Watching from afar

I finally had a chance to go in to see a doctor in Juneau this afternoon. I wasn't sure who exactly to see in town, so I just browsed the Yellow Pages and became more perplexed with the choices before finally just calling a foot and ankle specialist (with the reasoning that, well, toes are part of the foot.) I was lucky to find an older doctor who had dealt with frostbite before (much less common in Juneau than you would expect in an Alaska city. People here are more likely to get trench foot.) Anyway, he informed me that "at worst," I'd lose the tip of my big toe. Most likely, I'll just lose my toe nails. The worst-case scenario isn't ideal because it will involve an outpatient surgery and prolong my recovery, but all in all, the prognosis is looking good.

Every single employee in the clinic crowded around my chair to take a look at my foot - apparently frostbite is a major curiosity. One woman brought out the clinic's brand-new camera and asked me to rotate my foot in various positions, giddily snapping shots like a fashion photographer. "We need to track your progress," she told me. But I somehow suspect a picture of my disgusting, blistered toes may turn up on some hidden wall of fame in the supply room. (They look way worse now than they did in the emergency room picture I posted on this blog.)

As I explained to my audience how I happened to come down with a case of frostbite, a younger doctor interrupted to say, "Wait ... do you have a blog?" When I told her I did, she said "Oh, I think I've seen it! I moved up from California six months ago and everyone told me I wouldn't be able to ride a bike up here. I Googled "Juneau bike trails" and landed on the blog of this woman who does all this crazy biking in the snow. That's you?" I nodded. "I showed it to everyone on my floor," she continued, "so now most everyone at (this hospital in California whose name I've forgotten) has read your blog!"

They carved off the latest blisters, wrapped up my foot and sent me on my way with a new bag of antibiotic goop and bandages. It will probably be at least another week before I'm able to put any weight on my foot, and another chunk of time before I'm really walking. Having frostbite is not unlike sustaining a serious burn. The pain, treatment and recovery are very similar. Fire and ice.

In the meantime, I am continuing to watch the progress of the racers still in the Iditarod Trail Invitational, and am in awe of their progress in continually tough conditions. The leader, much to my amazement, is still a cyclist ... Jeff Oatley of Fairbanks. He's on the homestretch to McGrath, looking like he may finish in just under six days. The lead woman, Tracy Petervary, who is traveling with her husband, Jay, is not far behind, which also is incredible. Even more exciting are the two skiers hot on their trail, including Ed Plumb, who is one of the nicest guys I've ever had the pleasure of letting examine a set of frozen toes. If the trail is blown in by high winds as has been reported, will the skiers catch Jeff? Stay tuned!

Tracking this race on the Internet has been cathartic, and helped me stay upbeat over the course of this week, where disappointment and regret still loom. Even though there is nothing I can do to change what has happened, it's also been theraputic for me to imagine scenerios in which I could have saved my race and stayed on the trail, where I still wish I was and feel I belong. In my gear on my bike, I had one pair of extra Smart Wool socks, several foot warmers and a pair of down booties. I've imagined this scenerio where I stopped right on the lake, removed my boot and wet socks, placed both dry socks and some warmers on my right foot, pulled the bootie on and wrapped the whole thing in duct tape to keep the down bootie from shredding. I'm not sure this would have been enough to get me through seven hours of pushing and pedaling in what was likely a -40 degree windchill, but it surely would have been better than a wet boot, even with all the insulation I believed was helping me. Live and learn.

It's interesting because I still really believe that the tough conditions this year would have favored a person like myself, who is not fast but who has been working to master the art of the slog, and who really believed she was mentally prepared to handle it. Like I said, nothing I can do about it now. And it's not like I really even know what's going on out there. But, for therapy's sake, I'm going to let myself believe that I could have caught up to the main pack bottle-necked at the pass and kept pushing on toward McGrath.

12 hours of fun

The 2009 Iditarod Trail Invitational did not exactly go well for me, but it was amazingly fun while it lasted. The fun and almost relaxed nature of those 57 miles into Yentna Station came as a surprise after the general gloom that hung over me all day Saturday. Thick flakes of snow fell on Southcentral Alaska for most of the afternoon, accumulating by the inch and promising to obliterate any sign of the trail out of Knik. My cold had flared up again, compounded by anxiety and, much to my annoyance about the timing, cramps. I was nauseated and on the verge of vomiting for most of the afternoon, chugging Alka Seltzer out of a water bottle and catching little cat naps as we drove around to pick up our last "Oh, I forgot this" items and watch our friend and her band play at a Fur Rondie gig. To make matters worse, Geoff had caught my cold and was plunged into the worst of it. As we crawled up the Glenn Highway in the fresh snow, passing at least 30 buried and upside-down vehicles that had careened off the road in the storm, Geoff said, "So this is what impending doom feels like."

I took a sleeping pill and passed out for nine solid hours. And then, just like the calm center of a swirling storm, Sunday morning arrived. I woke up to clear, beautiful skies and a renewed sense of peace. My strength had returned and my nauseated anxiety had converted to almost overwhelming excitement. I felt like a harnessed sled dog as I arrived at the race start in Knik, nipping excitedly at the cold air and shaking with the desire to run, run, run. We purposely arrived just minutes before the start to avoid that last-minute anxiety, but as I unloaded my bike and wheeled it to the starting line, I felt confident. "I can do this," I thought. "This is my year."

The minute Kathi yelled "Go," most of the cyclists were off their bikes and pushing across the fresh drifted snow over Knik Lake. Ten inches of fresh powder promised at best slow riding conditions, at worst an indefinite amount of pushing. But I started the race expecting it. I knew if I had to push my bike all the way to Skwentna, it would take me at least two days to get there. "But that's OK," I thought. "I have all the time in the world."

Luckily, enough snowmobiles and been through that the trail had set up nicely as soon as we left Knik Lake. It took a while to pass all of the runners and skiers that had gotten ahead of me. The last skier I passed was Pete Basinger, a veteran Iditarod cyclist who decided to try to mix it up this year by skiing all the way to Nome. "Hey, Pete, thanks for fixing my bike. It feels awesome," I said to him as I passed him. "Can I borrow it?" he replied with a laugh. (Skiing is much more physical work than biking this trail, even in marginal conditions, so I'm hugely impressed with what Pete is trying to do this year.)

I joined a pace line with several other cyclists - a few Europeans, Anchorage rookie Sean Grady on "skinny" wheels and Catherine Shenk, a rookie from Colorado. Catherine and I hit it off immediately. I was excited to ride with other women in the race, and Catherine was excited to be riding her bike in Alaska. "This place is unreal," she said as we traversed the rolling hills and crossed the Little Susitna River. "Isn't it?" I said. Catherine and I seemed to be comfortable riding a similar pace and I thought we might make good companions for the duration of the race.

The wind picked up and our pack broke up as we hit more open and drifted areas that required us to get off our bikes and push. I noticed I was a little bit faster of a "pusher" than the people I had been riding with, and also seemed to be able to ride more of the marginal sections of trail (maybe because I was willing to run my tire pressure lower than some of the rookies, but that's just a theory I have about it.) Anyway, I soon broke out in front of the pack, somewhere ahead of the main group but behind the dozen race leaders who took the legal shortcut. For a long time I just shadowed skier Cory Smith, who was cruising across the drifting snow like it was groomed trail. As we dropped onto the slough before Flathorn Lake, I landed in shin-deep drifted snow and had no choice but to push. Cory shot out ahead of me, and I was alone.

I don't have a great memory of those last miles before I fell into the water. After sunset, it was still light enough to travel without a headlight, but the light was flat enough that it was difficult to tell a steep berm from a little bump, a ski track from a trench. I remember I was looking out across the lake a lot and not always looking down at my path, because there wasn't much of a path to follow. The wind was blowing so hard that snow drifted in tracks as soon as they were made, and I could hardly see the tire marks and footprints of the people who had moved through just minutes before. But it was clear enough that I could see exactly where I needed to go, so I just pointed my bike and walked toward the horizon. It was there, trudging slowly and focusing only on the distant shoreline, that I dropped my bike and one leg into a thinly-frozen crack at a weak point where a stream came into the lake.

After that, huge amounts of adrenaline kicked in and I moved with strength, excitement and purpose the next 30 miles to the Yentna checkpoint. I explained my decision-making process in my last post, but my physical state after I dunked my leg was nothing short of strong and healthy. The going was still slow with lots of pushing, low-pressure pedaling over lightly packed powder, and jogging in an effort to keep my foot warm. It took me seven hours to cover that distance, including a short stop to help out a fellow racer who had lost his pump, but I never once felt cold or uncomfortable. I thought I was OK at the time because I never felt my foot becoming cold, let alone freezing. This was probably because my foot was instantly numbed in the initial submersion, but I assumed it was because I was doing well to keep my foot warm. It turns out I was wrong about that, but in many ways I don't necessarily regret my decision to try to get to the first checkpoint. As soon as dunked my leg, none of my options were great. If I had stopped immediately on the lake to take off my boot, I would have halted my progress right there and become entirely dependent on rescue. In the time it took another racer to find me and send someone back to help me, I may have struggled with hypothermia or something more serious than frostbitten toes. Another option that seems appropriate in hindsight would have been to walk backward down the trail toward one of the unoccupied cabins on the lake. Breaking into a cabin to attend to a life-threatening situation is certainly acceptable in the harsh Alaska backcountry, but the fact is, it's private property and difficult to assess whether a situation is really life-threatening. It's also a controversial and discouraged practice with ITI travelers, who are supposed to be geared up to be self-sufficient.

Either way, what's done is done, and I know it's silly to feel sorry for myself. I was lucky in my situation. I initially thought I stepped into overflow, but in further discussing it with others who remembered that exact spot and realizing that my foot never hit bottom, I know that what I fell into was the deep, dark lake. I am extremely lucky that only my right leg went in and not my whole body, or even worse, my whole body and my bike with all of my survival gear attached to it. Taking a swim in subzero temperatures with 20 mph winds becomes life-threatening within minutes, whether or not you can pull yourself out of the water.

This race is hard. It is truly, for almost everyone who participates, more of an adventure than a race, more about survival and strength than speed. As I write this, those competitors still in the race are held up just below Rainy Pass, waiting for trailbreakers to forge a trail in the deep snow as a major storm moves toward the Alaska Range. This is shaping out to be a hard, hard year for the Iditarod Trail Invitational, and it will be interesting to see in the next few days who - if anyone - makes it to McGrath. I wish the best for the racers still out there. They have my deepest respect. I wanted to thank everyone who commented on my last post with words of encouragement, especially to the man who is recovering from much more serious frostbite down in Salt Lake City. I'm going to take care of my toes the best I can, I'm going to heal and be fine, and I don't for a second regret giving this race another try. I don't want to ever become the kind of person who doesn't dare to fail and fail spectacularly. I don't ever want to be unwilling to approach the unknown. I don't ever want to live a life free of risk.

Frostbite

So, what happened? As with most misfortunes, a little bad luck and a little bad judgment in a place where there's absolutely no margin for error, and I now have an incapacitated right foot. I spent six hours in the emergency room at Mat-Su Valley Regional last night. Most of that was waiting, but some of the waiting was connected to the fact that have a fairly serious case of frostbite that the doctors felt needed some outside consulting. Blisters have spread across all five toes and I have some black tissue on my big toe that is supposedly concerning. I will most likely not require surgery (i.e. I get to keep all of my toes), but I am in for a long recovery, and, as with all cases of frostbite, my toes will for the rest of my life be more prone to cold injury.

So what happened? Well, as is usually the case with bad judgement, I was feeling awesome. The day started out beautiful. Trails were slow and soft but rideable. I had everything dialed in. I rode with a peloton of six other cyclists and felt like I wasn't even working. The wind picked up over the course of the afternoon and began to drift in the trails with the 6 inches of dry snow that fell the day before. By Flathorn Lake, at about mile 30, all of us were off and pushing, and the group started to spread out. Evening fell and the light became really flat. Because I was pushing, I was not paying much attention to the trail, instead looking out at the beautiful alpenglow on Mount Susitna and the ground blizzards tearing across the lake like sand in the desert. Suddenly, my front wheel dropped sharply into a trench just as I was stepping forward with my right foot. I fell backward onto my butt and my right leg plunged up to my upper thigh in frigid water. My leg dangled over unknown depths of the lake as I frantically clawed backward up the trench. The overturned bike had also punched through the thin ice with one handlebar, but I left it there until I was securely on solid ice. I laid on my stomach, reached down and pulled it up by the rear wheel. A right pogie and a mitten that was stuck inside were completely soaked and the outside of my bivy bag was superficially wet. I'm pretty sure I lost a half-eaten bag of MnMs to the frigid depths of Flathorn Lake. But, much more concerningly, I had taken on tons of water inside my gators, boots, and both socks.

Now, I don't need lectures. I know how serious this is. At this point, I had to make quick decisions. I was out in the middle of a frozen lake in a fierce headwind and ground blizzards with temperatures already dipping below zero. I decided at that point that my best option was to get out of the wind and get into my bag in an area where I could build a fire, and I knew of a nice sheltered area between Flathorn Lake and the Dismal Swamp, about a mile away. However, on foot, pushing a bike through soft snow, a mile is quite a distance. By the time I got to the sheltered spot, by boot was frozen on. I could not even unhook the Velcro on my gators, let alone undo the laces and zipper and pull my foot out of a completely waterproof boot. So I was faced with a boot stuck to my leg and water sloshing around inside. What I should have done at that point was build a fire, wrap my sleeping bag around my body and try to melt enough of the ice to free my foot. But that's hindsight. What I did do was get this idea inside my head that my foot was perfectly warm even with the water inside my boot. I thought with the vapor barrier sock and insulated boot, my body heat would warm the water and create an equilibrium that I could work with, at least until the next checkpoint. Especially since I was walking at that point, and with all of the drifting snow, there didn't seem to be any end in sight to walking. I managed to wet my boot last year and walk for several hours in similar temperatures with no problems. Thus, the bad judgment. I thought I was fine.

The next seven hours were great. The soft trails set up enough to ride again, and I was feeling so strong that I alternated riding and running every 10 minutes just to keep my foot warm. I continued to wiggle by toes and they continued to wiggle for me. The temperature dropped to 25 below zero on the Yentna River. The fierce headwind drove the windchill down to minus a lot, but I never felt the effects of the extreme temperature. To deal with my frozen pogie and mitten, I put my left mitten on my right hand and rode with only a fleece glove on my left hand. I procured a new bag of MnMs and ate, and rode, and ran, and felt great. I knew I had a long layover at Yentna waiting for me, but I still didn't believe my race was over.

I arrived at the checkpoint at about 2:30 a.m. I was in 13th place. I sat down in the doorway and went to work removing my boot. Even sitting next to a wood stove, it still took me 10 minutes just to work the gator free, then the laces, finally the zipper. When I tried to remove my foot, I realized that my sock was frozen inside my boot. And as I worked the sock down to simply try to remove my foot, I realized with no shortage of trepidation that my foot was frozen to my vapor barrier sock.

It took nearly a half hour to get my foot out of my boot. The tips of my toes were rigid and white, but I was not yet willing to admit to myself what I had done. I quickly slipped on my bootie, went in the next room to check in, ate a meal and settled down for a nap.

I felt no pain as I slept, for the first two hours. Geoff arrived at about 5 a.m. and I told him I was worried I had frostbite. We moved upstairs and it was about then that the thaw set in. For three hours, I laid on the floor on top of my sleeping bag in a hot room, writhing in agony. Hard to explain that pain. Like the "screaming barfies," drawn out for three solid hours. I drew blood from by palms by clenching my fists so tight. By the time I stood up again, I could hardly walk.

I hobbled down the stairs to let the checker know about my situation. I showed him my foot, which still didn't look that bad. The sun shown brightly outside. The thermometer had climbed to 12 below. It looked absolutely beautiful. I so, so wanted to go out there and ride. "It's up to you what you want to do," the checker told me. And I'm ashamed to admit that I, after going through what I had gone through with the thaw, and knowing perfectly well that I absolutely had frostbite, and still had a wet boot, socks, mitten and pogie, seriously considered continuing in the race. Tim Hewitt, a man who has walked to Nome three times and has set out this year to do it a fourth time, who has to be one of the toughest men on Earth, walked up to me and said, with sincere sadness in his eyes, "You can't go on."

And that was it. Geoff, who was upstairs wheezing and coughing and struggling with a cold that had turned into a more serious respiratory illness, mulled over continuing for several hours before deciding to scratch and fly out with me. It was a horrible morning. The lodge owners and other racers were very kind, but I was in a state of disbelief, mostly about my foot and how much the condition had deteriorated over the morning. But dropping out of the race weighed very heavily on my mind. And I had to question my own mental state, and just how tied up I'd become in this whole thing, when I was more disappointed about leaving the race than I was about the fact that I had just sustained a fairly serious injury.

Looking back, I know what I should have done. Taken my boot off immediately, crawled into my partially wet bivy on the lake ice, and awaited help which was very close behind, in the form of other racers. I've mulled over all my options and I realize there was, with the gear I had with me, no way I could have saved my race. Falling into the pressure crack, because I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking, was my fatal mistake. But I absolutely could have avoided frostbite, and now have to question whether the misguided hope that I could save my race led me to drive on when it was clearly not the smart move.

This race has no margin for error. I love it still but I'm extremely disappointed right now, with concern about my upcoming recovery, and a fair amount of self-loathing for the decisions I made. It will take some time, some time when I'm on crutches and unable to ride my bike, but I'll work through this. As always, it's another life experience. I can't say I haven't learned a lot.

I want to say thanks to Scott for tracking me during my short time on the trail, to Sean Grady for his offer to help, to everyone who helped gear me up for the race and everyone who supported me. I'm sorry I let you guys down.