Sunday, January 08, 2012

Symphony of cold IV

Movement IV, sonata
A wind gust swept shards of snow over the trench as I struggled halfway inside my sleeping bag, trying to kick my pad into place. Loud pops followed small bursts of yellow light on the Shell Lake, about a mile and a half away and a few hundred feet below our bivy spot. I was impressed by the stamina of the children, who for most of the evening had been launching an impressive arsenal of fireworks in shifts — each one lasted about as long as they could stand in the harsh wind and 15 below zero temperatures. But now it was nearly midnight and they were really letting loose.

"Three more minutes," Beat said, his voice muffled inside his own bag.

"This bag is not cooperating tonight," I growled, squinting against another stinging blast of micro-ice.

"Are you going to freeze?" Beat asked.

"Hope not. I'll let you know."

I was nearly inside my bag when I heard Beat say, "It's midnight. Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year, sweetie." I poked my head out of the bivy, sat up, and threw my torso over the wall of my trench like a beached seal. Beat heard me do this, nuzzled his own face out of his down cocoon and strained his body toward mine. With a few more lunges I successfully touched my lips to his. "Happy New Year," I repeated. "Isn't this romantic?"

"Something like that," Beat said, but I saw him smile.

As we nestled in our snug down bags in a shallow snow hole cut into the side of the Shell Hills, 2011 transitioned seamlessly to 2012. The camping trip was really just a bedtime experiment. We had actually spent New Year's Eve in a much more traditional fashion, consuming large quantities of ham and smoked salmon at the Shell Lake Lodge. We played dice with men and women wearing bulky snowmachine overalls, laughed at the children running back inside the cabin with bright red cheeks and blue lips after lighting their fireworks, and listening to a survivalist explain to us in detail the importance of knowing how to build a snow cave, finishing his lecture with the matter-of-fact assertion, "When it's 70 below, and you don't build a cave, you will die. It's not a question. You will die." (That very night, it hit 60 below in McGrath, where the race Beat will be participating in next month ends.)

The huge dinner in the crowded, overheated lodge, followed by doomsday warnings about 70 below, did take the sting off camping at -15 in a -30 windchill just a couple of miles away. I felt downright cozy, and exhausted from our ongoing snowshoe adventures, enough so that when Beat woke up several hours later and proclaimed the experiment a success, I refused to leave. "I like it here," I said. "It's nice. I think I'll stay til morning."

Our weekend in the Shell Hills was idyllic, with subtle reminders of the hardships of winter in backcountry Alaska. We stayed with Anne and her husband, Mike, in a cabin on property they've owned for many years. The cabin was basic by most standards but luxurious by Alaska standards: A single room with a loft and a wood stove in the center, a diesel heater as backup, an outhouse, gas-powered stove and refrigerator (mostly used to "warm" food after a deep freeze), and even a shower in the Arctic entry that utilized a plastic solar shower bag and lake water warmed in a big pot on the stove. Anne and Mike were very kind to let us share their space, and Anne even cooked several delicious meals. During one breakfast that featured eggs, biscuits and reindeer sausage, Beat held up the sausage and said, "So this is what happens to reindeer after Christmas."

On New Year's Eve we trekked up the Shell Hills, aiming to reach a high ridge for a better view of the Alaska Range and Denali. It was mid-day, although you'd never know it by looking at the sky. The wind blew hard, and despite the hard work in deep unbroken snow, I felt more chilled than I had yet during our trip. Before we gained the ridge, we found ourselves neck-deep in a struggle with hidden alder wells, sometimes literally. Anne eventually punched through so deep that she couldn't extract herself. She pulled her gloves off and started clawing at her snowshoes, which were difficult to reach and tangled in branches. Beat and I inched closer, trying to avoid the trap ourselves and establish a good hold for our own weight so we could help her. After four or five minutes we finally had her by the arms, leveraging both of our weight to pull her out. But not before her fingers became painfully cold, and her face was a little white — no doubt processing what she might have done and what would have happened if she had been alone. We turned around.

On New Year's Day, we decided to stick to the established route and hike toward Finger Lake on the Iditarod Trail. We went about five or six miles across wide open swamps with brilliant views of the mountains, then turned around. Despite the sugary trail and ambitious pace, it felt like an easy stroll without the sleds in tow.

We did catch a glimpse of Mount Foraker and Denali in the distance. This was actually the only bluebird day we experienced the entire two weeks we were in Alaska.

We also tried a bit of snowshoe running. Although this was mostly a shakedown training expedition for Beat's ITI bid, I learned a few things that I think will help me during next month's Susitna 100. I've already thought through a few adjustments to my kit and know exactly what I'm going to minimize (this of course will be based on the forecasted weather the night before the race.) I'm also strongly considering using snowshoes in the race. I'm definitely going to at least carry them on my sled, and will likely use them for a better percentage of the run depending on trail conditions.

Snowshoes serve as a great equalizer for many different kinds of trail conditions, and worked well to stabilize my stride and provide a flat platform to kick my feet off, avoiding the muscle fatigue and mental frustration of uneven, punchy snow (and almost all snow trails have this quality to some degree. I could see evidence of the kind of footing that bothers me in Anne's deep and often off-camber footprints, compared to my shallow and even snowshoe prints.) Snowshoes are not popular with winter runners, possibly because they're heavy and somewhat awkward, but I still think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for me. I used mine for the entire trek, and it got to the point where I was so comfortable with them that I forgot I was wearing them.

On our final day at Shell Lake, we planned to fly out early, but a thick ice fog moved in and blanketed the entire region. Mike just barely got out in his small plane, and didn't think he'd be able to return to make the shuttles as planned. We called an air taxi service but they were also tied down by the fog. Because the oil heater had already been shut off and the wood stove only had enough oomph against the extreme cold to keep the cabin at 50 degrees or so, we retreated to Shell Lake Lodge. The lodge is maintained by Zoe, a woman in her late 60s who, with help from her son, Hank, keeps the lodge running all year long. As you can see from the mountain of firewood out front, that's not an easy task. Zoe was very sweet, served us up New Year's leftovers for lunch, and repeatedly called the air taxi pilot to relay weather reports and updates.

I went on an exploration safari, and spent quite a bit of time watching the chorus of birds out in front of the lodge. These Alaska Chickadees displayed an impressive activity level amid the frigid temperatures. It was 18 below zero when I shot this picture.

The fog lifted off of Shell Lake and temperatures continued to plummet. I watched the thermometer at Shell Lake Lodge drop to -22 and then -23. The pilot was in a rush to make several scheduled runs and said there was no way he could pick us up before dark, and would have to reschedule for morning. Beat and I were disappointed by this news, as we had a red-eye flight back to California that night. Of course, we had only ourselves to blame for cutting our schedule so close. In Alaska in the winter, you can't really count on anything working out the way you hope.

I thought the pilot saying there was no way he would come that day meant there was no way he would come that day, so Beat and I set out across the lake and into the hills to find some sun and frost.

Frost gives everything a delicate, almost ethereal beauty.

Then back across the lake as the sun went down, carrying the temperatures even farther down with it. When we returned to the lodge, Anne told us the pilot was going to make it after all and we better hurry and get ready to go or he was leaving without us. Whoops. This is another thing I learned this weekend about Alaska bush culture — nothing is certain until it's certain.

And just like that, we let go of a week of deep-cold adventure with a one-hour flight in the disappearing light. I have said goodbye to the Susitna Valley this way before, in this exact same plane, the day that I was evacuated from Yentna Station with frostbite in 2009. But instead of the cold finality of that goodbye, this one felt more like a warm hello. Thank you, Alaska. I will be back. 
Friday, January 06, 2012

South Pole on a bike

I will post my last Alaska symphony piece soon, but recently I've been participating in several social media discussions about a woman who is currently attempting to use a bicycle to reach the South Pole, and I wanted to distill these discussions on my blog.

Helen Skelton, a 28-year-old British television personality who I admittedly had never heard of before last month, is currently in the process of traveling 500 miles in Antarctica using an ice bike, skis, and a kite, toward the South Pole. In doing so, she's raising money for a charity called Sport Relief and also bringing the adventure and intrigue of Antarctica to thousands of young fans. It's a laudable goal with a few holes that immediately caused me to react with suspicion rather than the admiration she certainly deserves.

First of all, the media coverage surrounding this effort (at least initially) presented her expedition as an attempt to break "the world record for the longest ride on snow." This has since disappeared from most the coverage, almost certainly because too many North Americans called them out for conveniently ignoring the successful 1,000-mile rides to Nome, Alaska, on the Iditarod Trail. The southern route records are held by the husband-and-wife superteam Jay and Tracey Petervary, and the northern route records by Tracey Petervary and Mike Curiak. Curiak has also pioneered the only known self-supported snow bike expedition of that distance, successfully riding to Nome without a single resupply in 2010. Since the Iditarod Trail is entirely ice and snow (or, at its very worst, wind-scoured frozen tundra), any claims to the longest bike ride on snow, currently, would have to take place there.

Another aspect of Skelton's expedition that gave me pause is the fact that she has little to no cold-weather or snow-biking experience. She has a few crazy adventures on her resume, including a high-wire walk between the chimneys of Battersea Power Station, in London, and a solo kayak voyage down the length of the Amazon. The kayak voyage is especially impressive, but it does make one wonder what that has to do with managing a wide variation of equipment and survival techniques in the extreme environments of Antartica. True, she does have a large television crew and support team that presumably will come to her aid, as well as a guide who will be biking and kite skiing with her. But media coverage has practically praised her complete lack of preparation and experience, and her blog included descriptions of her first time winter camping, ever, just two months ago, and this gem about her bike: "I've tried it out on sand and it didn't work very well but the experts tell me it will definitely work better on ice and snow. It better!"

The bike she chose is another curious part of the expedition. It's a custom-built Hanebrink all-terrain bike, with several modifications that take extreme cold in account. However, it appears the designers failed to take into account the fact she will actually have to ride it in Antarctic conditions, which involve uncompacted wind crust, bottomless sugar snow, sasturgi (wind-blown ridges of snow that are similar to sand dunes), chunks of ice, and other technical obstacles. The 40-pound bike features a frame made from aluminum aircraft tubing, the components are simple and purposely sturdy, but the wheels are what the designers say are the key — a small wheelbase with eight-inch tubeless tires. The tires are steel-belted to add sturdiness and presumably prevent flats, because there's almost no chance she'd successfully repair a tubeless flat in extreme low temperatures. The tires and wheels combined weigh upwards of nine pounds each. Presumably they're so small to avoid weighing much more, because small wheels are usually a handicap when negotiating technical terrain.

"They're a lot like the tires for golf carts," one of the designers, Kane Fortune, told the BBC. "They are designed to leave the smallest impression as possible, so the grass on the green isn't damaged."

The problem is, Skelton isn't trying to leave golf course grass undamaged. She's trying to steamroll over incredibly difficult terrain features and float atop dry, sugary snow — while dragging an 82-kilogram sledge. It seems strange to me that with all of the research now out there on larger wheel-base snow bikes, and the fact that they have been extensively tested in extreme conditions and are now commercially marketed, that Skelton and her team would choose to use what amounts to 1990s sand bike technology. Although I'm not the expert on the mechanics of bicycle riding, I have a hard time envisioning how Helen and her guide are even propelling those things forward. All I can see is those little wheels spinning deeper and deeper trenches into the brittle crust as the sledge holds them in place like an anchor.

There is also the matter of what happens to the components of a bicycle in the extreme cold that Skelton will almost certainly encounter in Antarctica. In 2004, Mike Curiak and his friend Pat Irwin set out to scout a remote route in the Yukon that resulting in them spending several days pushing through temperatures in the negative 50s. After their struggle to survive, the Anchorage Daily News ran a piece about their trip in which Mike explored their mechanical failures.

"At 40 below zero, we started to have tube failures," Curiak wrote. "We had WTB (Wilderness Trail Bikes), Kenda and Avenir tubes with us, and they all pulled apart at their seams. The flats were so prevalent that we no longer had to look at our thermometers to know when the temp had hit minus 40. After the race, a product manager explained to me that 40 below zero falls a bit outside of the design parameters for bicycle inner tubes."

Skelton's bike has tubeless tires, which will mitigate the problem of exploding tubes. But the fact remains that rubber rendered inflexible in the cold can crack. Any air it is holding can escape. Even steel belting can't necessarily prevent this. And the fact is, no one has really extensively tested bike performance in extreme cold. Curiak noted all sorts of mechanical problems that the Anchorage Daily News reported:

• At 25 degrees below, the suspension seat post on his bike froze solid.

• At 30 degrees below, the headsets on the bikes started to freeze, making it hard to turn the handlebars.

• At 40 degrees below, the tube failures started.

• At 47 degrees below, the plastic head on his tire pump shattered.

• At 52 degrees below, the headsets on the bikes became so stiff that the handlebars wouldn't turn more than 10 degrees.

• At 55 degrees below and colder, it was time to forget riding and start pushing, because tubes wouldn't hold up at these temperatures and patching them was impossible.

• And at 60 degrees below, the only thing that mattered were the words of Hudson Stuck: "One must keep going."

Curiak has, in my opinion, already pioneered the current best possible system for a long self-supported snow bike expedition during his 2010 ride to Nome. He rode a titanium Moots frame with standard 26" 100-mm rims and used no trailer or sledge, instead adopting a more minimalist approach and piling up everything he needed on his bike using a rack and pannier system. With this system he successfully rode 1,000 miles to Nome without resupply, carrying all of his food, fuel and survival gear from the start.

Admittedly, Nome in the winter is a less extreme situation than an expedition to the South Pole at any time of year. Weather is almost certainly milder, a trail is generally set in place, and there are evacuation options if things go wrong. But Curiak's 2010 ride is currently the most ambitious winter bicycle expedition ever undertaken, and no one has yet successfully piloted a bicycle self-supported all the way from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole (which, in my opinion, must be the parameters for the first official bike ride to the South Pole.)

It would be wonderful if a woman were the first person to do it. However, I don't think that woman will be Helen Skelton. I do wish her the best, hope she raises a lot of money, inspires a lot of kids, and has an amazing life experience. I admire her adventurous spirit, and the fact that despite all of the obstacles, she is still charging forward all the same.

I just threw this photo in for fun. A blog friend, Claire, sent this to me from "Down at South Pole" back in 2008.

Symphony of cold III

Movement III, minuet
I woke up in the night with an unexplainable sort of ice cream headache. It was mild but it was definitely there, scooping away at my skull. Anne had told the Northwoods owners we wanted our cabin to be "hot," and they definitely cranked up the heater. It had to be at least 75 degrees in the room. I was down to my underwear and still drenched in sweat. The heat woke me up several times and twice I stepped outside just to cool down. That didn't take long.

And yet, even in the overheated cabin, I had a cold headache. This fact so perplexed me that I eventually got up to find my little hairbrush/mirror combo that I use as a camp hair de-tangler, switched on my headlamp and examined my forehead. Small red spots speckled the skin around my eyebrows; in the flat light it looked like a few might even be forming blisters. I concluded I had probably mildly frostnipped my skin while I was sporting the ice unibrow the previous day. That didn't necessarily explain the headache, but it did fixate my attention on other cold-related maladies: My scratchy throat — raw from breathing -35 air all day even though I filtered it with my balaclava; and my fingertips — sore and a little swollen from gripping a cold camera and going numb while I repeatedly tried to thaw my ice-lashes. Cold has a way of being hard on bodies in ways you don't immediately realize. "My legs and hips are sore, too," I thought. I acknowledged that may have had more to do with 56 miles and 16 hard hours of sled-hauling than it did with the cold.

It was 15 below and still pitch dark when we set out in the morning, a little later than we hoped, just before 9 a.m. The temperature felt downright comfortable after the previous day — a credit to the adaptability of human bodies, even as delicate as they are. The first hints of dawn arrived just as we emerged from the wooded swamps along Lake Creek onto the wide-open plain of the Yentna River. In Alaska winter racing circles, the big rivers are often dreaded for being "flat" and "boring" and "going on forever and ever." I actually love trekking the big rivers, even more than I do wending through the woods. They fit my aesthetic of stark open spaces, places so big that I can watch as the world opens up around me. I looked north to see hints of salmon-colored light rippling on the jagged Alaska Range, south to round mountains as they reflected deeper shades of gold, west to rows of birch trees glittering with hoarfrost, and all around as the Yentna cliffs grew closer, pinching the flow of a great river that was presently as quiet as anything can be. I imagined a rush of water under our feet, roiling and crashing against a thin veneer of ice. When I realized this was exactly what was happening, I had to stop thinking about it, because it made my knees feel weak.

As we approached the tiny village of Skwentna, I felt a giddy sort of excitement. On what was starting to feel like my own nostalgia tour of the Iditarod Trail, I remembered the Skwentna Roadhouse as the place where I took my first long break during the 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational. I had arrived just before 2 a.m., having ridden my loaded Pugsley ninety miles in twelve hours — for me, an unfathomably fast pace. I shared a small meal with Jay Petervary (dinner for me, breakfast for him) and moved upstairs to dry my clothing and take a short nap. I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror, scanning my face for signs of frostbite, and seeing only an expression of mixed pride and astonishment. I couldn't believe what I had set out to do. I couldn't believe I was doing it. It was, for that moment, my greatest accomplishment.

"I like Skwentna," I told Beat. "I was happy there." That it had taken me two and a half days to reach a place I once pedaled to in twelve hours didn't matter. I was glad to be back, and on these terms — older, possibly wiser, definitely slower — it felt right. We shook off our frost and stomped inside. The owner, Cindy, was wearing a bath towel on her head and appeared to have just woken up, which made perfect sense to me, being that it was the more civil winter hour of 11:45 a.m. She and her husband only bought the lodge about a year ago, so she wasn't there in 2008. But she was excited to see the three of us all the same. "You're our first runners for the year!" she exclaimed. She offered us all-you-can-consume Christmas cookies and coffee, which we warned her was a dangerous gesture given our status as cold and hungry runners. Cindy just laughed and directed us to the plates.

We ordered grilled cheese and fries for lunch and chatted with a local man, a former contractor from Anchorage who was now living full-time in a cabin he built on the edge of the river a couple years earlier. "I don't have a boat, so I just spend the whole summer here," he said. "I don't leave except to run freight in the winter. I love it. I'm glad I did it."

We grinned and nodded although I think everyone was wondering exactly he did all summer long, how he avoided cabin fever, why he didn't become lonely or cold or scared. The usual things that we civilized folk tend to wonder when one of our own sloughs off the frenetic lifestyle that we all work so hard to achieve and sets out to find his or her own version of happiness. I admired the guy for doing what he wanted to do, even if most people viewed it as strange and even fruitless. That is, after all, exactly how most people would view what I was doing out here.

I was sad to leave Skwentna, mostly because it meant we only had seventeen or so miles left in our trek before we reached Shell Lake. Although I started out thinking our plan was ambitious for what was essentially just a training run, by the end I was startled by just how doable it was. I mean, we were walking thirty miles a day, in conditions that made every step nearly as difficult as a solid run. We were outside for eight hours or more each day in temperatures that never even flirted with rising above zero, working just as hard to keep our bodies warm as we did to keep them moving, and rarely did we stop moving. It had been hard, but in other ways, so simple. I enjoy the process of occasionally reducing my existence to moving, eating and breathing. It reminds me just how simple existence really is, in the end, and at the same time so rich and meaningful, even if it's impossible to define its meaning.

This observation carried some insight about why I love Alaska so much, because in Alaska I see reflections of my own sense of meaning everywhere I look. The snow portrays a fleeting beauty, the open swamps a lasting wisdom. The trees and animals are perseverance, enduring the worst of winter for the rich reward of summer. The mountains are the great unknown, that powerful force that will always drive me forward. I realize that all of the entities exist in lots of places in the world, but they do seem to resonate deeply for me in these northern latitudes. I'm perfectly content to live where I do right now, but Alaska remains a wonderful place to visit.

We climbed into the Shell Hills, brushed with the pink light of another sunset. Those seventeen miles seem to go by in what felt like a single breath, a dream. I was entirely surprised when we dropped onto the windswept ice of Shell Lake and pressed against the wind toward Anne's cabin. Before going inside, we stopped to light Beat's stove and melt some snow, so he could practice the process of making water in cold temperatures at the end of a long, sweaty day. The experiment went well, but I was still hesitant to walk in the door, almost searching for excuses to stay out longer. I reminded myself that we still had a full New Year's holiday to spend at Shell Lake, and our adventure certainly wasn't over yet. 
Thursday, January 05, 2012

A symphony of cold II

Movement II, adagio
I leaned against the railing of the cabin's balcony and looked up at the muted sky. The morning was so still that I could hear a hundred variations of silence. Low moans carried from the direction of the distant city. The quiet stirrings of nearer creatures also were startlingly amplified; I heard the squeaking footsteps of an animal as though it was walking right in front of me, although it may have been a half mile away. The cold air itself seemed to emit the ever-so-faint harmony of chiming. I imagined ice particles brushing against each other like tiny glittering bells.

The proprietors at Luce's Lodge were very sweet and got up at what is an ungodly early hour in Alaska's December — 7 a.m. — to make us a huge breakfast of eggs, meat, pancakes, coffee and orange juice. We wolfed it down as Anne urged us to load up on butter because, "in these temperatures your body needs fat." Although I'm of the opinion that fast-burning carbohydrates are still the best fuel source for both heat generation and energy, and don't even particularly like butter, I slathered it on anyway. I wanted all the help I could get.

The porch thermometer still read 20 below — a small grace offered by the cloud cover that moved in overnight, because it could have dropped a lot lower. I asked the proprietor what he thought that meant for the temperatures on the trail. "Definitely 30 below," he said. "Probably 35 below in spots. There are some cold holes on the river."

I have what I feel is an adaptable but effective outfit for a wide range of cold temperatures. Over the years I've ditched all of my wool for synthetic layering head-to-toe. Synthetics in my experience are more forgiving when damp and also dry faster. For a base layer I wear a polypro shirt and light fleece tights. The mid-layer is a furry fleece jacket and wind tights. On top of that goes the down skirt and a Gortex shell. I've used soft shells in the past but I prefer Gortex because it's such an effective wind blocker, and this one has lots of zippers for venting. If I begin to overheat, I just open up the full-length pit zips and chest zipper, and effectively pour the excess moisture out. I also naturally vent a lot through my head and hands. This results in crazily iced up balaclavas and hats, but these things are "cheap" weight-wise, and I can afford to carry a few extra to exchange after one becomes damp. I still rarely change these out because fleece hats are warm even after they've turned to ice helmets.

For my hands, I used a pair of pogies on my trekking poles that Beat sewed out of a synthetic sleeping bag. In non-windy conditions, the pogies were all I needed. They enabled me to go bare-handed for nearly the entire trip, 35 below and all, which is why I was able to take so many photos and stuff my icy face with so many tasty carbohydrates and sips of water from my deeply buried Camelback vest. Photo-taking and food are my best coping mechanisms — the key to feeling healthy and happy the entire time. On my feet go Drymax socks (pure, blister-preventing gold), fleece socks and vapor barrier socks, with Gortex trail running shoes and knee-length winter gaters. Even with my prior frostbite damage, I never had issues with cold feet. On the morning of 35 below, I did add a primaloft puffy sweater to my ensemble. This proved to be unnecessary and ultimately a mistake of overdressing, but I didn't realize it at the time. I mean, really, it was 35 below.

Sure enough, as soon as we dropped onto the river, the temperature fell from "dark side of the moon" to "outer space" levels. It definitely felt 15 degrees colder. Anne announced that she was going to have to "trot" to stay warm, which meant she would be running. I tried to follow her lead, but the heavy breakfast sloshed in my stomach like a load of bricks, and I quickly grew dizzy from the effort. I pulled out my GPS to see what speed I was "running" atop the loose sugar snow: 4.2 miles per hour. If I really amped up I could push it to 4.5, but that felt like full-intensity sprinting. Everything moves slower at 35 below, but the energy inefficiency of trying to "run" in these temperatures, on this terrain, was almost baffling. I'd have to expend twice the energy and muscle effort for a measly one extra mile per hour. I yelled out to Anne that I was never going to keep up. She agreed to meet us at an off-trail oasis called the Northwoods Lodge, which she thought was about 20 miles away. She didn't know what it looked like or exactly where it veered off the trail, only that "there's probably a sign."

Beat didn't seem to mind the walking pace, but he did appear uneasy with the temperatures, which trickled into our clothing like ice water every time we stopped. Steep river bluffs walled us in, trapping cold air like a prison. When we passed side canyons and sloughs, a stream of new cold air would hit us like a blast from an air conditioner. Even the creeping daylight did little to warm the morning. After six miles we passed a friendly sign advertising coffee and food. Anne's footprints indicated she clearly went on without stopping. Beat started walking toward the building to make sure Anne's footprints weren't up there. I held back, keeping my eyes fixed on the top part of the sign: "Yentna Station."

"We should probably keep moving," I said. "Anne kept going."

Beat agreed that we should probably shouldn't fall too far behind Anne, but asked me if I wanted to go in and get warm. I did, but still hesitated. How could I explain this? It was Yentna Station where in 2009 I struggled in front of a weak wood stove, trying to remove the boot that had frozen to my foot. It's where I endured the agony of thawing frostbitten toes and coped with the crushing disappointment of dropping out of my second ITI 350 and ending my great Alaska adventure before it even really began. The proprietors at Yentna Station were nothing but nice to me, but it's still difficult to return to the place where I spent one of the worst nights of my life.

Beat saw my face and understood. "You don't have happy memories here, do you?"

The miles rolled on. Beat and I didn't talk much, retreating into our introspective worlds that close in amid these expansive landscapes. The clouds began to thin and the weak December sun made its lazy arc over the southern horizon. I watched the golden orb creep beside me through the tips of frost-crusted birch trees, casting its heatless light amid a skeleton of shadows. The weak rays were already trending downward, the sun setting without even making a real effort to rise. It made me think of a visit from an old friend, someone I no longer knew well. We shared a brief, superficial chat and parted again too soon, filled with a sad sort of yearning for the days when we were close.

Silence held on throughout the day. We only saw a handful of snowmachines, freight drivers hauling loads of fuel and lumber at creeping speeds, although not as slow as us. They all gave us friendly waves but let their helmet-masked gaze linger for a few too many seconds, no doubt intrigued by these odd ice-crusted figures trudging up the river. I have been told that the "bush" Alaskans who occupy this region are often suspicious of human-powered travelers, uncertain of their motives and baffled as to why we'd choose such an obviously inferior method of travel. Dog teams have carried humans up these valleys for centuries. The "iron dog" snowmachine added even more power and efficiency for a fraction of the effort. Bush pilots buzz overhead in ski planes that can land and take off from any snow-covered pond. Humans have always been weak and slow, and no one is so poor or needs to travel so badly that they should venture out on foot at 35 below.

And yet I felt inexplicably, almost mindlessly, happy. I sometimes glanced back at my sled, still trailing behind me like the loyal pet I was beginning to picture it as, even though its runners still scraped across the snow like two pieces of sandpaper. My shoes and poles squeaked loudly in the cold snow. It made me think of a friend chatting amicably but nonsensically, which was all right with me, because I wasn't really in a frame of mind to listen to words. My thoughts were often as blank as the river snow, thinly cut with a trail of memories. I simply breathed and walked, breathed and walked, and when the happy started to slip away, I stuffed another piece of icy candy into my mouth.

Beat for his part seemed to be enjoying himself, and commented that it was "heating up" even though I'm pretty sure it was still 20 below. Twenty miles went by without a sign of a lodge, and the daylight again began to disappear. Anne was now far enough ahead that some snowmachines had gone through after her, and we had a difficult time picking out her footprints. The wind began to pick up and for the first time all day, I felt a chill. I reached to zip up my Gortex coat and realized that my primaloft sweater was fairly wet. The wicking fleece jacket below was still dry, but the sweat had all consolidated in the puffy sweater. This wasn't a disaster. I could always take it off and let it solidify to an ice ball, then put on one of my dry layers if I was still cold. But the essential loss of the puffy was a bit of a mental blow, given our plan to camp out that night. I was quickly reminded of the universal truth — that no matter how well things are going in Alaska, they can turn bad in the blink of an eye. Things certainly hadn't gone bad yet, but the razor-thin closeness of potential diaster gave me a jolt of fear.

We were 28 miles from Luce's Lodge when we saw a sign on the other side of the river. I waded over to see an advertisement for the Northwoods Lodge, and another that said Skwentna — our potential destination that night — was still 12 miles away. We had originally planned to bivy somewhere in between, but darkness was sinking in and carrying with it new ungodly cold temperatures. We walked a mile up Fish Creek to find the lodge and Anne, who arrived forty minutes before we did. I removed my layers in a shower of frost as Anne informed us that the lodge owners believed temperatures out on the river would reach 40 below or lower overnight — the outer limits of our sleeping bags and definitely in that "struggle to survive" zone.

"And, well," Anne said. "They knew we were coming up the river and they already started heating a cabin for us this morning. I don't know about you guys, but I don't have to practice being miserable."

It was settled before it was settled. This was, after all, our vacation, and setting back out to camp on the river when there was a perfectly good cabin at our disposal would only confirm our craziness. I couldn't wait to get my hands on some hot chocolate.


Tuesday, January 03, 2012

A symphony of cold

Movement I, allegro
Even the air seemed frozen in place, a thickly compressed stillness that shattered as I darted toward the outhouse wearing only my running shoes, a base layer shirt and underpants. I didn't suit up for the 4 a.m. chore because I so feared the deep cold that I wanted an extreme test run before the consequences expanded exponentially out on the river ice. Sure enough, the thermometer next to the heated entryway of Luce's Lodge already read 23 below zero, Fahrenheit. On clear nights, this thick, cold air sinks into the river basins like a rock. I expected it was ten degrees colder on the trail just fifty feet below the lodge. Were we going to see 40 below before dawn emerged — at least what passes for dawn in December in Alaska?

But my more immediate concern was a full-body revolt against the 90-degree temperature swing just outside the door. I could almost feel the blood in my extremities retreating toward the hidden refuge of my core. The fragile cells trapped on the surface of my skin sprung to full attention, struggling to fight the blood's escape through their rapidly diminishing armor. It was a full-blown riot that penetrated the fragile realities of my warm-blooded nature and unleashed a more primitive, abstract kind of energy that never fails to stir my soul. Every molecule in my body was vibrating — naked, exposed, and alive.

My brain joined the fight by urging my numb arms and legs to start flailing, an erratic dance that reflected the simultaneous elation and desperation I was experiencing. I knew a heated cabin was just meters away, but that didn't stop the panic of cells that understood on a fundamental level exactly what dying feels like. They raged and screamed at the curious part of my brain that continued to urge in a gentle voice, "Wait, just wait. There's no real harm yet. This is really quite interesting. I'm kinda sorta wondering just how dead we can get." But of course, primitive survival instincts easily won that intellectual battle. I finished my business and raced back to the cabin before my core temperature started dropping. I still had to shiver beneath the covers for several minutes before my fingers found the wherewithal to at least tingle.

The Luce's Lodge experiment left me feeling simultaneously exhilarated and terrified. It was madness, really, that I was going to take conditions that my nearly naked body could barely survive for five minutes, and with the minimal use of technology, fitness and intellectual prodding, push through the extreme cold for hours and even days. But I had just been out there — for 26 miles, actually — walking away from the safe haven of the ice-coated Parks Highway and into Southcentral Alaska's deep-frozen backcountry. Our ambitious plan had us trekking overland to Shell Lake, a distance of about 90 miles, in three days, followed by day trips and New Year's celebrations launched from a primitive cabin above the lake. We dragged behind us all of the necessities for such a trek, including food, fuel and survival gear. We hoped to camp out if conditions were conducive to "fun winter camping." But if temperatures tipped the scales toward "struggle for survival," we agreed we would invest the extra miles and money to seek refuge in commercial wilderness lodges. This was, after all, our vacation.

Our friend from Anchorage, Anne, along with Beat and I, launched from Deshka Landing on Wednesday, December 28, in light snow and a "balmy" temperature of 5 below zero. The air still held a sharp bite as we fumbled with last-minute sled assemblies and gear adjustments. It was after 10 a.m. and still only the faintest hints of first daylight managed to penetrate the ice fog. It would be dark again by 4 p.m. I wrapped a series of layers around my body and finished it off with my new down skirt, currently my favorite piece of gear as it provides the perfect combination of heat-venting and protection for the cold-weakest part of my body, my butt. Beat eyed the skirt jealously and expressed his desire for a piece of gear that would similarly protect the front side of his undercarriage. "I should just wear a skirt like that," he said. "Who cares? I'm already out here. It's not like I need to assert my masculinity."

I had a hunch that minus 5 might be the warmest temperature we would see all week. As we shuffled toward Mount Susitna — now fairly well-known territory for me — I was filled with anxiety about the unknowns. The unknowns of independence. Honestly, the main reason I like winter "racing" is because an organized event means someone is probably looking out for you, even if only on a base level. Out here in the "pre-season" of December's darkness, we weren't even likely to see much cursory snowmachine traffic. We were truly on our own. I was also anxious about the unknowns of the forecasted cold snap and what that meant for long-term exposure to low temperatures. Some of my friends who live in milder climates often fail to understand the depths cold can reach. They say to me, "Once it drops below 30 degrees, isn't it pretty much all cold?"

"Well, yeah," I reply. "But you know the difference between 30 degrees and 90 degrees? You can feel that, right? Well, that's the difference between 30 above and 30 below."

Even in the minus-single-digits, the snow was sharp and dry enough that the runners on our sleds dragged through it like sandpaper. I felt like I was pulling a reluctant dog — in that way animals make their bodies inexplicably heavy when they don't want to move, so too do sleds on frigid snow. But this was new snow, still soft and powdery enough that every huffing step resulted in a heel-deep posthole. I faltered for about a quarter mile before I stopped to strap on my snowshoes. Beat and Anne, who are both runners and therefore prefer to cling to the hope of running, continued on trail shoes alone. For all of us, moving at 3.5 miles per hour was intensely hard work, the kind that makes my ten-minute miles up steep trails in California feel like woefully inadequate training. But at the same time, hard work produced our own personal bubbles of heat, a safe haven of warmth in the stark and terror-rimmed landscape. As long as we could keep moving — and stuffing down the calories to to keep our furnaces cranking — we actually had much less to fear. This is a kind of self-reliance I cherish — that even the best in insulating technologies can still be matched by human perseverance. Of course I was still grateful for all the heavy gear I dragged in my sled in case things went horribly wrong — after all, I don't trust my perseverance to those extremes.

We arrived at Luce's Lodge just before 6 p.m. It had already been pitch dark for more than an hour. We struggled to hoist our sleds up a steep embankment toward the oasis of warmth. Bright lights illuminated the cabin and a friendly Christmas tree sparkled in the front window. I nearly teared up with nostalgia. The first time I saw Luce's Lodge was as the mile 52 checkpoint in the 2006 Susitna 100, my first endurance race. The race volunteers plucked me out of the darkness at a similar time in the evening, gave me drinking water, told me I was doing fantastic even though my eyes were bloodshot and my clothing soaked from a disheartening rainstorm. I think often about that race. To some extent, I feel like every big endurance challenge I've embarked on since has in some ways reflected a desire to duplicate my novice experience — the intensity, the hardships, the raw beauty, and the personal triumphs over fear and weakness. Of course I can never again return to the same wide-eyed naivety that made the 2006 Susitna 100 so soul-awakening. But I can return to these places that still fill my heart with happy memories, and remember exactly what it was like to feel so afraid and so alive, all at the same time.

But the minute we stopped, the bubble of warmth broke and reality punched back through. It was cold, really cold, and getting colder. At least for now, Luce's had hot chocolate and warm chili, and a pre-rented cabin already heated up for us, so we wouldn't have to think about trekking as many as forty miles the next day, deeper into the backcountry, in temperatures down to 40 below, toward a possible overnight bivy in the wilderness. These were all realities we didn't really need to think about. Not yet, at least. 
Wednesday, December 28, 2011

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.