Juneau, again

I lived in Juneau for all of four years, between 2006 and 2010, after one year of living in Homer. I've already surpassed the three-year mark in Los Altos, a number that unsettles me because I'm dangerously close to becoming more of a Californian than I ever was an Alaskan. I also suspect I'll always be more of a rambler than a homebody, but a couple of places just feel like home. Salt Lake City — the place where I grew up — obviously. And Juneau, Alaska.

On Thursday, I boarded another plane and flew home for a visit. When I stepped out of the airport, the thermometer read 39 degrees and a mist of rain wafted on a stiff breeze. I walked across the wet tarmac with the knowledge that this was the last time all week that my shoes would be dry, stopped a moment to blink droplets off my eyelashes, and smiled. Oh, so good to be home.

 The fat bike stayed in Anchorage, so this weekend I struck back out on foot, facing a host of minor physical issues that the the bike allowed me to ignore up until now. My legs just feel tired; muscle aches, especially in my quads, crop up early and stay the whole way. My right shin is still sensitive, IT bands are tight, and the skin on both feet is a mess. Even after just an hour of being wet again, it shrivels up and makes my toes look like mummified grasshoppers, and the bottoms of my feet start to hurt in that same aggravating way all over again. But March in Alaska is not about recovery, it's about cramming as much experience into limited windows as possible. And in Juneau, when it's 30-something degrees and intermittently and sometimes simultaneously raining, snaining, blizzarding, and blasting wind, one does not rest. One hikes!

I got out on the Dan Moller Trail for a rainy day snowshoe through heavy wet slush on Friday. This turned into an 11-mile, 4.5-hour outing when I bumped into my ex-boyfriend Geoff, who was running with a group of friends. He lives in Juneau during the summers but currently spends most of the year in Colorado. He just happened to be in town because a friend of his recently died. I doubled back on another ascent toward the ridge to chat, but turned around when a hard bonk hit and I was starting to fade from the group anyway.

After catching up more at dinner last night, Geoff and I planned another outing today on Mount Roberts with our friend Dan and his girlfriend, Marisha. Geoff and I share a dynamic similar to old friends: We're not close, we only infrequently e-mail each other, and we haven't spoken face-to-face in 18 months. But put us together again and within five minutes we're avidly discussing events that happened in 2003 as though they happened last week. This is probably true of a lot of former relationships, but it's rewarding to learn what remains when all of the hurt and confusion finally fades away. Just like memories of a grueling race — we let time whittle away the excess and keep what's left at the core: Good times.

 Good times like taking a beating in Juneau's infamous Taku Wind. Today's conditions were a little breezy. I am woefully out of practice in both snowshoeing and Juneau-specific hiking, and took an unnerving tumble while trudging uphill at what felt like a 45 degree angle leaning into the crosswind. Lying with my face half buried in snow, I plunged one trekking pole into the crust out of instinct and nearly lost the other to the gusts. I wasn't actually going to blow off the mountain, but it sure felt like it. When the group reconvened again, everyone was discussing the various reasons they weren't necessarily feeling it today. Dan, who is training to run the White Mountains 100, already ran 24 miles before he met up with us. Geoff has health issues that seem to be exacerbated by travel and sleep deprivation, and was feeling downtrodden. I couldn't hear Marisha over the wind, but I cited being "a lot less than sure-footed" as my reason for being perfectly happy with turning around.

Down we ran, back to the iced-over, muddy safety of the Sitka spruce forest. The weather here is so terrible. I missed it, so much. 

Alaska rambling

 Good thing no one reads blogs any more. I may never get around to my Iditarod report. But I might as well keep up with the Alaska scrapbooking and bike photos. After I booked a month-long trip to Alaska earlier this year, I didn't make any plans past the ITI. Instead, I hoped to just organically flow where the wind happened to take me. Rambling through Alaska. I recommend it.

 Of course, all good rambling requires the kindness of friends who are willing to put up with you for a few days. I spent a few days in Anchorage with Dan and Amy, an awesome couple who have generously let me and others set up winter race base camp at their home for the past three years.

 On Sunday they took me on a tour of their favorite trails in the foothills east of the city. Everyone was tired from weekend adventuring (Dan and Amy biked 68 miles of the Denali Highway in tough conditions.) But I looked at the weather and realized this would be the last bluebird day for a while, so we rallied for a ride.

I guess no Dan-and-Amy ride is complete without a stop at the Hillside Ski Area for snacks. It was such a nice day that I ordered a jug of Diet Pepsi with ice, my favorite, and gulped the whole thing down in less than ten minutes. Of course my core was frozen for about an hour afterward. "You need to remind me not to drink the big soda on a winter ride," I told Dan.

On Sunday afternoon I headed north to Willow to spend a few days with Dave Johnston, the undisputed master of sled running. Dave tells the best stories, and his 2014 Iditarod experience is mind-boggling. I really need to get it down in type, and hope to, eventually.

Willow is largely a mushing community, and is criss-crossed by a maze of fantastic trails. I did spend a too-short time exploring them on Tuesday (without the camera, sadly.) But as a visitor with only a short month to spend in Alaska, I feel drawn to destination rides. So on Monday I set out to climb Hatcher Pass Road, which is closed in the winter but well-traveled on the Willow side.

 It was a blustery day, and the road was in not-great shape for riding: Lots of wind drifts over solid ice. Imagine deep sand on top of ice: You're swerving all over the place and suddenly the wheels wash out from underneath you. I did wipe out once. Luckily Dan let me borrow a helmet, because I smacked the side of it reasonably hard. Although the road climbs 1,600 feet in ten miles, the grades are rarely steep, and I found enough traction in the spindrift to do most of the climbing in the saddle. The wind was blasting in my face at upwards of 25-30 mph; I had to wear a full face mask and goggles even though it was a balmy 27 degrees. Still, the harsh wind gave the ride a raw and adventurous feel, and I love this kind of stuff (in small doses.) I pedaled ten miles up to Lucky Shot Mine, turned my back to the wind, and rode a full-throttle rocket ship downhill. I wanted enough momentum to plow through the deeper drifts, so I let the bike go. Traction felt solid in the fluff, and I was shocked how fast I could coast with that wind.

I had ambitions to make my way up to Denali this week, but the turn in the weather discouraged me from bothering with the long drive. Scenery is sort of the same everywhere when it snows. I still wanted to explore a new area, so this morning I pulled out Dave's gazetteer and decided to check out Petersville Road, which is near Denali State Park and is also unmaintained in the winter (and thus a logical snowmachine route.)

 There was a trail. It was soft. But I drove an hour to get there, so I gave it a shot. The route started out with lots of rollers that would climb 100 to 150 feet and lose nearly that much elevation in a half mile. This new bike of Beat's impresses me with its grippy churning abilities, though. I was actually able to ride most of the climbs, even though I still had to pedal hard to maintain momentum downhill.

 After five miles the snowmachine tracks veered off to a lodge. So I struck out on my own, briefly, with predictable results. At least it was a solid White Mountains training ride. Those measly ten miles required well over two hours of sustained hard work. Nothing like pedaling a bike at running efforts for walking speeds.

With plenty of daylight left in the afternoon (thanks, March and Daylight Savings Time!), I still had a few hours to head over to Talkeetna and check out the winter trails that I'd heard were great for biking. They probably are, but it seemed no one had used them since this latest storm. Even over a nice base, 4 to 6 inches of wet powder is sure to make you earn every inch. I got in another seven miles in 1:45, and I was wiped. Today was my first sustained hard effort since the race, and my lungs reminded me that they're not quite recovered yet. Surprisingly, my legs feel strong. Anything that's not walking, they're fine with. I may attempt my first post-ITI run tomorrow, just to see how it feels.

I've been chatting with Beat every day, but because I post updates on Facebook, I didn't think to repeat them here. He's doing well. Since he left McGrath he's been traveling in close proximity to Tim and Loreen, and camps with them, much like we did before McGrath. It's been tough going since they reached the Yukon River. A cold snap moved in with temperatures down to 30 below, followed by a wind event that drifted in the trail, slowing their progress and forcing them to walk through their exhaustion all night a few days ago because it was just too cold and windy to stop. They're approaching the coast now, less than thirty miles from Unalakleet, but now a winter storm is moving in that could dump 5 to 10 inches of snow on the region. Fans of this race will probably always remember 2014 as the "easy" year for human-powered travel on the Iditarod Trail — but things are *never* easy for the walkers, and they're out there long enough that the weather can and will throw everything their way. I toss and turn every night because I feel so anxious for Beat out there. I get wiped out by four hours of biking, and I just can't imagine how he keeps going everyday, taking care of himself while dealing with such dangerous weather conditions in such a remote area. But every time he calls, he's bursting with positive emotions, and hasn't yet revealed any hints of resignation or despair. He loves this, and of course I relate to his feelings, but it's still difficult to really understand everything he's going through mentally and physically.

On some levels, I wish I was still out there as well. But I'm also glad to be curled up in a warm bed this night, planning small these small adventures. 

Onto the adventures

 With Beat now making his way to Nome, I'm planning to bounce around various locales in Alaska until the White Mountains 100 at the end of the month. As such, I've been enable to embark on a few great rides amid the work I *am* trying to complete (thus limited blogging, still.) Since my first post-ITI physical effort, a two-hour fat bike ride on Thursday, I went for three more longish rides (first was 3.5 hours, the second was nearly 7, the third on Sunday was another 3 hours) with few issues. My body is well-equipped for endurance right now, but I seem to have no power in areas where I am usually much stronger, such as steep climbs and bike pushes. However, spinning pedals and breathing cold, crisp air has been fantastic for recovery. I feel great.

Dave Johnston, the runner who finished the Iditarod Trail Invitational in an unfathomable record of 4 days 1 hour 38 minutes, told me, "You must have had a pretty easy time out there if you're already riding this much." I had to laugh. Maybe I did take it too easy out on the Iditarod Trail, but traveling 350 miles on foot was unknown territory to me, let alone doing it in a week, with a 45-pound sled, in highly variable winter weather conditions. I stayed where I thought I needed to stay to survive and reach the finish, which I did. Now I know a whole lot more than I used to.

As for Dave, hearing his stories about the experience were absolutely mind-boggling. I think it would be generous to say that I ran 5 percent of the trail (and this was often shuffling, not a whole lot faster than my walking pace.) Dave walked 5 percent and ran 95 percent of the time, often up to 9-minute-mile pace. Even after his sled broke into two pieces on the dirt at mile 220, he lashed it together with rope and dragged the shattered remains another 130 miles. And he did it nearly without stopping. He slept a total of six hours, basically only ate just a little more than once a day in checkpoints (because he couldn't eat on the move without getting sick, he hardly bothered with trail food!) and when he ran out of water, he didn't stop to melt snow — he was just out of water, sometimes for many hours. He justified this with the explanation that, back in ancient times, people traveled without stopping for days, and they didn't get food and water every thirty minutes. And they lived and went on the reproduce the offspring that became wimpy us.

"People think they need all of this stuff, and they don't," he said.

I said, "Dave, what you did out there doesn't seem possible."

He replied, "I know. Everyone told me I couldn't do it, and even now people still tell me it's not possible. But I did it."

In my admittedly biased opinion, I think Dave's feat on the Iditarod Trail to McGrath is one of the most incredible ultra-long-distance running accomplishments by anyone, anywhere. I hope to write a longer article about it when I get a minute to breathe. Hopefully soon! I'm falling behind on everything.

And I'm falling behind thanks to this — Alaska, and its incredible playground at everybody's back door. On Friday, my friend Jill M. in Anchorage had this great idea to try to ride snow bikes at Turnagain Pass, an area popular with backcountry skiers and snowmachiners. Her reasoning was that recent warmth and sun might have left rideable crust, and thanks to lack of snow, the snowmachine area was currently closed to motorized use. We initially tried the Tin Can drainage along an old skin track. But I was not faring well with the steep pushing, and it was beginning to look like that's all it would be for the foreseeable future. We were able to ride the mile downhill at a grin-inducing clip, but I'm glad we didn't commit to doing that with our bikes all day long (it's funny, because usually I am all about long and punishing hike-a-bikes. But on this day, my legs and feet said no.)


Instead, we crossed the Seward Highway to hit the nicely packed and blissfully quiet snowmachine side, rolling along the valley on punchy but fun crust.

Jill shot this photo of me busting across an open creek. We had a ton of fun doing what often felt like sandy desert / slickrock riding on an incredible bluebird day in the Chugach Mountains.

 On Saturday, Jill and I joined her friends Scott and Sue near the Portage railroad station to look for a winter route to Spencer Glacier. We initially tried to follow a faint snowmachine trail next to the train tracks, but found mainly breakable crust that seemed reluctant to support my weight. Scott, who is a big guy, was also busting through, but Jill and Sue fared much better. All of the women were about the same size, so I can only assume crust-floating technique is an acquired skill that I currently lack thanks to my limited snow bike practice during the past few years. I tend to mash pedals and feather the handlebars too much, which quickly plants one of the tires deep into the snow.

 Even the frustrating trail scouting took place in a beautiful setting, with sparkling hoarfrost and mountains surrounding us on all sides.

 Temperatures were in the single digits rising to the low teens, and winds were light, which meant ideal conditions fat bike travel.

 About 2.5 miles in, it was beginning to look like we'd have to bushwhack across the valley to locate the main snowmachine track, which we avoided because we knew it crossed open water in several spots. At the time, Jill was a half mile ahead and seemed keen on crossing the valley even though it meant also crossing the Placer River, which was likely to contain a lot of open water and thin breakable ice. As it turned out, she just wanted to scout out a potential route and head back to the railroad tracks if necessary, but all I could see were sketchy ice crossings in our future and I wanted no part of that. Scott and Sue also weren't thrilled about our current bike-pushing route, so the three of us opted to turn around, cross the highway bridge, and try the snowmachine trail. Jill continued forward.

After an hour of essentially backtracking, we made it to the other side of the valley and a veritable snowmachine highway. Riding was super fast and life was good.

We crossed a few open or thinly iced-over streams, but thought we had it made until we hit the first open braid of the Placer, which looked to be about knee deep even at the shallowest crossings. I had brought a pair of lightweight waders with me, which allow me to keep my feet dry in stream crossings up to thigh deep. But this first crossing was more than a hundred feet wide, and there was no way for us to share one pair of waders. We walked up and down the bank, looking for an ice bridge, when we encountered a snowmachine tour group crossing the river. They splashed down as water rose well above their own boots, and I walked over to talk to the guide while he waited for the group to make it across. He told us there were five such river crossings, and they were all about equal depth. Ice shelves on both sides would prevent us from riding bikes across, and even if we were willing to ride or wade, the risk wasn't worth it. Wet feet for hours in single digits is a good way to get frostbite.

 So, we turned around. And of course, Jill — who chose to stick close to the tracks — was able to cross the river on railroad bridges and successfully accessed the Spencer Glacier. Scott, Sue, and I were a bit bummed to put in all that effort for a "DNF" (all-in-all, we rode or pushed thirty miles over seven hours, albeit at a relaxed pace with lots of stops.) But I can't deny that it was a grand day out in a beautiful valley. I would have liked to see some blue ice, but I don't regret leaving the railroad tracks to follow the more aesthetic trail. The scenery was incredible.

And no shortage of picture taking opportunities, either.

Scott took this picture of me riding back down the valley. This encapsulates what I love so much about being here: Wide open spaces, wild terrain, mountains, big skies, and an environment that makes accessing these beautiful places deeply challenging — and worth it. 

Mindblock

Recovery is an interesting thing. You can stay on the move for eighteen-plus hours a day and somehow feel a few notches stronger every day — the aching hamstrings and stiff knees stop their protests; the sore back, wrenched by dozens of miles of sled-halting roots and rocks, also gives up the fight; and shin pain, which at times became excruciating, just needs a few minutes of walking to "warm up." Even hurty feet that always hurt stop occupying every other thought. Bodies somehow find an equilibrium that is neither fresh nor stale. It's just shelf-stable: Your body is a walking machine, that's its job, and with a determined brain at the helm, it will do what you ask it to do. A friend once put it, "Your legs are the dogs and your brain is the musher." I echoed that phrase a lot out on the Iditarod Trail. "Mush, legs, mush."

And then, somewhere in there, your brain tells your legs it's time to stop. It could be seven hours, it could be seven days, maybe it could even be seven weeks — but somehow the thought "I'm done" sets off a chain reaction of physical events that are difficult to quantify. Suddenly I can't sleep more than two hours without waking up drenched in sweat, so much that I have to change my clothes, presumably because my body is flushing out an enormous buildup of toxins. The hurty feet that always hurt again become very good at reminding you they hurt, so much that you hobble around and hold your bladder to the brink of emergency just to avoid the unsavory task of walking. The legs stiffen up and fatigue sets in so deep that not even long-neglected appetites have enough spark to spur you to action. "I walked fifty miles yesterday without issue, what happened?" I'd think. Suddenly I couldn't fathom walking another step. Why? Because I told myself I didn't have to walk anymore.

And thus, I flew back to Anchorage in a daze on Monday evening, watching through the last light of sunset as the Kuskokwim River Valley, the Alaska Range, and the Susitna River Valley unfolded beneath me in a blink. Ever since then, it's been a scramble to put together enough cognitive energy to catch up on obligations and work, and try to set a plan for the next month. Even just one week out in the wild in "walking machine" mode makes it difficult to return to regular life routines, and I feel overwhelmed by the simplest tasks. I made all these plans out on the trail for a book proposal I want to write, and I can't remember any of them — of course — but I sit at my computer staring at a blank screen all the same, willing them to come back. There was a full day of deadline work on Tuesday that I thought would be simple enough, but somehow felt so stressful that the night sweats came back even though I was awake.

All desire to move was gone for two days, but that didn't take long to come back. Today I set out for a bike ride along the Chester Creek and Coastal Trails. Surprisingly, or maybe predictably, I felt fine, and ended up spinning twenty miles out to Point Woronzof and back. The feet were irked at being stuffed into hard-sided boots, but beyond that, there were no problems or even muscle fatigue. I was sleepy when I got home, but then again I might just be sleepy because I haven't been sleeping well. The night sweats are finally gone, but I still wake up with a startle every two hours, mind racing with thoughts of "time to go."

So where does recovery begin and end? There are people that did the same thing I did every day for a week, and they're still out there, pressing deeper into the wilderness. I stayed off my feet for three days, so I should feel even stronger than them, that much more recovered. But somehow the recovery process moved my body from shelf-stable to stale. I'm like Pilot Bread that got left out by a hot wood stove a bit too long.

Through it all, I haven't even attempted to start a race report. I value my habit of keeping a prompt and fresh journal, but it all just feels too far away right now, and it's still a puzzling challenge just to decide what groceries to buy at the store. So it may be a while yet, if too much else gets in the way. I don't know. Maybe if I just start walking again, it will all come back ...

Iditarod, again

In 2008, I wrote this passage about the Iditarod Trail for my book, "Ghost Trails:"

The trail was soft and deep now, but eventually the cold would sink in. The trail would set up and harden, only to be blanketed by fresh layers of snow. The racing dog teams would come through and stamp it out again, followed by recreational snowmobiles tracking it out until the warm air of spring left the surface rotten and unusable. Then summer would come and take the rest of the snowpack with it, leaving behind only open tundra and narrow passages through the alder where the trail wound through a canyon below Rainy Pass. In a few short months, there would be no sign of the winter trail or anybody who followed it. The Iditarod Trail was a ghost itself. But that night, beneath the moonless twilight of the Northern Lights, the Iditarod Trail was more of a ghost than any trail I had followed before. Not in the way it frightened me or battered me, but in the way it haunted me, even as I lay beside it, like it was some distant part of my past and inevitable part of my future.

Six years later I was back, traveling the trail by different means, seeing the landscape through different eyes, experiencing the world as a different person. But just as the trail and life are ever-changing, so much remains, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to return. Beat and I stayed together for the duration of the 350-mile trek to McGrath in the Iditarod Trail Invitational, and finished together in 7 days, 7 hours, and 50 minutes. There's more to say about the experience, of course, but for now I wanted to post a few of my favorite pictures from the race.

 Carole Holley and Beat run the rollers of the Susitna Valley, heading toward Mount Susitna.

 On the Yentna River, looking toward Mount Foraker and Denali.

 Finnbear Lake.

 Rainy Pass.

 Tim Hewitt enjoying some alder shwacking in the Dalzell Gorge.

 Sketchy passage at the bottom of the Dalzell Gorge — wet, thin ice and open water for more than a mile.

 The "new burn" heading up Egypt Mountain. We saw barely a skiff of snow for more than 40 miles, and the surface ground had thawed after two days of temperatures nearing 50 degrees. We dealt with dry dirt, roots, rocks, puddles, bison-stomped mud, tussocks, knee-deep stream crossings, wet swamps, gravel bars, and glare ice. Muscling my 45-pound sled through this section was by far the most physically difficult segment of the race. It was the most mentally challenging as well, because I am deeply afraid of open water in winter travel, and we had to deal with a lot of that, all while knowing that it could easily drop back to 30 below on the Farewell Burn overnight. Still, traveling through this kind of terrain, on the northern side of the Alaska Range in February, was downright surreal, and became the most memorable part of the journey.

 Crossing one of the Farewell Lakes. Race director Bill Merchant scratched this "trail" for us on his return snowmachine trip from McGrath that morning, which was helpful.

 Approaching the village of Nikolai with Loreen and Tim Hewitt, and Rick Freeman. The five of us more or less traveled in a pack, with our friends Steve Ansell and Anne Ver Hoef just a few hours ahead. This made for a fun and social journey through a remote part of the country.

 On the last morning on the Iditarod Trail, with Denali and Foraker behind us now.

A wonderfully rejuvenating mid-day bivy on a slough of the Kuskokwim River, during the final leg into McGrath. Even an hour of rest does wonders for resetting tired legs and hurty feet, making for a more enjoyable afternoon. 

I'm friends with the monster

I intended to write more pre-race thoughts, but this week slipped away from me and suddenly it's Saturday night in Anchorage. The Iditarod Trail Invitational is all set to begin at 2 p.m. Sunday in what looks to be generally favorable conditions for the forty cyclists and fourteen runners who are signed up this year. It's a great field this year. The bikers should fly; it wouldn't be too surprising to see last year's 67-hour McGrath record broken again. Twenty-three people are signed up to go the distance, a thousand miles to Nome. There are seven women in this year's event, and five of them are traveling on foot. A fairly large percentage of the field on foot are people I consider friends, so I'm really looking forward to spending some time out there with a quality group of crazies. Although there is still a healthy dose of nervousness and a dash of dread regarding the daunting task ahead, I now mostly feel excitement about the prospect of a week-plus of nothing but walking, shuffling, spreading out my bivy under a wash of stars, facing and conquering scary obstacles, and spending a few blissful minutes (not too many) in warm cabins with friendly faces.

My strategy for the race is to keep a steady pace but stay mostly within my comfort zone while moving, and try to limit stopped time to improve overall speed. Beat, for his own experimental purposes, is traveling fully self-supported for the first 350 miles — meaning he is hauling all of his food for that section and not planning on stopping inside of any cabins. My goal is to shadow Beat as best I can and possibly spend nights out with him, camping on the trail. I want to do this for both the wilderness experience, and as a race strategy. Cabin checkpoints are often loud, hot and crowded, and I rarely sleep well if at all inside of them. However, a simple shelter, someplace warm and surrounded by other humans, is such a huge comfort that I'm not sure I can resist the gravitational pull, even if I know for a fact I'll sleep better curled up in my bivy sack outdoors. We'll see. I'm announcing my intentions on my blog in hopes that some public accountability will hold me to it. I'd like to move in an out of checkpoints relatively quickly and grab most of my sleeps on the trail.

We've been in Anchorage since early Thursday morning, mainly doing unfun things — arranging our gear, shopping for food and last-minute supplies, rearranging our gear, obsessing about what we may have forgotten, trying to stuff butterfly stomachs with food, and rearranging gear again. We spent a couple of nights at the home of our friends Dan and Amy, and have enjoyed the calming effects of playing with their kitten, Olive.

Beat especially loves Olive. He carried her around the house in his coat, which she let him do for longer than you'd expect. I should probably check his sled to make sure he's not smuggling her for the trip to Nome.

Beat does have a friend for the journey, however — a toy husky named Bernie that he plans to prop on top of the sled. You know — the man pulling the husky rather than the other way around.

Bernie and Olive.

On Saturday morning, Beat put the Moots fat bike together, and I took it out for a short ride on the trails near Dan's house. I've obviously gone through a lot of back and forth about my decision to walk the Iditarod Trail this year, wondering if I'd regret not having a bicycle. And while I have to accept that there will inevitably be moments of longing, especially while pounding painful feet on a hard-packed trail for seemingly endless slow miles — I'm truly glad I chose to walk the Iditarod Trail this year. The slow pace will allow me to see and experience the landscape in a new way, and the longer span of time will facilitate the meditative mindset I crave. Not that I'm under any delusion that it will be a week of endless peace and quiet — there are bound to be long hours of boredom, pain, and occasional sheer terror. I think back to the last time I sought a similar experience — Petite Trotte a'Leon in France last August — and how badly that went for me. I met demons and monsters out there that I never want to meet again, and I'm almost certain I will. But that's part of the appeal and the challenge as well — facing the fear of the unknown, meeting the dark and loathsome sides of myself, and emerging wiser and more confident, in everything.

Saturday was a very good day that ended in a beautiful sunset. The last time I was here in Anchorage before an Iditarod attempt, in 2009, there was a big snowstorm, all these cars were off the road, and all I felt was doom. "I feel no doom this year; this is a good omen," I said to Beat.

"There are no such things as omens," he replied. Maybe not, but there is optimism, and that can go a long way by itself.

If you'd like to follow up with how the race is going, here are a few links. As a walker near the back of the pack, there won't be much about my progress, but the leaderboard should be updated once a day with the location of the last check-in. My best-case scenario is to finish sometime in the afternoon of Sunday, March 2. A more likely scenario is Monday or Tuesday, and the race officially ends on Wednesday, March 5.

 Race updates:
Iditarod Trail Invitational
Facebook updates
Message board

Recent media:
Rugged and crazed cyclists, runners ready for Iditarod Trail Invitational
Running Wild Alaska (TrailRunner interviewed Beat for this article)
Fairbanks fat bikers pumped for ITI 
Ultrarunner Johnston readies for Iditarod Invitational

Perfect bike for the Whites

People collect things — stamps, pennies, books, bottles of wine, bobble-head dolls. Beat, love him, likes to collect bicycles. Every time he starts musing about potential acquisitions, I tease him about enjoying the process of buying and building bikes more than actually riding bikes, when I'm almost exactly the opposite — love riding bikes, but wish they could magically fix themselves and maybe go live somewhere else when I'm not using them. He always fires back that I, the primary cyclist in this relationship, benefit the most from his collections — to which I can only agree. Since I moved to California in 2011, I've sold or given away all of my previously owned bicycles save for one (my commuter fixie). Yet, thanks to Beat, I enjoy regular rides on a wonderful titanium soft-tail mountain bike, an S-Works Specialized Roubaix, a carbon Calfee road bike, an aluminum Fatback, and now a expedition titanium fat bike that I *will* plan a proper winter expedition for, someday soon. Beat joked that I've commandeered all of the bikes and he needed one that was uniquely his own, a geared mountain bike. I put up resistance because, well, so many bikes (and he owns a trainer franken-bike, his own commuter fixie, and a single-speed mountain bike that I never borrow.)

"You don't even like mountain biking," I argued facetiously, to which Beat countered, "so?"

I lost this argument in grand fashion when Mike Curiak, who sold us the expedition fat bike, put another "Snoots" up for sale — a Moots softtail fat bike with an Action Tech Pro Shock suspension fork — kind of an old-school, lightweight full-suspension set-up for massive wheels. The kicker was this fat bike also came with a second set of 29" standard mountain bike wheels with hubs wide enough to accommodate a quick switch. With those wheels, it's very much like my own Mooto-X YBB. "It's a fat bike and a mountain bike," Beat argued, so it met the criteria he set for yet another bike purchase. Plus, as a bicycle collector, he is also a huge fan of Curiak's design aesthetic.

So, now this bike lives with us as well. I initially tried to keep my distance because this is Beat's bike. However, we recently discussed which bike I'm going to take to Alaska, to ride post-ITI and also to race in the White Mountains 100. I didn't want to bring Expedition Snoots on this particular trip because of its value, and also because it's not necessarily the best bike for a "short" race like the White Mountains. But after beginning to prep the Fatback for the trip, Beat suggested maybe I would enjoy all of the awesome features of the latest acquisition. First I had to make sure I was comfortable riding it.

Today we set out with Liehann for a three-hour fat bike tour on the new Moots, the Expedition Snoots, and Fatty Fatback. My rash, while having improved markedly in the past few days, is still irritated enough to make sitting in saddles and turning pedals unpleasant. Without getting too graphic, I'll just say that it's similar to having serious chaffing in all of the wrong places. I was stewing in misery about this for the entire 90-minute climb to the top of Black Mountain, mostly ignoring Beat's cheerful recommendations to try to dropper seatpost and questions about the handling.

The final pitch to the peak is steep enough that I always feel like I might tip over backward if I pull too hard, and I have to keep my butt planted in the saddle to maintain traction. Still, by that point today I was done with saddles — and anyway, I wanted to put Beat's Moots to a test. Standing up and leaning far over the handlebars, I purposefully pedaled in the loose gravel off to the side to mimic a steep climb on soft snow. Amazingly, the Surly Nate tire dug in, and the low gearing allowed me to spin a comfortable cadence while maintaining traction, even with the rear wheel unweighted. I was an instant fan.

The long, rolling descent was increasingly more fun. The Moots has similar comfort, agility and responsiveness as my YBB, along with the confidence-inspiring stability and bouncy fun of fat tires. Standing out of the saddle more frequently also went a long way in improving my mood. With Beat's blessing, we're going to pack up this bike for the trip north, and I am *really* looking forward to riding it in the White Mountains. The prospect of this gives me glimmers of carefree excitement amid the weighty dread I feel about the Iditarod Trail Invitational.

This dread is a good thing — it's what makes these endeavors so rewarding — but, damn, it sure makes me feel icky in the week leading up to the challenge. Both Beat and I have been a bit moody this week with our various points of panic — for Beat, it seems to be mainly gear and food planning. For me, it's obsession about my greatest fear out on the trail: Bad ice and open water. Alaska was so warm for most of January that a lot of waterways opened up, and little new snow has arrived to fill in the cracks. Although there's been decent freeze-up for the past two weeks, more warm weather is forecasted for next weekend, with the horrific prospect of "ice pellets and rain, 37F" in the Susitna Valley and on up into the Alaska Range from Saturday until at least Tuesday. Of course it's at least a week out and the weather could be something completely different — but we have to mentally prepare for what I consider the most challenging weather condition. The misery of perpetual wetness at near-freezing temperatures with gear we can't afford to soak — such things cannot be anticipated with anything but dread. And of course, I'm even more terrified of the prospect of new overflow, open leads and bad ice caused by another long stretch of above-freezing weather. All we can do is maintain flexibility, make the right decisions for ourselves, and hope for the best. But, damn, what can I say? I'm looking forward to the White Mountains 100.

As for the rash, I did see my doctor and he believes it's eczema caused by some sort of allergic reaction. It could still be a lot of things, but he did prescribe a corticosteroid cream that has been helpful in minimizing flare-ups and reducing symptoms. I opted out of Prednisone since I am already amped up with dread this week, and don't need the added insomnia from steroids. But if this doesn't clear up completely in the next few days, I'm probably going to kick myself for not insisting on drugs. The next step is to visit an allergist and see if we can pinpoint a cause. Hopefully it's not an autoimmune reaction that will only continue to worsen over time. But for now, the top concern is staying safe and as dry as possible starting next week. I am excited for this adventure — but scared, viscerally scared, which is the very part of myself I set out to overcome in such endeavors. With some luck, we'll prevail.