Meanwhile the world goes on

Part of my preparations for the 2020 ITI was to pick up the jumble of words I wrote about my experiences on the Iditarod Trail in 2018, and weave it together into something coherent. My reasons for this writing project were mostly cathartic ... I had a rough go of things the last time I was out there, and I'm still trying to make sense of why I decided to go back, on foot of all things, which is an damn near impossible mode of travel for someone like me ... and finishing up my race report did little to boost my confidence. Beat joked that it was making me more anxious and might be healthier to stop.

But, similar to its subject matter, I plodded through to the end and came up with 45,000 words that depict what it's like out there for a hiker on the trail — from the intimate connection to the landscape, to the weird ruminations and meanders down memory lane, to the horrific things that happen to feet. It seemed like a good reference to put out there for those who might be interested, before I take off for another crack at a very long and hard walk in the cold. And although I promised myself "no more books about the Iditarod," this is really the best medium for a narrative of this length. So I'm putting it out there as an eBook, available on Amazon.

It's a small fee, but free for people with Kindle Unlimited, and an app makes it available for reading on any device or laptop. As always, I'm grateful for readers who support my (admittedly excessive) adventure content.

As a preview, here is chapter two, "Knik Bar," with a few photos from my 2018 trek:

Knik Bar

The feel of this place is familiar yet vaguely unsettling. A rundown bar sits on a lake shore near the end of one of Alaska’s many dead-end roads. A blinking neon sign beckons the few remaining motorists on the highway with promises of cheap beer. It’s a fading piece of Alaskana, a roadhouse that once stood at the edge of the wilderness but now borders ever-expanding suburban sprawl. The parking lot is a mixture of minivans and snowmobiles; the building is a green rambler with plywood flooring. The clientele is mostly local and male, proudly sporting the image of grizzled sourdoughs even though there’s a Subway restaurant just a few miles down the highway. This is mile zero of a historic winter trail that traverses a thousand miles across Alaska, all the way to the Bering Sea. The Iditarod Trail.

Once travelers head west from Knik Bar and Grill, there’s little civilization to be had in hundreds of miles. What exists hardly qualifies as civilization — shuttered summer cabins, a few fly-in lodges, and a handful of public safety shelters. One must cross an entire mountain range and nearly three hundred miles of ice and snow to reach the first village. By then travelers have entered the alternate universe that is The Bush, a place where residents tan pine marten pelts in their living rooms and drive snowmobiles through sixty-below blizzards to attend high school basketball games.

What lies beyond is makes Knik Bar so unsettling. Patrons can order a cheeseburger on a paper plate, guzzle Budweiser on tap, throw darts and play a round of pool. It’s all so commonplace, but as soon as they step outside in a swirl of wind-blown snow, this last tenuous connection to civilization ends. All that remains is a journey that is both perilous and frivolous, a journey with no external rewards, a journey that becomes a battle for survival … and that’s when things are going well. For those of us about to embark on this journey, the Knik Bar is a place to pick at a greasy mistake of a meal and sit in contemplative silence, wondering where exactly one’s life went wrong.

I keep coming back here. It’s as baffling to me now as it was the first time, ten years ago, when I gazed across this snow-covered lake toward a cluster of birch trees. I knew then, just as I know now, that beyond these trees are hundreds of barren and inhospitable miles. Then, just as now, terrible scenarios filled my imagination. I questioned whether I could accept the worst possibilities and surprised myself with a clear answer: Yes. I might die. That was okay by me.

Perhaps it was easier when I was twenty-eight years old, mortality was still a vague concept, and I was naive about nature’s brutality and dangerous depths of physical exhaustion. I had absolutely no idea what actually awaited beyond the far shoreline of Knik Lake. I was nervous, of course, but I was also young, headstrong and unwilling to quit something in which I’d invested so much. With providence on my side, I propelled body and bicycle more than 300 miles to the village of McGrath and finished my race — alive, astonishingly. I promised myself I wouldn’t return.

Of course I returned, just one year later. The year was 2009. I only made it as far as the first checkpoint. Twenty-five miles into the race, I punched through thin ice on a lake, soaked a leg and froze my right foot. I spent the next several months recovering from frostbite, and still cope with nerve damage I sustained in that incident. But I survived, relatively unscathed, so I considered it a valuable life lesson. I intended to never return.

Less than two years later, I met a man and dragged him into the strange world of winter endurance racing. He in turn dragged me back to the Iditarod Trail — not without reluctance on my part. Still, I was excited to experience the trail by his preferred mode of travel — walking, moving slowly and methodically, gazing skyward. We completed the race to McGrath together in 2014, sharing a beautiful and intimate experience that can never be repeated.

Still I kept coming back. In 2016, I returned with my bicycle and a tentative ambition to pedal all the way to Nome. In this race I was more successful than I imagined possible, setting a women’s record for the thousand-mile distance in seventeen days. By then I was in my late thirties, and life started to catch up with me. Fatigue clamped down, followed by a wave of chronic health issues including asthma and autoimmune thyroid disease. I stood in the shadows of my former vitality, scarred by years of striving, certain that endurance racing was to blame for this premature sense of old age. I was finally ready to admit my hubris, accept my fragile humanness, and walk away. But then I came back. Why?

My interest in athletics is as myopic as it is preposterous. I want to discover how far I can go. That’s about it. Speed and competition just don’t hold my interest the way distance does — and not just distance in physical miles, but distance into the abstract expanses of my mind. I want not only to explore landscapes, but to explore the outer limits of existence. I want to tip-toe beyond the fringes of the known world and peer into the abyss. I want to feel the ache of being, at that hard edge where mortal flesh meets the crushing indifference of the universe. I want to see the beauty of places so hostile that I must fight just to survive, and in turn learn to cherish the fragile gift of life. I want to release my soul to the wind and watch as everything I thought I knew about myself is torn to pieces. In this I hope to pick up the pieces and put them together, like a puzzle with endless possibilities. I was born into this world with a human body, and in my opinion it’s not a particularly great one, but it works well enough to propel me through a strange and mysterious universe. For this I’m grateful.

I started on the same track as many future endurance athletes — as a child humiliated on her elementary school playground. Even for a girl I was bad at sports. I still cringe at the memory of my second-grade class cackling after my pitched softball plopped into the grass two feet in front of me. In kickball classmates relegated me to far left field, where I never caught the ball. In sixth-grade gym I squirmed at the bottom of the climbing rope, never budging an inch. In seventh-grade tumbling I writhed around on the floor, unable to complete somersault. In eighth grade I failed the presidential fitness test because I could not run a mile in eleven minutes. It wasn’t for lack of trying. But thirteen years old and humiliated again, that became my final mile — the end of trying. After that, my interest in fitness only extended as far as the bare minimum it took to pass gym class. For my high school newspaper, I wrote an impassioned column listing reasons why structured exercise was a waste of time. Snowboarding, ska dancing, and thrashing around in mosh pits were the only workouts I’d ever need.

When I was fifteen, my dad invited me to join him on a hike up my first real peak, Mount Aire in Utah’s Wasatch Range. At first, the rewards of such strenuous effort eluded me. The climb was hot and painful, and the peak was rather underwhelming. I remember looking around at scrub brush dotting the summit and thinking, “It’s okay I guess. Maybe we’ll get ice cream when we’re done?” Dad was grinning as he handed me a bottle of warm Gatorade. I smiled back. My Dad was proud. Despite sunburned calves and blisters boiling up beneath my brand new leather hiking boots, a warm satisfaction settled over me. I was already looking forward to our next hike together. I blame Dad’s influence for a lot of what I’ve become, but nature runs deeper than nurture. I was doomed — or saved, depending on perspective — either way.

I am … well, who am I? My mother insists I haven’t changed much since I was a baby, but my identity always felt fluid. Like many girls, I tried on different versions of myself to see which one fit in. None quite did. Now, in 2018, I’m thirty-eight years old. My fair skin has been marked by years of desert and mountain sun, so I look my age. I have blue eyes and dirty blonde hair. With a little effort, I probably could have slipped into a conventional version of beauty, but never bothered. Awkward as a child, rebellious as a teenager, I never stopped feeling defiant toward the status quo. Money and power held little interest. Time is life’s only currency, and freedom is its most valuable reward. 

I come from a large Latter-day Saint family in Utah, with roots curling back to nineteenth-century pioneers. Since I’m white and American, the Mormons are the closest thing I have to an identifying culture. I’m proud of my pioneer ancestors. They packed up meager belongings in wooden carts and walked thousands of miles across the Great Plains. They did so on nothing more than faith — a conviction that God called upon them to uproot their lives, labor across the hostile wilderness, watch their sons drown during river crossings, watch babies and mothers die in childbirth, battle early winter storms, and often succumb to typhoid or diphtheria. They endured all of this so they could be free to openly practice their faith. My great-great-and-so-on-grandfather survived the arduous journey and helped found a town in northern Utah. It was hardscrabble place where winters were long and throttled with subzero cold, and summers were hot and dry. Generations of family members continued to work the land there. My great-grandmother resided in the same home until she died at 98, proudly remaining self-sufficient for nearly a century. My grandmother was born here as well, an eldest daughter who essentially raised her siblings while her parents worked long hours on the family farm. Hard labor was their way of life, and they championed work ethic and grit. This is my family’s legacy. I was doomed — or saved, depending on perspective — long before I was born.

A number of generations and 150 years removed from my Mormon pioneer ancestors, I’m still wandering across the wilderness. I don’t believe God called me to do this. I know there’s no new life waiting for me on the other side, nor do I believe there will be rewards in heaven. I only know that powering myself across Alaska is the most self-actualizing endeavor I’ve found, the most “me” thing I can do. Comfort, safety and the necessities of survival will always drive me back to civilization. But the edge of existence is the only place I break free of petty distractions and insecurities, and just live — pure, unhindered, and forever unresolved.

Once again I stood beside Knik Lake, squinting amid the glare of afternoon sunlight reflecting off snow-covered ice. Against the white backdrop was a flurry of colorful motion — eighty-something racers adjusting bags on their bicycles, strapping on skis, and maneuvering sleds around piles of snow. The race organizer had strung a black banner over the shoreline — fancier than the homemade version of 2008. Not much else about the Iditarod Trail Invitational had changed in ten years. Support is limited to infrequent meals and shelter at a handful of camps and villages. Participants are self-supported between these checkpoints, which necessitates carrying survival gear, food, water and supplies.

How much weight one carries is self-imposed, based on tolerance for risk. If you want to travel light, that’s your choice. If you want to wager that you won’t be caught out in an impenetrable storm without an extra coat, won’t panic about shivering in a thin emergency blanket because you miscalculated your energy and succumbed to fatigue, and feel confident that you won’t lose a mitten and frostbite your fingers because you don’t have spares, then you’re free to travel as light and swift as you’re capable. The race requires self-sufficiency and check-ins at six checkpoints. The rules end there. There will be no hand-holding through this race. If you make a choice, you better be prepared to live (or die) with it. In subzero temperatures and windstorms, or on thin ice over cold water, the gap between a small mistake and a fatal outcome can be measured in minutes. It is best to operate under the assumption that no one will come to save you, at least before it’s too late.

Due to my anxiety-prone personality, I fall well into the “heavyweight” end of the spectrum. I’d rather carry my fears in my sled than in my heart. If I didn’t have a security blanket to cling to for anticipated worst-case scenarios, I wouldn’t find the courage to cross Knik Lake, let alone persist for a thousand miles of frozen autonomy. This year I only pursued the 350-mile distance on foot, as opposed to the thousand-mile distance on a bike, which was my original ambition. Practicality pushed me back to the “short” race when my thyroid and lung health continued to falter, instilling little confidence in my fitness or stamina.

The most succinct way to explain my condition is that my body is strong but unreliable, like a sport utility vehicle with a clogged fuel line. There’s a chance my heart will start racing uncontrollably or I’ll sputter with breathing difficulty, and I can’t predict when this might happen, or how much it will limit my ability to keep moving.

Most people with health concerns would have the sense to stay home, find safer hobbies, and accept that aging hits us all — at least the lucky among us who don’t die young. The thought of confining myself to comfortable routine fills me with more anxiety than the dangers of frozen wilderness. I fear the mundane more than I fear the unknown. But I feel I can still mitigate risk with a sleeping bag rated to fifty below and an expedition down coat that will allow me to rest in almost any weather.

All of the gear and food piled in my sled probably weighed around fifty pounds. I’d refused to calculate the exact weight. I had no intention of minimizing my safety supplies, so I’d have to schlep it regardless of what it weighed. Best not to know the number, I figured. I even brought an emotional support animal: A plush toy Siberian husky named Bernadette. The sled balked as I dragged it toward the fancy black banner.

Beat, my partner of eight years, stood beside me with his even larger sled. He was again bound for Nome, his sixth attempt. Beat was already a prolific ultra runner when we met, but had no experience with cold or Alaska. After we started dating — prompting each other into increasingly grueling adventures disguised as “dates” — he raced his first winter ultra and I raced my first foot hundred-miler at the 2011 Susitna 100. We finished together, both shattered in our own ways. For Beat, the continuing story is a freight train of progress. He walked to McGrath through deep snow and intense cold in 2012, and has been bound for Nome every year since, with finishes in 2013, 2014 and 2016. I may have stood at this starting line first, but I was now the novice next to his knowledge and experience.

Unlike our magical week on the trail to McGrath in 2014, we did not intend to travel together this year. We both knew my fitness was far below his, and a plan to team up would force him to essentially take care of me in order to maintain the pace necessary to reach Nome before the thirty-day race cutoff. This sort of lopsided partnership was against the rules and, more importantly, against the spirit of the endeavor. The experience would have no value to me if I couldn’t be self-sufficient. As Beat adjusted his harness, I leaned in for a kiss. I expected it would be our last for a month.

*****

The rest of "Meanwhile the world goes on" is available as an eBook on Amazon. A free Kindle app can be downloaded for reading on tablets, phones, and other devices.

Final preparations

Oof, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Predictably I have not yet written down a gear list for the trip to Nome, but I've made a nice stack of things that looks disconcertingly like a lot of things. Beat and I have been putting together our Nome food boxes, and I just have to say that this part is the absolute worst. I am now neck-deep in planning fatigue and tempted to just grab random things from the pantry to fill out my food boxes rather than try to adhere to the lists I made. I told Beat I will not be doing any of this next year. I don't even care if I fail miserably in the 2020 race and don't manage to save the funds to buy a plane ticket to New Zealand next winter. I'll stay home. I hear Colorado is nice in March. I wouldn't even know!


Last week I joined my friend Cheryl for a sub-24-hour overnight trip to Leadville. The Arkansas River Valley is one of the relatively close-to-home parts of the state that is often quite cold, and I was excited when the nights leading up to our trip dipped into the negative double digits. Of course, by the time we arrived in Leadville, heavy storm clouds were building over the Sawatch Range. The forecast called for 1-3" of snow, but I was already bracing for a foot, since warm, wet snow just seems to be my lot in life. Alaska has been experiencing one of its coldest winters in years, but I have little doubt by the time I arrive in the North, the winter-hurricane conditions I experienced for an entire month last year in Nome will return. Not that I have any sort of crystal ball. And of course, because I'm bracing for warm and wet conditions, the universe will probably smack me down with endless days of 40 below.

We started out from the southern tip of Turquoise Lake just after 2 p.m. Initially the weather was quite nice, 15 degrees and partly cloudy. The trail was recently groomed and a bit punchy, but had a good base and optimal sled glide. I got a head start with my fully packed sled and wanted to see how long I could stay ahead of Cheryl. I even did a bit of jogging, and was thankful that dragging a sled at a decent clip actually doesn't feel that hard in good conditions. I don't think I've done a sled-drag yet this winter where conditions weren't unreasonably difficult — either deep and unconsolidated snow, or a continuous steep climb, or loose powder at 30 below. 

Cheryl passed me about three miles in. The flurries had already started, and we were heading toward ominous skies. We had agreed on a likely place to camp near our starting point, and I planned to hike out and back. But I was making such good time that I decided to follow Cheryl all the way around the lake. I texted her to let her know my new plan, but we had forgotten to exchange specific InReach e-mail addresses, and a message sent to her phone number from my poor-reception cell phone just disappeared into the void. This miscommunication caused confusion when our planned site wasn't accessible, and Cheryl became sweaty and cold while riding around and looking for me.

Meanwhile I was feeling good, marching up a thousand-foot climb in increasingly heavy snowfall, listening to decade-old podcasts about the Iditarod Trail Invitational that I managed to dredge up from deep Internet (so much nostalgia. Gear talk about Pugsleys!), and trying to keep Cheryl's disappearing tire track in sight so I could meet her wherever she decided to camp. Between the big climb and a longer-than-expected route — 16 miles, when I was banking on 13 or 14 — I was about an hour late. Cheryl had decided to return to the car. She didn't seem too irritated about the miscommunication, although I felt bad. She was carrying a lightweight sleeping bag that she recently purchased and changed her mind about using it. She wanted to return it while it was still new and instead bring her 40-below bag to Alaska for the 350-mile race. On the drive up, we'd had a long talk about how I was a "fear-packer" and hold few regrets about this. Sure, I'm not that strong, and I acknowledge that the weight does affect my performance. But I'd rather carry my fears in my sled than in my heart for a thousand miles. I wholeheartedly supported her decision to go with the 40 below bag, even if it meant she wouldn't be camping with me on this night.

Unfortunately it was still fairly early in the evening when Cheryl headed back into Leadville and I walked a mile up the trail to a dead-end picnic area to pitch my camp. We set a time to meet in the morning and it was 12 hours later ... I should have given that more thought. Winter bivies can be okay for five or six hours, but longer than that becomes tedious. I've found I need to be endurance-racing exhausted to sleep much in a winter bivy, so this was going to be a long night.

Anyway, I expected to find a nice picnic table in this picnic area, but of course the sites were all buried under six feet of snow. At the trail turnaround a musher left a few bails of hay, so I made those into a table for my leisurely dinner of Mountain House Chili Mac and tea. (The meal gave me indigestion, and now I'm having second thoughts about packing this flavor in my boxes. Which means I'm down to about three freeze-dried dinner varieties that I'm willing to eat.) It was snowing heavily and snow got into everything. The first night of winter camping is always quite the junk show. On a long trek it doesn't take all that long for routine to settle in, but flailing my way back into the routine while inundated with wet snow means lots of things get wet. This overnight was a valuable refresher, in that regard.

The overnight low was 6 degrees, and about six more inches of snow fell on the trail overnight, in addition to the four or so that accumulated during the hike. It's just my lot in life. I did not sleep much and tossed and turned in my bivy sack for close to eight hours before I finally got up a little after 5 a.m. and started to hike out. It was six miles to town, and by the time I got there to meet Cheryl at 7:30, we'd both decided we'd had enough of slogging through deep snow, and opted to head home early.

There's less than two weeks until the start, and it can't come soon enough. Although I am enjoying being warm, not wet, and not hyperventilating into a closed bivy sack while trying to sleep at night. I suppose I should enjoy these terrible days of stress and anticipation more than I have been. 

Weather whiplash

We're three weeks out from the Iditarod, which means Beat and I are officially tapering. This final training block since the Fat Pursuit has been disappointing, to say the least. After more than two weeks of a death cold, there hasn't been a lot of time to squeeze in long runs. My gym visits lapsed for too long and I lost a lot of ground; now my twice-weekly weight sessions leave me quite sore the following day. Setbacks are bound to happen in a training effort this long, but I was a little discouraged.

Overall, though, I feel about as healthy and strong as I could hope. When I'm doing the thing I'm training to do, which is dragging a sled through the snow, I feel relaxed and energetic, not overly burdened or bored in the least. It's encouraging enough. It's funny, though, as the Iditarod approaches, I feel increasing reluctance to do anything hard. Go to Niwot Ridge and battle 70 mph winds, or sit at home by the fire? This weekend, I surprised myself by picking the sit-at-home option. I justify this with all of the many things I'm still trying to accomplish in the three weeks I have left. But there's also only so much comfort left, and I want to soak it up. Once February is over, I'm likely to be uncomfortable for a long time. 

Life at home has been interesting enough, as Colorado does its Colorado thing with amusingly bipolar weather. On Groundhog Day - 02022020 Palindrome Day - Superbowl Sunday, Boulder topped out at 75 degrees! We joined our friend Daniel for a real trail run on his home trails in the foothills west of Denver. At least, I showed up believing we were going for a summer-style trail run, because it sure felt like summer. But there was still plenty of ice and snow in the woods and along north-facing slopes, not to mention a lot of slick mud. Beat took a solid digger while we were side-hilling a particularly steep slope coated in bulletproof crust. Just as he was talking about how his shoe studs weren't all that effective and I was thinking about ice axes, both of his feet shot into the air and he landed on one side. After that, I was overly cautious. I slid down one icy chute on my butt. 

And yet, when we climbed up onto another ridge bathed in sunlight and a hundred percent dry, sweat streamed down our foreheads and it was easy to forget that it had ever been winter. I wholly enjoyed this 75-degree day, but running in those temperatures does skirt the edge of uncomfortably hot. 

It's no wonder that the Rocky Mountain marmot saw his shadow on Sunday, and thus no surprise that our six (probably closer to 12) weeks of winter returned with a 63-degree drop in temperature on Monday. It was 12 degrees with 3-4 inches of new snow when I set out to drag a sled from home. I loaded it up with 45 pounds and soon realized that breaking trail through fresh powder with a heavy sled is harder than dragging my 90-pound cart on gravel. When I was about 2.5 miles up the road, a neighbor came through with a plow and made two passes, scraping much of the road down to gravel. Argh. I mean, good for driving. But bad for me in that moment. I opted to veer down a faint old jeep road and make a loop. 

Soon I regretted this decision, because this route is littered with rocks, ruts and down trees that were covered in enough snow to hide them, but not enough snow to insulate against them. My sled was awkwardly weighted with a five-gallon jug of water and a few extra things. It must have tipped over ten times. Each time I had to wrestle with it to turn it over, and I wasn't wearing gloves because I'd been using pogies on my trekking poles. Predictably, my hands started hurting, started burning, went numb ... and still the sled continued to tip over. The hands became a concern. It was only 12 degrees ... definitely frostbite territory if I couldn't warm them up soon. I briefly considered abandoning the sled and coming back for it later, but managed to make my way back to a road, start jogging, and generate enough heat to writhe with screaming barfies most of the way home.

Important lessons were learned — things will go wrong when I don't expect them to go wrong. Always be prepared. And keep some damn mittens in close reach at all times. 

On Tuesday it continued to snow all day. At least, I think it did. It was one of those days where I was locked behind a computer screen for the better part of 14 hours. But Wednesday dawned as the most gorgeous, powdery, bluebird day. It was still quite cold for Boulder — the temperature at dawn was -5F. And it was breezy, with gusts to 40 mph in open areas. So ... yeah, actually it was very cold. Somehow it didn't feel this way when I set out to run to town, breaking trail through ten inches of snow along the relatively sheltered west ridge of Green Mountain. I'd been feeling stressed, and the run was everything I needed to calm down and enjoy being in the present.

"I so love running through the snow," I thought as I splashed through pillows of powder during the descent from Green. "If only I could just do this for a month and nothing else. Oh, wait ..."

It was downright hot again, close to 50 degrees, on Thursday while I ran chores in town and went to the gym. I did not feel like I was missing out on a slush slog. Then on Friday, it snowed again. More than eight inches came with this storm. Ski resorts and mountain passes to the west received as much as 55 inches. I-70 was an utter disaster before CDOT finally shut it down. Lift lines stretched across counties. Front Range avalanche danger climbed to 4 out of 5. Beat stayed home from work because roads in town were such a mess, and we did another sled-drag. This one wrapped up with less drama than Monday, although a neighbor's friend had gotten her car hopelessly stuck in a ditch, and we both separately spent some time trying to push her out. Beat ended up running all the way home (three miles) to return with his truck and plow, then successfully cleared a path to free her car.

Then, on Saturday, it was warm again! Forty-five degrees! Beat insisted on wearing shorts and gaiters for what I expected to be an awful slush slog to Bear Peak. The road was a muddy mess, but the trail was in great shape with mostly packed powder. The people who packed the trail apparently couldn't navigate to save their life. Beat, ever the rule-follower, did not want to tramp over their eroded path through this fragile burned area, so we ended up breaking some of the trail up the west ridge, wading through drifts that often swallowed entire legs. Despite the gaiters, Beat's legs still ended up a little bloodied.

Then, on Sunday, it was 18 degrees and snowing ... again! All of the muddy gravel that we ran on Saturday was covered in six inches of new snow. Most of the Front Range received only trace snow for the entire month of January, so three big storms during the first week of February has been a shock to everyone's system. The wind combined with bad roads and volatile backcountry conditions ultimately kept us away from the mountains, but it was nice to get several things done and go for a short sled-drag in the afternoon.

I was able finally try out my completed sled-pole-harness system, which I filled with most of my planned gear for the Alaska journey, as well as two gallons of water (16 pounds) to mimic the weight of food, fuel, and other things I'm missing. It all felt great. My Nome sled is smooth and has excellent tracking — it's going to take work to tip this thing over. Beat added a canopy to keep snow out, and also to be used as a head piece while sleeping in my sled. It's a great addition. And of course, I made sure Bernadette, my stuffed Siberian Husky, is strapped down so she won't be forgotten. I've been working on finally finishing up the thing I've been writing about the 2018 Iditarod, it it's helped me remember how much Bernadette meant to me when I was tired and alone and had the emotional stability of a 3-year-old.

I'm getting close to finalizing my gear list, so that will probably be my next blog post. If I find the time for one. So much to do! Such stress. February is often the worst month on my personal calendar ... and yet, I don't want it to end.