscles we're not used to working, and some by fighting off a chill we're not used to fighting. People who train their bodies in winter conditions have an advantage over people who reside where the livin's easy. It's simply a different game.

We were driven to get out as much as possible, if only to adjust our bodies to Alaska's harsh environment. But after several days of such efforts, it became obvious we would have to taper if we expected to have any energy for our big trip. We went to visit my long-time friend Craig in Palmer and planned a quick and easy hike to Hatcher Pass. We climbed the exposed slope in single-digit temps with a stiff wind, resulting in a windchill factor of about 15 below. The hike itself was short and sweet, about 90 minutes. But its meandering nature, followed by a leisurely two-hour lunch in a wood-heated lodge that was not very warm, left my whole body deeply chilled. The sedentary battle for body heat completely drained me of energy. It was a useful reminder about the paradox of winter travel — the more one moves, the less one's body has to "work" to stay warm. You're tired and it's cold? Just keep moving. Stopping will only make the overall fatigue worse.

Beat and I are both feeling nervous but excited about our three-day trip starting Wednesday morning. The plan is to leave from Deshka Landing and follow river trails toward Shell Lake, about a hundred miles away, over three days. We'll be dragging all of our supplies in sleds, including stoves and fuel, but will likely utilize a couple of backcountry lodges for some water and food. This is the "luxury" section of the Iditarod Trail, where a few outposts of civilization remain. But it's still "out there" in every sense of the phrase, a roadless region through a vast swath of mountains, swamps and boreal forest, with only a spattering of log cabins. In most Californians' understanding of remote, it might as well be the moon.

I savor these stark landscapes with a palette of emotions that remain difficult to describe with words, but the closest one is "love." I love being out here, even if it's a terribly difficult place to be. All of this new snow, which is still falling as of nine hours before our planned departure, is supposedly going to be followed by a cold snap. That's right, it's not quite "cold" yet. The current weather forecast indicates a likelihood that we'll see temperatures below -20F on the rivers as we stomp over all this soft new snow. Beat and I have both seen this before, and we're preparing for it, but the possible scenarios remain intimidating. Traveling an average of 35 miles a day is, by comparison, quite easy. In fact, it's the easiest way to stay warm.

Way back in January 2008, when I was preparing for my first Iditarod 350, I wrote this paragraph to sum up my feelings about a winter camping experience. I was referring to endurance racing, but it fits just as well with an expedition-style tour of backcountry Alaska in December:

"This multiday winter endurance racing thing is completely crazy. On the surface, it looks hard. Then you peel back its rigid veneer only to find an inner layer of hard. And even as you chip away at its core, you continue to find layer upon layer upon layer of hard. Every part is hard.


And I love it."

I still do. I may never be able to adequately describe exactly why, but I do. And I continue to try.

Just a Lazy Christmas Eve

Twas the morning before Christmas, and deep in the Mat-Su Valley,
Six intrepid sightseers were getting ready to rally.

Their snowshoes were packed in the truck with great care,
Knowing thigh-deep fresh powder awaited them there.

The hikers were nestled snug in the cab with their coffees,
While the thermometer on the dash dropped below zero degrees.

But with mittens and balaclavas and frozen gumdrops to snarf,
The group set out in the frost for a long winter's march.

When out of the fog they arose with surprise,
To see a whole world emerge beyond ice-crusted eyes.

Up Lazy Mountain they trudged like molasses,
Sweating in frigid air and fogging their glasses.

The low solstice sunlight on new-fallen snow,
Gave a luster of summer to the fog bank below.

When what between two layers of clouds should appear,
But a spread of Chugach Mountains, brilliantly clear.

And a peak in front, so wind-swept and crazy
They knew in a rapid heartbeat it must be Lazy.

A strenuous 3,500 feet they had climbed,
To stand in the wind and breathe something sublime.

They didn't stay long lest their toes become frozen,
But were ecstatic with the Christmas gift they had chosen.

They sprang down the mountain on cold pillows of fluff,
Wondering if one Lazy Christmas could ever be enough.

And they wanted to say, before the frost numbed their lips,
"Merry Christmas to all, and to all awesome trips."

Testing sleds

Before we go on our big Alaska trip, which looks like it will be taking place next week (beginning Wednesday), we wanted to conduct several test runs of the sleds. Since we returned from Nepal, Beat has been in a frenzy designing and building Sled V.2, which has been fortuitous for me because it means I can use V.1 without actually having to build my own sled (given my usual lack of success with even simple projects such as cooking or adjusting my bicycles' derailleurs, I think it's better I avoid building my own crucial pieces of gear.)

I tried out a few of my own new winter things on our first trip out: A down skirt to combat cold-butt syndrome, and the trekking pole pogies that Beat sewed for me out of a cheap synthetic sleeping bag. This all began when I was digging through my winter bike stuff, saw my Revelate Designs pogies and said to Beat, "I wish someone made a small version of these for poles." Unlike me, Beat loves to build gear and is actually pretty good at it, so he made a couple pairs in time for our Anchorage trip. The reason I prefer pogies over mittens and gloves is because pogies allow me to remain bare-handed or wearing only a thin pair of liner gloves down to fairly low temperatures. Free fingers are better for taking pictures, pulling my Camelback hose out from under many layers of clothing, and feeding myself.

We arrived here just in time for what our friends have told us was the largest snowstorm all month, and it started cranking just as we set out for our afternoon run. Beat got some good testing in with Sled V.2, which he purposely made larger, more water-resistant and more robust for the 350-mile Alaska backcountry race in two months.

The storm ended up dumping more than a foot of snow, so when we went back out this morning with Anne, we had no choice but to strap on our snowshoes. This filled me with a warm Christmas spirit because I love a good uphill slog in knee-deep powder, especially when towing all of my winter survival gear (I am not being sarcastic. I really do love this.) Beat thought four hours of this didn't sound like a difficult enough workout, so he filled his sled with a few Anchorage phone books on top of his winter camping gear.

He probably regretted this decision when the route started twisting through the trees and tipping the sled over, forcing him to test V.2's backpack mode (V.1 is more narrow and didn't have the disadvantage of the poor weight distribution of phone books, but I still had to carry it over blowdowns and around the hairpin turns.) We traveled from Anne's front door, up Hillside singletrack trails and into Prospect Heights. This is a region where I often rode my mountain bike during my very short stint as a resident of Anchorage (April to June 2010.) It was fun to relive these memories amid the ice and snow through the power of nostalgia. Janice's Jive! This trail is so fun; it's a steep rooty bruiser in the summer. Now it's just kinda ... soft ... and slow. (Slog, slog, slog.) ... (Note: To the Anchorage snow bikers who get to ride these trails once they're nicely packed down — you're welcome.)

Temperatures this morning started out in the teens and never rose above 21F. But even fresh from California, and purposely minimizing layers knowing the work we were in for, I still felt overdressed in a single layer of tights, a thin long-sleeve shirt and a soft-shell jacket. No hat or gloves until we started down. This is good, hard work, and after four hours of sled-dragging snowshoeing, my quads are feeling it.

I am seriously excited about our trip next week, which we had to organize around the weather and the schedules of Anne and her husband (our pilot for the flight back.) But the current plan is to leave from the Mat-Su Valley on popular (and hopefully nicely packed) snowmachine trails and trek toward Shell Lake over three days, give or take a long night. That's about 110 miles on the Iditarod Trail, on foot, bivying outside in the cold for at least one night and possibly two. (We are hoping to utilize a backcountry lodge during the first night, if we make good distance.) Considering the context — self-supported snow run — it's a pretty ambitious plan that's probably going to end up being more demanding than the actual race I'm training for, the Susitna 100. It's also probably going to be even more fun, of both the Type 1 and Type 2 variations, so I am quite excited.

But for now, we're going to enjoy a weekend of holiday food celebrations and winter play. Let it snow!