Clear sky send-off

 Alaska sure knows how to break my heart.

After Beat returned from McGrath, we had two more days to kill in Anchorage before our scheduled flight back to California. Beat was predictably exhausted and slightly shell-shocked, but managed to walk out of his eight-day ordeal relatively injury-free. I'll probably write a bit more about Beat's Iditarod experience and the aftermath in another blog post, but he's doing well. He had painfully cracked finger tips from continuous freezing and thawing, and a bulging blister under his big toenail. However, he was already up and running the following day, modeling his powder snowshoe sprinting skills for our photographer friend Dan. Dan and Amy took great care of Beat by baking a steady stream of pizza and cookies, and they let me borrow their snow bikes for some crunch-time White Mountains 100 training.

 Alaska blessed my snow-biking frenzy with blue skies, perfectly groomed multiuse trails (the Tour of Anchorage just came through here last Sunday) and fast-flowing, foot-packed singletrack. Birch trees shimmered with frost, the Chugach Mountains carved a dramatic skyline, and I had to consciously decide to close my mouth to keep my teeth from freezing through my grin. Luckily Dan's schedule limited me to a few hours each day because I easily could have burned every second of available daylight (and there seems to be a lot up there now) out on those trails. I even question the actual training value of the hours I did steal, so lost was I in snow-rolling bliss.

The problem with sunny March days in Alaska is that they all but force you to fall in love with this place all over again. The wooing doesn't let up for a second:

It's beautiful when you're driving along the Glenn Highway ...

It's beautiful when you're gassing up the trucks you borrowed at $4.31 a gallon ...

It's beautiful when you're commuting to the airport beneath a full moon and the strongest solar storm since 2004, witnessing luminescent waves of white and green aurora despite layers of light pollution.

And just when you think you can't possibly fall any more deeply in love, it's time to cram your exhausted body onto a red-eye flight and jet back to reality. I am happy to be home, though. Happy to be back in familiar settings with my own bikes, excited to see my cat again, excited to get back to more focused work, looking forward to some real down time with Beat (that is, after I cram in a "peak" training weekend on the Fatback.) It was predictably gorgeous in California this afternoon, with skies as clear as those in Southcentral Alaska and temperatures near 70. I went out for a road bike ride, where I simultaneously felt ridiculously fast as well as overheated and sluggish. Still, it was fun to feel the effortless freedom of rolling pavement after weeks of trudging through snow, and I'm really looking forward to a night in my own bed.

But I will be back, Alaska. In two weeks, actually. After that, I'll just have to see how long I can resist the magnetic pull. 

Yukon fat bike weekend

 There are strange things done 'neath the cold March sun
By the women who ride fat bikes
The Yukon trails have their secret tales
Of the good times that everyone likes.
The Northern Lights have revealed cool sights
But the coolest they ever did guide
Was a fat bike train across wintry terrain
By four girls out for a weekend ride.

One called "Alaska Jill" you see was from Cali
Where the sunshine always stays
Why she left her home in the south to roam
Round the frozen wastelands, she couldn't say.
She was always sore, but Yukon lore
Seemed to hold her like a spell.
And she drove all day just to while away
A weekend on these snow-covered trails.

On a misty Sunday they started pedaling away
Over the Dawson Trail.
Thoughts of cabin beds for the cold night ahead
Kept them hammering like they were driving nails.
With grins frozen in place at the wide-open space,
Where a remote trail provides adventure and thrills.
It tickled them all, but the biggest smile of all
Belonged to Alaska Jill.

Okay, that's about as far as I'm going to get in my take on Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee." The poem was cited, along with Nelly's "Hot in Herre" and other classics, during an overnight fat bike tour with four awesome women. We rode a hundred kilometers of the Dawson Overland Trail, the famous gold rush route that passes Lake LeBarge en route from Whitehorse to Dawson. Now the trail is better known for serving as the route for the Yukon Quest dog sled race and Yukon Arctic Ultra human-powered race. It's also famous for being horrendously cold (think 60 below), but we were lucky to see mild weather and great trail conditions for our relaxing overnight hut trip.

It started, as many great things start these days, with a simple tweet. Somewhere in the Twitterverse I fell into a conversation with a woman named Jill who is actually from Alaska, and eventually had to admit that my Twitter handle (@AlaskaJill) is misleading. (It was more true when I created the account while living in Alaska.) Then, in the way great things work in random ways, we figured out we had common interests in snow biking and mutual friends in Canada, and started discussing the possibility of meeting up for a winter bike trip in the Yukon. After a couple months of spontaneous planning in 140 characters or less, The Real Alaska Jill and I finally met in person, and then drove a truck 700 miles from Anchorage to Whitehorse.

Jill and I joined our Whitehorse friends Sierra and Jenn for the weekend tour. I borrowed a Surly Pugsley from our Canadian friends' friend. Sierra planned a trip from Braeburn to the Takhini River, 100 kilometers of backcountry trail with a cabin near the halfway point. She even arranged for a friend with a snowmobile to pack in our dinner and some of the gear. Because she couldn't arrange a shuttle out, we did have to plan for carrying our gear on the second day, so I ended up carrying everything in except for my 9-ounce sleeping pad. This gear was surprisingly light, probably because I didn't bring enough clothing.


The trip was unique in many ways, but I think one of the coolest aspects was the fact that four women were pedaling fat bikes across a rather daunting distance in the Yukon backcountry during the winter. The sport of snow biking is growing, but it's still tiny and dominated by men. The strangeness of four girls on fat-wheeled bicycles wasn't lost on the handful of hunters that passed us on Sunday, staring almost googly eyed at us as they inquired about what we were possibly doing out there. We got a late start and had to pedal fairly hard in a race with daylight (which fades so much later now than it did just three weeks ago at this latitude.) We encountered our "cabin boy" Sky Hunter* about 25 miles down the trail. Sky told us the public cabin was occupied by bison hunters, but there was a trapper's cabin a few miles away that was empty. (*that's his real name)

The trapper's cabin was a spacious log building with a massive wood stove that we stocked with Sky's supply of firewood (and later some "to be purchased later by calling the cabin owner" firewood.) Sky had done so much for us and told such great stories that we talked him into staying for pasta dinner and then into spending the night, even though it did take away from our female-version-of-Brokeback-Mountain jokes. We sat by the wood stove, sipped beverages and laughed late into the evening. It was decidedly non-epic, which was refreshing. I think I've been doing snow biking all wrong lo these past years (this revelation won't stop me from continuing to enter races like the White Mountains 100, even though my untrained snow biking muscles protested mightily this weekend and revealed all the ways in which that race is going to be really hard, given it's less than three weeks from now.)

Photo by Jenn Roberts

The next morning, Sierra cooked breakfast over the dwindling fire while I tried to steal as much extra sleep as I could (this was the same night Beat was making his way through -40 temperatures between Nikolai and McGrath, and I let the lack of cell phone reception work me up into an anxiety-ridden lather over a situation that was a thousand miles away and completely beyond my control.) Anyway, because of this, I really didn't sleep. But I was excited to get back on the trail (and, as Jenn pointed out later, closer to cell reception.) 

We had some of our own cold to deal with, starting the day at -4 near the cabin and feeling it drop even lower in low-lying areas and shady spots — probably down to 10 below. I'm not sure what I was thinking but I had basically packed for a day ride in temperatures above 15. I didn't have an extra insulation layer, a thick balaclava or warmer mittens — all things I would have worn had they been available. My core temperature dropped and consequently my fingers and toes felt quite cold. It was manageable but I found I couldn't stop moving for more than two minutes before I felt uncomfortable, and after five minutes I started to feel some anxiety about my own cold situation. Since this was a nice social ride, the stops were frequent, and I often used them to run around and inject some blood back into my toes. As soon as I figured out how to manage my core temperature with the clothing I had, I felt fine and no longer worried about it. But I was always on the verge of feeling too cold, which is not all that fun.

The scenery was beautiful, with rounded mountains, birch forests and steep river gorges. Our first day of primarily climbing paid off on the second day, with fast and swooping descents. They weren't great for my body temperature, but the downhills reminded me why I love snow biking. Snow biking can be a character-building slog, but it can also be a vehicle for perfect freedom. There's a Zen-like peacefulness to the subdued colors and silence of winter, and Yin-and-Yang thrill in white-knuckle descents atop a pillow of frozen crystals.

Photo by Jenn Roberts

And despite the subzero temperatures and occasional overflow, there was still plenty of chatting and joking among the girls of "Pecha Kucha Mountain." (Don't ask me where this name came from. This is the way jokes progress on a weekend that involves girls, wine, and a hundred kilometers of frozen nothingness.) As we passed historic artifacts, I wondered what the gold rushers a century ago might have thought about four women on bikes. There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun.

Thanks to Sierra, Jenn, and The Real Alaska Jill (or Jill Hunter or whatever other nicknames we came up with this weekend. There were many.) I really enjoyed my weekend with the girls. 

Beat finished!

Beat and Anne Ver Hoef in McGrath. Photo by Iditarod Trail Invitational

Beat finally finished this crazy race, reaching the finish line in 8 days, 2 hours and 20 minutes in seventh place with our friend Anne. Sorry for the lack of updates as it's been quite a busy weekend. More soon.

Steady progress

I received a couple calls from Beat on Saturday afternoon as I was pedaling a borrowed fat bike along the buffed snow singletrack in the hills outside Whitehorse. In the first, his voice sounded so distraught that my knee-jerk reaction was to start panicking, convinced he was hurt. "I'm so sorry," he said in a single slurred word. "I lost my camera. It fell out of my pocket. I went back a mile to look for it but I can't go back any more. It's gone. All of the pictures I wanted to show you. I'm so sorry."

I had to pause for a second just to realize that this emergency simply was just a lost camera. I can understand, however. When I'm out for a long time alone, and my body and mind are incredibly tired, I also experienced these exaggerated emotions. I compare it to reverting to a childlike state, where small setbacks feel like the end of the world until I allow my mind to process them rationally. Similarly, good feelings become euphoria and exhilaration. Beat sounded truly distraught over the loss of his camera, and I admit I felt like a parent trying to soothe a child as I responded, "It's okay. It doesn't matter. There are still several racers behind you. I'm sure someone will find it."

An hour later, I received another call: "I have my camera!" he exclaimed with the kind of exhilaration I'd expect when an exhausted mind experiences triumph. "Some snowmobilers found it and gave it back to me."

After that, there were no calls for many hours even though he said he'd call when he arrived at the Bear Creek cabin, where he planned to spend the night. Even though I don't necessarily expect calls, especially when he arrives at a stopping point because he's so busy attending to his own needs, I couldn't help but worry some. Weather reports for Nikolai predicted temperatures down to 30 below zero overnight, which can easily drop to 40 below in low-lying areas. I knew he was simply resting, but it's still almost unavoidable. I feel anxiety.

Beat called again as he was leaving the Bear Creek cabin just after 1 a.m. Sunday. The temperature was 25 below zero with a light wind out of the east. He was still feeling tired after "a full night's rest" but felt he had slept enough and wanted to start into Nikolai, which is about thirty miles northwest of the cabin. There's little between the two besides open swamps and scraggly stands of human-sized spruce trees. The mountains of the Alaska Range still loom on the horizon, and McGrath feels too far away to comprehend. It's a difficult section of trail and I felt apprehensive about him taking it on in the deep cold of the morning, but I know he has few choices now but to keep trudging away at this until he gets it done. It's an inspiring thing he's doing, but it's still hard for me to hear his voice so tired and distraught, even if it is over a lost camera.

Meanwhile, right now (Sunday morning) I am getting ready to leave for an overnight bike tour on the Dawson Overland Trail. I probably will not be able to post any more blog updates until Monday afternoon, although I might be able to squeeze something in on my Facebook page, depending on cell reception. I expect he'll finish sometime late Monday night.

Meanwhile, I'm having way to much guilty fun in Whitehorse:

Riding miles of buffed snow singletrack.

Laughing with my friends (not at, with.)

Checking out the more quirky features of life in the Canadian North. Is this not the coolest lawn ornament you've ever seen?

Thanks for all of the support. I admit I'll be glad when this race is all over. 

Beat heads into the Burn

After twelve hours of driving across 700 miles of scenic nothingness, we settled in to a barrage of homemade pizza and frenetic conversation with friends. Just before midnight we heard a rumor about Northern Lights, so we loaded up again and headed into the hills above Whitehorse. We danced and struck silly poses beneath shimmering waves of light. Since the colorful flares spread out from a point far beyond the sky, I knew there was a chance Beat could see the same show I was seeing. I found comfort in that realization, even though we're now separated by hundreds of empty miles and the greater divide between my comfortable fun and Beat's difficult journey.

Beat called from Rohn at 6:30 p.m. Friday. He made great time on the trek over the Alaska Range on Rainy Pass, crossing 45 miles of steep climbs and the dramatic Dalzell Gorge in fourteen hours. This same section of trail took me 27 hours to traverse in 2008. The current race leader, Geoff, took twelve. Geoff was the first to leave Rohn, about two hours before lead bikers Pete and Phil. Beat took a nap and was the ninth competitor to leave remote checkpoint, about twelve hours after Geoff. He said the trip down from the pass was unbelievably gorgeous and the weather improved. Since the sky had cleared, he was hoping for a glimpse of the aurora as he hiked into vast expanse of the Farewell Burn.

The latest update came Saturday morning at 7:30. Beat bivied overnight near Egypt Mountain as temperatures plummeted and the wind increased. Cold feet woke him up several times and he estimated it was about 20 below, but he was able to catch some needed sleep. He sounded upbeat in the morning, and said his feet were fine after he warmed them up again. His plan for Saturday was to continue through the remnant foothills of the Alaska Range, into the Burn, and stop for the night at the Bear Creek cabin, which is about 30 miles away from the village of Nikolai, 300 miles into the course. He said it was still cold but the wind had calmed. There have been reports of deep snow drifts on the trail ahead, so progress may be more difficult for him on this section than it was over the mountains.

I'm hoping to hear from Beat tonight from a warmer, comfier spot. He's healthy and moving well, now nearly six days into this journey.

Taking this show on the road

I am falling victim to waiting syndrome. I'm not really doing the work I hoped to do. I toss and turn enough at night that I'm not really resting and recovering from the Susitna 100. That race already seems like it was a year ago, and I forget that my legs are still a little tired and that the bottoms of my feet are still tingling and sore. But this morning I wasn't as productive as I'd hoped to be with an article I started, and I was become tired of refreshing the ITI Web site repeatedly when I already knew the latest information about Beat's whereabouts. The weather was poor and I didn't feel like driving, so I decided, "I'll go blitz Lazy this afternoon."

The Lazy Mountain route is typical of the Chugach Range in that it starts at somewhere near sea level and ascends to 3,720 feet in less than two and a half miles. I imagine it's pleasantly steep in the summer, but in the winter, touring skiers and hikers pack the route into an icy slide with a deceptive skiff of powder. I wore crampons for maximum traction and my plan was to hike it as hard as I could. I endured 2,000 feet of calf-searing, lung-pounding, sweat-drenched marching before I broke near treeline. The temperature was about 16 degrees with a stiff wind, light snow was falling, and I debated heading back down. But after my red-line blitz, I didn't feel like immediately launching into the steep downhill, where I had no choice but to dig in and brake hard with each step or risk riding the ice slide all the way down the mountain (I believe this would be a lot less fun than it sounds.) I always appreciate my time in the mountains, so I piled on all of my dry clothing over my soaked base layer and abandoned the blitz for a pleasant stroll. (You know, among the zero-degree windchill and stinging snow.)

I was glad I climbed to the top, but downhill in the crampons was indeed hard work. I actually had to remove most of my layers again even before I reached the wind protection of the birch forest. I was cooked at the bottom, in good way — a kind of peaceful tired washed over me, and I felt satisfied in a way I haven't since the Susitna 100. I drove to Vagabond Blues for warm-up soup and tea, and received another call from Beat. He sounded so much more energized than his previous calls, and told me he had reached Puntilla Lake — four hours earlier than I had expected. He had an enjoyable hike through the foothills of the Alaska Range with Dave and Andrea. The trail was getting better, he was feeling better, and planned to continue toward Rainy Pass with Anne around midnight.

The fact he's decided to take on the pass is a decisive action. It means he's fully committed to the finish, barring an unworkable injury or bad weather. This was great news — the best of the journey so far. I feel like this means I shouldn't wait around and worry any longer. Beat is going to do his thing and cover his miles, and I'll hear from him when he feels like calling. Sitting around hitting refresh on a computer screen won't do either of us any good.

I've decided to head out to Whitehorse this weekend to join an overnight snowbike trip with friends. I'd been on the fence about going, but the schedule will put me back in Southcentral Alaska before Beat's likely to finish the race. And I do believe, now, that he'll probably finish. If not, there's going to be a delay in our reconnection, but I think he'll understand. I did tell him about this trip before the race started. It's going to be so full of awesome that I'll probably completely forget about the refresh button. It does mean my own Web updates will be more delayed, but I will continue to post about Beat's progress.

Meanwhile, current standing are posted here: http://nellahcir.com/iti/standings

My fault

Photo by Daniel Bailey, www.danbaileyphoto.com

I hoped Dan would understand if my line was a bit erratic on the powdery descents — it was my first snow bike ride in eleven months. We launched onto the delicious trails at Far North Bicentennial Park — soft groomed with about two inches of fresh — and ramped into the climbs through the foothills of the Chugach Mountains. Soon we connected with the hiker-packed singletrack of the Speedway Trail and wended through piles of fluff and snow-covered spruce trees an a thin thread of trail. The light was soft — afternoon gold, filtered by wisps of clouds — and I slipped into a peaceful, Zen-like state. It was exactly what I needed on Wednesday afternoon, as anxiety had been building at a surprising rate.

This race. Oh, this race. What a cluster it's been, so to speak. This kind of effort makes sense with a team of people in the Arctic who were expecting to break trail through daunting obstacles for days on end, and probably planned with enough supplies for a dozen or so miles per day. But when you have fifty people, many of them with wheeled anchors, who are trying to race, expecting to cover fifty to a hundred miles per day — then you have a problem. No one expected a massive storm to obliterate the trail and change everything — but of course, that is the nature of the Iditarod Trail. You can and will see anything, so you have to prepare for it. But here we are, four days into the race, and only three people — a skier and runners Tim and Geoff —have made it to the halfway point. Most of the cyclists, from rookies to the long-time veterans, have scratched. Beat is one of the people still trudging away at it. I have simultaneous mixed but strong feelings about this — pride in his perseverance, and also sadness for his suffering. This was inevitable, I suppose. Because I can imagine the hardships, I can also imagine the spirit-crushing despair.

He sounds so tired on the phone. He makes one call a day now, and keeps it very short. Half of his words are slurred; I can only pick out pieces of information amid the run-on sentences. Beat is now traveling with David Johnston and Andrea Hambach, a fact that makes me happy because those two are experienced Alaskans with a fantastic sense of humor. Humor means all the difference when despair threatens to encompass everything. When trudging across Alaska for 150+ miles at less than two miles an hour, the only advantage anyone can have is the ability to laugh at themselves. It's ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous. At yet, it's so life-changing and enlightening that the rewards are worth the struggle. Usually, I believe — but not always.

During Beat's long preparations for this race, he would joke that his signing up was my fault. "You talked me into it," he'd say with a grin. "You're going to dump me if I don't finish."

"That's I lie!" I proclaimed. "I did nothing of the sort." But I was grinning, too, because I was thrilled he was going to attempt this incredible journey that had such a perspective-shifting effect on my own life. "You're going to have such an amazing experience," I told him.

Now I'm not so sure. Honestly, I'm not. It's inspiring what these men and women are doing out there, but at the same time, I wonder what psychological, physical and spiritual sacrifices they're making to achieve it. I can't help but wonder if these sacrifices will cancel out any rewards ahead on the trail. I only wonder. I'm still so proud of Beat, and also Geoff, Tim, David, Andrea, Anne, Shawn, and all the people I do not know who are still sticking out the ceaseless trudge. A handful of cyclists are holding on in hopes that the trail will firm up over the pass. These cyclists are the craziest of all, and I admire them. I'm cheering Tim, who as a 57-year-old Nome hiker from Pennsylvania, no one dreamed he would lead the race for so long. But I just hope Beat doesn't feel compelled to stay out there for anyone but himself. "Just do what makes you happy," I told him on the phone. "Please."

As for Beat's status, he left Winter Lake Lodge, mile 135, at 3:25 a.m. Thursday. The 30-mile section of steep hills and river gorges between there and Puntilla Lake took leaders Geoff, Tim and Andrea about 18 hours to cover on snowshoes and skis. There have been reports of deep drifts on the trail, as well as a little bit of new snow in the forecast today. I expect — or at least I am hoping — to hear from Beat at Puntilla sometime between 9 p.m. and midnight tonight. From there, who knows? That will be more than a hundred hours into this race, with only half the distance covered on little rest. I can't fathom how he'll still have enough gas to power on to McGrath, but Beat continues to surprise me in many good ways.

And even as I was writing this, I received another text from Beat: "Cross Shirley Lake. More fun. Miss you. Pete just passed us." Definitely positive signs of improving trail conditions. 

I can only hope that when he comes home, and tells me this was my fault, he has a smile on his face.