Day four: Rohn

I couldn't believe how much better I felt after I woke up from my four-hour nap. Of course it's all relative; I still had the sensation of sandpaper scratching against my tongue, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and the deep chill of 4 a.m. seeping in through my half-dozen layers. But I was alive! Something about that fact made me so happy that I didn't even care I still had a 15-mile push into an outpost checkpoint where I was told I would be lucky to find a propane-heated tent.

I took off at a pace much faster than the night before ... at least cracking the odometer: 2.1 mph ... 2.2 mph. With all of the walking I was doing, I had been grateful for choosing light and comfortable mountaineering boots over the floppy and cumbersome overboots I had worn in both Susitna 100 races ... that is, until I came to the first open stream crossing in the Dalzell Gorge. The trail disappeared into an creek more than five feet wide that appeared to be running at least knee deep. I stood, stunned, as though I had reached a brick wall. I followed the leaders' footprints upstream to a spot that ran much more narrow and deep. It appeared they had jumped across the opening onto a steep, icy incline that slid precariously back into the water. How they cleared it with their fully loaded bikes eluded me. They must have helped each other. I knew the only way to get myself across would be to walk across the wider, shallower opening. So I rifled through my bag for the old dog musher standby: Heavy duty garbage bags. I slid one up each leg and wrapped duct tape around the bunched-up openings just above my knees. Then, before I could psych myself out of it, I hoisted my bike and stepped into the stream.

The rush of water blasted my legs and I wavered for a single terrifying moment. As I lurched to recapture my balance, my grip loosened on the bike and I could feel it sinking downward. My stomach plummeted with it. As the tires hit the water I lunged sideways to catch it upright before it fell over and soaked all of my gear. In grabbing it, I kneeled into the stream just deep enough to feel the rush of water pour into the garbage bag wrapped around my right leg. The icy water hit my foot like a hammer, soaking into the sock and the insulation like first taps from the fingers of death. I darted for the shoreline, pitching the bike forward in a surge of adrenaline before crawling onto the snow, gasping and heaving. "Don't panic; don't panic; don't panic," I said out loud. Endless darkness hovered over the canyon. I knew I had just made a race-ending mistake. I did not care. "This is not a race. This is my life," I thought. All I could do now was walk into Rohn and hope the hoofing helped heat my wet foot. If that didn't work, I would have to pull on one of my down booties and walk in it until it shredded. All that mattered now was getting to Rohn.

The hike remained hard and daylight started to envelop the canyon. I did not feel cold. I felt beaten. I stumbled into the checkpoint at 11 a.m. It was every bit as remote as I had been promised ... a single cabin and a few tents. Two snowmachines. No planes. The cabin was exclusively for Iditarod Sled Dog Race checkers, and I was not to go inside, I had been told. But the Ultrasport tent was nowhere to be seen. I took a moment to survey the damage to my bike. The front wheel bolts had been frozen in. The derailleur was frozen as well and would not shift out of granny gear. The brakes rubbed, but I was able to work them free. Still, my bike was every bit as frozen as my boot. The situation seemed more discouraging by the minute.

As I lingered outside, a man swung open the cabin door and beckoned me to come inside. He said his name was Jasper, he was from Minnesota and he had volunteered to cook for the Iditarod dog mushers for many, many years. He offered to make me pancakes even though it was nearly noon. He told me to set my boots by the wood stove and stay for a while. When I explained to him that my bike was frozen, he offered to let me bring that inside to thaw out as well. Then another volunteer laid out a sleeping pad on his own bunk and urged me to lay down. I couldn't believe these Iditarod volunteers were being so nice to me, an intrusive Ultrasport racer who did little else than get in their way. I suspected special treatment for being a woman, but I wasn't complaining. Instead, I laid in the bunk and shivered with nervous apprehension.

On the outside, I felt rested and healthy, ready to go on with the heat of day. But inside, I was a mess of fear and doubt. I had made it over the Alaska Range and had a sip from the bitter cup of hardship. But ahead of me lay the Real Cold; the Real Remote; the Real Unknown. The Interior. This is insane, I kept telling myself. I am Jill from Juneau. I am no wilderness survivalist. I never even made it past Brownie level in Girl Scouts. What the hell am I doing out here?

The Ultrasport checker, Rob, finally came into the cabin and told me he hadn't had a chance to set up the tent because he and the other volunteers had just arrived. Apparently, they couldn't get their snowmachines over the pass, which is why everyone had to break trail. Most of the leaders had already gone on. The only racers in camp were me and Ted, who hated The Push with venom and had already resolved to scratch the race then and there. I knew I had no reason to scratch so I made excuses why I couldn't yet go back out. I needed a little sleep. A little more food. A little more time to dry my boot.

At about 6 p.m. I was outside trying to work up more courage when Bill and Kathi Merchant rolled up on their bikes. The Merchants are the race organizers and were themselves pedaling to Nome. I figured they had passed Geoff at some point, so I excitedly ran up for word about how close he was to Rohn. "I have so been enjoying Geoff," Bill said. "We were having such a great time at Finger Lake."

"Geoff's at Finger Lake?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Geoff had to scratch," Bill said.

My heart dropped.

"Yeah," he continued. "He was having real problems with his ankle. Then he started compensating for that. Then he hurt his knee. I'm worried I may have coaxed him back out with my trail stories. He limped out toward Puntilla, but then he came back to Finger Lake."

Knowing Geoff was out of the race was about the worst news I could have received at that point. Bill could have told me the weather forecast called for the storm of the century, 60 below windchill and zero visibility in the coming days, and I would have been more comforted to hear that than to hear that Geoff was off the trail. I was crushed. I was so, so alone. I wanted to scream, but there was nothing to scream at. The Iditarod Trail? The Iditarod Trail did not care. There was nothing to break on the Iditarod Trail except myself. And I did not want to be broken. I couldn't face that possibility, and yet I couldn't quite turn away from it. I decided the best thing for me to do would be to crawl into the now-staked but still-unheated Ultrasport tent and go to sleep. Things always look better in the morning, I said to myself.

Day three: Rainy Pass

I stepped out of Puntilla Lake Lodge into intensely beautiful weather. Direct sunlight cascaded off the crystalline snow as the last pink light of sunrise faded into the horizon. In the blindness of night I had climbed into the mountains, and suddenly they were so close I could touch them. The air felt much warmer than 0 degrees; in the sun I wore only a single hat and let the frost petrify my strands of hair. I decided this would go down as one of my favorite morning rides ever.

After a few miles, the trail climbed beyond treeline and became much too soft to ride. My position in 12th or 13th place gave me a direct view of what came before me. As the footprints piled up deeper and deeper on the trail, I knew none of the leaders, none of the really strong and really skilled snowbikers had been riding, either. Their footprints cut up the middle of the trail as their bike tires rolled to the right. All of my "bike push" training had me rolling my bike to the left, and I didn't feel completely comfortable switching positions, but I had no choice but to follow their trail. I expected to walk a lot of Rainy Pass and didn't feel discouraged about the prospect. I just turned on my iPod and chanted my new mantra ... "So! The Push!"

As the trail left the last valley in its route over the range, the incline pitched up steeply and my shoulders burned white hot as I plowed Pugsley through the soft snow. They say in an event like this, you will begin to feel every ounce: every extra chemical warmer, every battery, every last candy bar. I packed for comfort and safety and I packed a ton. Veterans go ultralight and rookies bring their insecurities. As I hobbled up toward the highest elevation of the entire trail, I realized how quickly insecurity can weigh a person down. I crested the pass right at sunset, having traveled maybe 20 miles in nine hours. I was already feeling exhausted, and questioning my ability to make it to Rohn, still more than 20 miles away. But a frigid wind whipped up the canyon and I could already feel the deep cold settling in again. I knew I would have to at the very least seek shelter from the wind.

I had heard that once you make it to the pass, the downside of the trail is usually rideable - even an icy, harrowing downhill run. But as I plowed Pugsley over the last hill and looked through the last remaining sunlight at the trail below me, all I could see were more knee-deep footprints punched in an expanse of power snow. I would find out later that no snowmachine had been able to make it over the pass all year long, and that morning, the dozen leading cyclists actually broke their own trail by sidestepping the open water down the steep Dalzell Gorge. What I followed was a mess of postholes that was probably better than literally breaking trail, but slowed me down so much that my odometer wouldn't register forward motion - slower than 1.5 mph. Lifting the front of my bike off the ground became routine. All the while I knew I had 20 miles to push to Rohn, the deep cold of night was settling in, I was crashing quickly and even as I tried to keep the food coming in, every bite just made me feel worse.

After about six miles of fighting the inevitable, I finally realized that I was going to need to recover or risk literally passing out on the trail. I plowed my bike into the waist-deep snow just off the trail and began to punch out a snow hole. I rolled out my bivy sack, grabbed some nuts and chocolate to eat for dinner, and crawled inside with my water bottle and Camelbak. Before I pulled the backpack inside, I checked the thermometer on the outside. The mercury had bottomed out at 20 below. All around me, the deep cold needled into the now-still air. Inside my bag was amazingly warm and humid. I was so, so grateful that I could rest and be warm, but so nervous that I couldn't stop hyperventilating. After about 20 minutes of nibbling on my food and sipping my water between dozens of gasping breaths, my mind finally began to accept that this sleeping bag really would keep me warm. I drifted off to sleep, cuddling the Camelbak that held my precious water, breathing a settling peace from the food and the warmth, vocally expressing gratitude to my sleeping bag and mumbling a clairvoyant message to my mom that all was OK. I had never felt so alone.

Day two: Skwentna to Puntilla Lake

The first person I saw at Skwentna was a wild-eyed Jay Petervary, fresh awake from his nap and gulping down soup in the kitchen. I couldn't believe I had caught one of the leaders, even if he was technically a few hours ahead of me. I asked him how he felt and he practically screamed, "Great! Great! Awesome!" His energy was magnetic and I could see in his eyes the intensity it takes to dominate a race like this. "Had a long sleep," he sniffed. "Three hours. Gotta rest up when I'm going to Nome."

"But you're still going to win the race the McGrath, right?" I grinned.

He didn't even smile back. He just nodded. "Oh yeah."

As Jay packed up I sat down to my daily trail meal ... spaghetti with meat sauce. It tasted like ketchup-coated starch strings with rubber balls. It was heavenly.

I woke up the next morning after my own three hours of sleep and took a toilet-paper bath in the luxurious indoor plumbing-equipped bathroom. I was pleased that I still looked somewhat like a normal person. I tried to eat a Clif Bar for breakfast and could only choke down half of it. This was the beginning of the end of my goal for healthy food intake during the race. In the end, I would run a calorie deficit that would cause me to lose five pounds in six days and bonk out in the dark, cold wilderness more than once. But for now, I just decided I wasn't hungry quite yet.

I set out into the Shell Hills with Ted Cahalane, who quickly outpaced me as the trail began to work its way up toward the Alaska Range. Alone again, I basked in the warmth of sunrise and pushed hard up a few hills to jolt my metabolism. This race couldn't possibly be this easy, I thought. I immediately tried to shake that thought out of my head before the Iditarod Trail demons decided to smite my arrogant rookie self with a monster storm. I stopped at the Shell Lake Lodge for a big breakfast with a European cyclist who didn't speak any English. This would become an ongoing theme for me in this race - meeting up with racers who I couldn't even communicate with well enough to remember their names, but with whom I share an intimate understanding and respect. Again, I had a hard time choking down my breakfast. At one point, I thought I might need to run outside to vomit. But it didn't seem like that serious of a problem. The appetite would come, I told myself.

Headwinds into Finger Lake made the going slower, but the trail was still hardpacked and 100 percent rideable - phenomenal conditions this far into the route. As I pulled into the 130-mile checkpoint, I was caught by none other than Pete Basinger, another favorite in the race. I found out he broke one of his pedals on the Skwentna River, waited overnight for a replacement to be flown in, fixed the pedal and still managed to plow up the trail at a pace that was quickly advancing him toward the front of the race. The quantum mechanics of such an effort astounded me. I didn't want to seem like too much of a star-struck groupie, so I tried to advert my eyes as he packed up his drop bag - looked to be mostly candy bars - reloaded his mp3 player, and left without even eating. My own drop bag was loaded with 10 pounds of food and fuel to replace the less than one pound I had consumed so far. I picked out a few choice items and left 90 percent of it in the discard pile. The checker then coaxed me to eat my own meal - chicken with rice and beans - before I hit the trail myself.

I was told the 35-mile climb into Puntilla Lake would likely be the most physically challenging section of the race. The trail gains the most elevation in this stretch, through a series of rolling hills that means a lot of elevation lost must be gained again. Even a firm-packed trail is often so steep that uphills become a grunting hike-a-bike, and the trail was starting to become much softer. The European cyclist I had breakfast with could only say, "So, The Push!" We walked together until he, too, outpaced me. I watched my progress slowly bring me closer to the jagged peaks in the distance, until darkness fell. Then all I had to watch was my progress in a five-foot-diameter circle of light on the trail, telling only a story of footprints and tire tracks, a monotonous sequence of hills and The Push.

The temperature began to drop - to minus five and then minus 10. The water in my insulated bottle holder and Camelbak bladder grew more slushy and solid by the hour. Every sip felt like drinking near-boiling water on a 100-degree day. My body didn't like this cold water and it didn't like the cold air. I could scarcely steer as eyelash icicles obstructed my vision. I kept thinking about the humor of the situation - here I was, Juneau Jill of The Rain, trying to ride a bike up a mountain in negative 10 cold. I had no idea how easy I had it.

I arrived at Puntilla Lake very late - 4 a.m. - having pulled out a 21-hour day and losing most of the beauty of the Alaska Range approach to the cold night. But this is the nature of the race - if you only traveled by day, you wouldn't even be moving half the time you were out there. Night still dominates this time of year. So one must travel when one can and stop when one needs to. The checker at the tiny Puntilla Lake Lodge gave me my next gourmet meal - clam chowder served boiling hot directly from the can and "pilot bread," a quintessential Alaska Bush food that I can only describe as a giant soggy sodium-free Saltine cracker. Again, my dinner tasted like heaven. I was glad to have my appetite back. I crawled onto a hard wooden bed in the bunk room and drifted quickly to sleep, my knees burning and toes wrapped in blisters from walking, but otherwise feeling fresh, fresh as I need to be to climb Rainy Pass, I told myself.