The action kilt

When browsing through photos from the Iditarod Trail Invitational, my friend stopped at a snapshot of Beat and Anne at the finish in McGrath. "What's he wearing? Is that a skirt?"

"It's not a skirt!" I said with mock offense. "It's an action kilt!"

It's totally a skirt. This ingenious piece of gear insulates body parts that don't make their own heat while preventing sweat from the ones that do. Insulated skirts took off in the women's outdoor gear market a few years ago after women discovered they were the ideal way to keep their tushes toasty while avoiding the thigh chaffing and sweating that often accompany insulated pants. Plus, you can just wrap these skirts around your waist whenever a chill hits, no shoe removal required. In addition, they're pretty cute — especially the models offered by Skhoop.

I acquired a Sierra Designs Gnar down skirt a few months ago, then wore it on our New Years trekking trip in Alaska. When I raved about its abilities to ward off "cold butt syndrome," Beat noticed other potential benefits. Beat, like many guys, often has trouble keeping his man parts warm in cold temperatures. He has tried many things, from windproof tights to sewing a piece of neoprene to the front of his briefs, and still cold air manages to find its way in. Our friend Anne let him borrow one of her skirts during a day hike, and Beat was sold. He decided he needed one for the ITI.

Beat sewed his own skirt from scratch. Weirdly, insulated skirts are only sold in women's sizes, and tend to be tight in areas that Beat didn't want it to be tight, and not as protective of the areas he wanted to protect. He designed a skirt that was high in the back, loose in the front (he doesn't like having his torso constricted), with waterproof zippers for movement and venting, strategically placed on the sides to keep the front secure. He used a Gortex-like waterproof material for the shell with Primaloft insulation. Beat has become quite the seamstress with his $79 sewing machine, and the skirt — ahem, action kilt – came out really well. Not only did it survive 350 miles of the Iditarod Trail, but it survived with style.

I think there could be a commercial market for men's action kilts if men could only get over their hangups about the whole skirt thing. I guess it's just a matter of what's more important to men — asserting their masculinity, or protecting it. But I can already imagine the ad campaign: "Action Kilt — Warm enough for a woman, but made for a man."

Cramming for White Mountains

After we returned to California on Friday, I decided it was time to launch some focused training for the White Mountains 100. Problem is, the race is in two weeks, and I am back in a land without snow. My snow bike weekend with the girls and two three-hour rides in Anchorage were a good jump-start to my all-too-short fat bike season. These rides were also a reminder from my body that running muscles and snow-biking muscles are not exactly the same muscles, and the latter felt pretty flimsy and out of shape. There isn't much I can do about that in two weeks, but I figured it couldn't hurt to load up my Fatback with winter gear and ride up some hills. Long, slow climbs are probably the closest simulation to the resistance of snow that I can find near my home. Climbing on dirt or pavement more closely resembles riding flat snow trails, whereas the White Mountains are full of trails that go up, well, mountains. But every little bit helps ...

I am trying mightily to resist the urge to overpack my bike this year. The White Mountains 100 organizers allow racers to choose their own gear — which for a packrat like me can be even worse than being forced to carry required gear. I care less about how fast I ride, and more about being ready if I step into overflow. I think I've figured out a good compromise: Big down coat, bivy sack and small pad to sit on if I am injured and unable to walk; waders and microspikes for overflow; goggles; spare balaclavas and gloves; trash bags; extra mid layer; insulated pants (maybe); extra socks. Also bike pump and repair stuff, headlamps and batteries, medicine/foot kit, and food. I'm basically thinking about the stuff I actually used in the Susitna 100 and stuffing it into a couple of small bags on my bike. It is still far from "fast and light." This thing is a beast. On Saturday I took it trail riding. It was a blast to ride dirt again after several weeks on ice and snow. I felt fast and awkward at the same time. Twenty-seven miles and 4,500 feet of climbing in 3:27.

I wanted to put in a day-long ride on Sunday to "work out some kinks." But between the late-rising effects of Daylight Savings Time and a planned celebratory dinner for Beat with friends, I only had time for a moderate ride. Fatty and I climbed over the Monte Bello ridge and dropped into a state park currently on the chopping block in California's budget cuts, Portola Redwoods. I can't really blame the state for carving this one out of their budget, as there was almost nobody down there on a pleasant spring afternoon. I wouldn't mind if they put up a gate and took down all of those "no bikes" signs on all of the trails. Right now bikes are limited to the narrow gravel and paved roads, but it's still a peaceful way to while away a few hours on a Sunday. I love wending around the big trees and listening to birds chirp from far-above heights in this seemingly forgotten forest. Forty-six miles and 6,500 feet of climbing in 5:02. Three fewer hours than I hoped, but it was still my longest ride since the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow last November.

Monday and Tuesday brought "short" rides up Monte Bello Road. It rained on Tuesday and I used that as an excuse to test my pogies and waterproof handlebar bag. If you're wondering whether pogies actually help when it's 50 degrees, windy and raining — they do, especially on long descents. My fingers are nearly always frozen at the bottom of Monte Bello Road no matter what gloves I'm wearing, but with the pogies they were toasty. And it's easy enough to bunch them away from my hands on the climbs. I would probably use them more often in California if they didn't earn me so many strange looks and probing questions from strangers. I already have to budget about ten extra minutes into each ride for people who stop me to say, "Man, those are some big tires. What are those for?" On Monday I talked to a woman who flat-out refused to believe I had pedaled my bike all the way up Black Mountain. She seemed to interpret the Fatback as a downhill bike and thought I had taken a truck shuttle up to the gate (sure, lady, I always shuttle gravel and paved road descents.) "You can't really climb with that bike, can you?" she asked at least twice. Well, actually, yes. That's exactly what I'd been doing all weekend.

Monday: Twenty miles and 3,100 feet of climbing in 2:10.
Tuesday: Seventeen miles and 2,600 feet of climbing in 1:45.

For a four-day total of 111 miles and 16,700 feet of climbing in 12.5 hours of loaded fat-biking.

On Monday and Tuesday I strapped on the heart rate monitor to see if I was working as hard as I felt like I was working on these climbs. Today's graph was especially erratic and confirmed that I'm entering that overtraining zone. Time for a rest day and maybe a trail run, as I actually haven't been out for a proper run since before the Susitna 100. I'll probably fit in a few more loaded rides this weekend before packing up Fatty for the trip to Fairbanks.

But it was fun while it lasted. I heart bike binges. 

Thoughts on Beat's ITI

The morning after a 45-below night in the Farewell Burn. Photos by Beat Jegerlehner

It's true that we can only view others' experiences through the lens of our own, and for that reason, few can grasp what an event such as the Iditarod Trail Invitational is really like. Bits and pieces reach us when we remember times when we were cold, or exhausted, or fighting mind-numbing tedium, or frightened for our lives. We feel empathy, and believe we understand, but we don't. Not really. This is why I shy away from telling others' stories, but I wanted to express a few thoughts about Beat's Iditarod experience from an outsider's perspective. In time I'm sure he'll write about his experiences out there, what really happened, even if few can understand.

2012 was the year of weather for the Iditarod Trail Invitational. Walkers and cyclists who pushed through to the finish saw raging blizzards and high winds obliterate the trail several times over, soft and sugary snow, rock-hard wind drifts, overflow, and a temperature swing of 90 degrees, from 40 above to 50 below zero. Only 18 of the 47 starters would reach McGrath, and none would go on to Nome — a first in the 10-year history of the ITI. It was a tough year to run the race, let alone as a rookie, and one that undoubtedly favored stubbornness and perseverance over any kind of speed.

Sean Grady, a cyclist who rode as far as Shell Lake in this year's ITI, laid out the race weather report well:

Day 1 - Blizzard dumps three feet of snow around the confluence of the Yentna and Susitna.
Day 2 - High winds.
Day 3 - More winds followed by another snow event.
Day 4 - Snow falling.
Day 5 - Negative 45 degree temps.
Day 6 - Negative 45 degree temps.
Day 7 and 8 - Eight inches to one foot of new snow fell on the final section of the course.

Just a few hours after the race began at 2 p.m. Sunday, a blizzard buried the course in more than 30 inches of snow. Where snow had drifted in on Flathorn Lake, some of the frontrunners found it impossible to make forward progress of any sort. Runners actually encountered the first cyclist moving backward on the trail, claiming that was the only direction he could physically go. Only by cooperative effort did the group manage to plow through Flathorn Lake and the Dismal Swamp, covering something in the range of six miles in seven or eight hours. A handful of cyclists turned around and scratched, not even making it to the first checkpoint.

When Beat called me early Monday afternoon to tell me he was still slogging along the Susitna River, I knew things were bad. This meant he had traveled less than 35 miles in 24 hours. The same distance on virtually the same course had taken me ten hours to knock out on foot, just one week earlier. And step for step, Beat was working considerably harder than I ever did during the Susitna 100. In all likelihood, his exertion level and energy burn for those 35 miles were on par with my entire Susitna 100 effort combined. Not only that, but I could only imagine how demoralized he must have felt, to be so exhausted before even leaving the old-hat Su100 course.

I didn't expect him to scratch at Yentna Station, but I admit part of me hoped he would. I love the guy; I hate to think about him out there suffering, even though I acknowledge these activities are optional and that another part of me (a part I still don't understand) wished I was out there experiencing the same epic struggle. He reached Yentna at 10 p.m. Monday and took a short rest there before striking out toward Skwentna early Tuesday morning. That afternoon, my friend Dan and I did our fly-over and saw Beat, other walkers, and the still-bike-pushing cyclists making their way along a single soft trail on the Yentna River. He reached Skwentna at 6 p.m. that evening and left around midnight. By then, it was just about 60 hours into the race. Contrast this to my 2008 Iditarod, when I hit Skwentna in 12 hours (with a bike) — or even our December 2011 sled-trekking vacation, where we leisurely walked for eight to nine hours each day, rested, ate and slept for the rest, and still made it to Skwentna within 48 hours of starting (about 15 miles shorter, but still.) I offer these as examples because Beat was still in familiar territory, moving slower than he ever imagined, and one of the challenges of this race was accepting that.

But even in a year of frustrating extremes, Beat did experience moments of bliss. This is a photo of Rainy Pass, which he crossed right at sunrise on Friday. This is another place that only experience can really reflect. It's so pristine and remote that just being there is ethereal. But experiencing Rainy Pass solo and under the influence of heavy physical effort is sublime. I still carry my favorite memories of my 2008 Iditarod experience through the frame of Rainy Pass. I slumped over these mountains at sunset and completely bonked beyond recovery, but even then I understood that I had crossed a threshold into a new perspective, and my life would not be the same.

But the blissful moments wouldn't last. Shortly after leaving Rohn, Beat would encounter the deep-space cold of the Farewell Burn. This section of trail crosses 90 miles of absolutely nothing. It's hard to truly fathom until you see it, but there is really nothing out there. Covering this distance on foot takes two full days of self-sufficiency.  You might happen to see a person on a snowmobile out there if you get into trouble, but in all likelihood, you won't. When I crossed the Burn over two days in 2008, I saw exactly three people, and they were all other cyclists. During the time Beat was out there, other racers recorded temperatures of minus 40 to minus 45, and it's likely that some cold sinks saw temperatures in the negative 50s. When it's this cold, a body enters survival mode. Nothing else matters. Beat later described the last half of this race as a something of a tug-of-war between mind-numbing tedium and terror. There was little in between. 

Beat traveled the last 50 miles with a friend, Anne Ver Hoef, who finished first in the women's overall race. They reached McGrath at 4:20 p.m. Monday for a finishing time of 8 days, 2 hours, and 20 minutes. I found this amusing as this was the exact time of day, down to the minute, that I finished in 2008 — 6 days, 2 hours and 20 minutes, and I had much easier trail conditions (and a bike!) Even though I feel like I have some frame of reference from my own experiences, it is still impossible for me to fathom what Beat and others really went through out there this year. It's also impossible to explain why Beat wants to go back out and do it all again next year, if the opportunity arises. He's a crazy man, and I'm proud of him.

I'm also happy for Geoff, who finished first in the foot race in his third try on the course. His race report is published on iRunfar. I think Geoff's report does a good job of portraying just how far the Iditarod goes beyond the typical conception of an ultra-endurance race. The ITI is a full expedition, with the added layer of racing against a clock and others, and it's as exciting as a race can be at 2 mph.  What Geoff managed to do out there is, in my opinion, a more exceptional performance than his 2010 Western States win. The ITI was a full week of high-level exertion and mental stamina without the benefit of support, or the satisfaction of moving fast. But of course most people prefer fast, because most people can relate to fast. Because of this, most ultrarunning fans will soon forget about Geoff's 2012 ITI and remember him for Western States. My (admittedly unique) opinion is that most people just don't understand.

But Beat finished the ITI without even the benefit of sponsors, and he finished as the top rookie runner in the race (as well as tied for third runner and tied for seventh overall.) He's awesome — at least that much I understand. 

Return to Juneau

Amid the whirlwind of activity during my three weeks in Alaska, I never had a chance to post about my short trip to Juneau. Thanks to an Alaska Air mileage ticket and a few extra days between the Susitna 100 and Beat's arrival in Anchorage, I had an opportunity to return to Southeast Alaska for the first time since I moved away in April 2010. I was excited to see old friends, eat a Silverbow bagel and drink some Heritage coffee, and walk across the Douglas Bridge while gazing lovingly at the Gastineau Channel. But more than anything, I wanted to visit some mountains.

Of all of the places I've lived, Juneau still holds the deepest level of affection in my heart. In many ways, Juneau feels more like home than Salt Lake City. In spite of myself I often bring up Juneau in casual conversation, enough so that most of my new friends have at some point asked me why I ever left. I tell them I had to leave because my life there just wasn't working. I felt I had given my best effort to make it work, but it came to a point where I needed drastic change, the kind that just can't happen in an isolated community of 30,000 wedged on a narrow strip of land between ice-capped mountains and the sea. Leaving Juneau was one of the most difficult decisions I've made, and also one of the best. I don't regret that I left, but I miss it, sometimes achingly, all the same.

At the height of my unhappiness there, I was still struggling to cope with the breakup of a long-term relationship, working 50- and 60-hour weeks just to barely hold together my section of the local newspaper, living in a small room of a house owned by a fussy landlady, cycling through the awkward realities of dating again, hanging out with my ex too often to be healthy, avoiding some of our mutual friends because of awkwardness caused by the breakup, feeling under the weather all the time, losing interest in cycling and generally showing early signs of a potential onset of depression. It was a rough time in my life, and there were a few months in there where my only source of happiness was the mountains. I've mostly let memories of those bad months fade behind everything I loved about Juneau, but I still hold on to images of those snow-bound peaks. I couldn't wait to visit them again. There was only one little kink in my plan: The Susitna 100.

For your viewing pleasure, I'm re-posting the picture of what my feet looked like for several days after I finished the race. I had a rather impressive case of edema that was concentrated in my feet and lower legs. My hands and face didn't swell at all, but my feet looked and felt like they were about to burst. I also had painful skin issues, having essentially boiled my feet in their own sweat for the better part of 35 hours (thus the blisters, but those aren't what hurt. My soles felt like a combination of sunburn, electric shock and severe athlete's foot.) It was Tuesday afternoon before I could even fit my feet in my oversized winter running shoes again. That evening, I got on a plane to Juneau.

I was still limping when I arrived at the house of my good friends Libby Bakalar and Geoff Kirsch. Libby and Geoff were a great support system when I was going through my rough patch, and it was fantastic to see them again and meet their year-old son. On Wednesday morning, I woke up to 35 degrees and full-on snain ("snain" is the term Juneauites use for precipitation that includes both slushy flakes of snow and stinging daggers of rain. It's rain and snow at the same time, and although it happens all the time in Juneau, I've never witnessed this exact phenomenon anywhere else.) I was already grumpy about how much my feet ached, and I used snain as an excuse to sit around all morning, snarf three Silverbow bagels, and pout.

At about 2 p.m. I finally had to acknowledge that I was either going to completely squander my trip to Juneau, or I wasn't. I stuffed my swollen feet into some shoes, put on my snain-resistant Gortex coat, and hobbled out Libby and Geoff's front door. The closest trail to their house is the Dan Moller Trail, and since I had no transportation besides my hurty feet, I moved slowly in that direction. Eventually the excruciating hot-coal feeling numbed and I once I strapped the snowshoes on for softer snow, my feet felt almost normal. The climb was hard. I wasn't recovered from the Susitna 100 by any stretch of the imagination, and my heart felt like it was racing even as my legs struggled to lift out of the soft powder. But I pushed through it, all the way to the ridge, because I wasn't going to lose this chance to visit "my" mountains.

At the ridge, the stiff wind and sweeping views hit me simultaneously, and I experienced the sensation of freezing and melting in the same breath. The scene was heart-achingly beautiful, in a way this photo doesn't begin to show. Or perhaps it was so beautiful to me because of the memories that are now deeply infused in this place: Looking out over Admiralty Island for the first time, gimpy snowshoe hikes while recovering from a knee injury, all the incredible snow bike rides while training for the Iditarod, my last afternoon of blissful ignorance just a few hours before Geoff broke up with me, all those damp late-summer hikes with Geoff while we tried to work through it. The Douglas Island Ridge has seen me exhausted and frozen, excited and strong, blissful and content, angst-ridden and weak. I do look to these places now like I look to old friends, for understanding and remembrance. This visit did not disappoint.

On Thursday morning, I headed downtown to have lunch with my friend Abby at Rainbow Foods. Because of procrastination I had to run the entire way in order to not be late — a little less than three miles in 24 minutes. I was running hard with a big hiking pack and snowshoes in my hands, and I won't lie, it hurt. My feet were on fire and my legs were screaming too, but in a weird way it felt good to run for the first (and still only) time since the Susitna 100. Abby and her daughter Marin were ten minutes late anyway, but it worked out for the best because we also bumped into my friend Dan. Dan and Abby are the two who are directly responsible for my first steps into the running community. Abby was the one who rallied me to join her on training runs when I first expressed interest in running following my cycling burn-out after the 2009 Tour Divide, and Dan was the one who finally convinced me that trail running is just like hiking, only faster.

During this time, Abby invited me to join her at what would become my first trail race, the Mount Roberts Tram Run. We started out jogging together near the back of the pack when she said, "Is it all right if I run ahead?" At the time I only understood that she was somewhat faster than me, so I replied, "Of course, go win the race!" I was joking about the winning part, but then she went on to scorch the 4-mile, 1,800-feet-of-climbing course and win the overall race, beating all of the guys. Turns out she's a lot faster than me, but she made an effort to include me in some of her training runs all the same. Abby is awesome, and I'm lucky to have had such a great running ambassador during my novice year.

Fittingly, my afternoon plan involved hiking up Mount Roberts. Dan took a half day off work just to join me, and in true Juneau fashion, did so by calling his boss and saying, "I'm not coming back from lunch. I'm going hiking." And his boss, because the clouds were breaking up and actual sunlight was hitting the downtown streets, said, "Of course. Have fun."

It was another gorgeous afternoon in Juneau. The sucker holes didn't stick and thick clouds settled back in, but temperatures were mild, the wind was surprisingly light (for Mount Roberts) and it was fun to catch up with Dan. He's looking to enter his first 100-mile trail race this summer, and we spent time discussing the possibilities. It's humorous that I've completed a 100-mile foot race before Dan, given how reluctant I claimed to be about the whole running thing back in 2009. He opened up questions about my latest Susitna 100 experience with, "Last time I saw you, you didn't even like running and now you've gone crazy with it." Yes. Yes I have.

I also worked in a dinner with my friend Brian at El Sombrero. By early Friday morning, it was already time to leave. It's an interesting experience to revisit a place I left because my life wasn't working, and discover how many pieces fell into place, exactly where they needed to be. I will be back again, Juneau, hopefully sooner than later.

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.