Blog interview

Recently a guy named David, who works with a T-shirt company called Adayak, interviewed me for a people feature on the company blog. I've had my nose to the grindstone since I got back from Denali and haven't had time to do much else, so I hope he doesn't mind if I post the questions on my own blog.

Your hometown is just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. How did you end up in Alaska?

I'm the worst kind of cliche for an Alaska woman - I followed a man here. My former boyfriend talked me into moving up in 2005. We traveled through the state in summer 2003 and both fell in love with the landscape and the culture, but I was reluctant to move up because I feared the cold and isolation. I remember saying to him, "What in the world am I going to do all winter long?" That was before I discovered snow biking. The relationship didn't work out but I'm glad living in Alaska - and loving winter - did.

Where did your passion for cycling come from? Did your family encourage you to ride or did you pick it up on your own?

I was like most suburban kids. I only rode my bicycle when my parents refused to drive me to my friends' houses. I didn't own a bicycle as an adult until I was 22 years old. My (now ex-boyfriend) and I were driving home from a camping trip in Moab, Utah, one Sunday afternoon when I saw a bicycle tourist riding up Spanish Fork Canyon. I said, "Wouldn't it be fun to travel around on a bicycle?" That set a plan in motion a bicycle tour around the Four Corners area. I bought a touring bike and spent the summer "practicing," which I later relented to calling "training." Our two-week tour in September 2002 took us all around the mountains and deserts of Southeastern Utah and Southwestern Colorado. I came home from that trip completely hooked.

You wrote a book titled Ghost Trails. Did you always aspire to write a book or did it come about by accident.

I still have a paper I wrote when I was in first grade titled "Where I will be in the Year 2000." I wrote that I would be 21 years old and probably in college, where I was going to study writing because "I want to be a writer and write books." As an adult, I swung that aspiration toward a career in journalism, but the desire to be an author has been there since I learned my ABC's.

You have been blogging on Up in Alaska since 2005 - that's a long time! How do you find inspiration and new topics to keep the blog updated?

With my blog, it isn't hard because I just write about my life and I'm always out there living my life. I appreciate interest and input from readers, but I'm being honest when I say that I write my blog for my own benefit. I love looking back at old posts: the pictures, memories and insights into how I've changed. It is my journal, only online and public. If it grabs people's interest, great. The blog has put me in touch with some of the best people I've ever met.

Is there anything that blogging provides you that writing newspaper articles or authoring a book doesn't?

Well, blogs are a stream-of-consciousness kind of forum, usually unedited, so they generally feature a much more raw and honest form of writing. Plus, there's no limit on the things you can write about. Newspaper articles and books aim to be more commercial, so they have to cater to the interests of larger audiences. On my blog, I could write about the kinds of mustard I have in my fridge if I wanted to. That doesn't mean anyone is going to read it, but I could.

The pictures of Alaska on your blog are incredible - they alone probably keep a lot of your readers coming back for more. Is photography a hobby for you, or do you just point and shoot? What type of camera do you use?

I'm pretty sure my blog has a lot of "readers" that never actually read a word. I like to say that Alaska is like a supermodel - it's hard to take a bad picture of it. Right now I just use a point-and-shoot, an Olympus Stylus Tough, to document my activities. But the act of just shooting pictures in order to preserve memories has generated more of an interest in photography itself, and I am looking to upgrade my camera.

What is the longest race/ride you've ever completed?

The Tour Divide, a 2,740-mile mountain bike race along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, which spans the Continental Divide from Banff, Alberta, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico. The race took me 24 days, and until this year's race begins on June 11, I still hold the women's record (which will likely be broken this year.)

Have you ever been on a ride and been stuck in a terrible situation? Maybe you've been lost, come face to face with a grizzly bear, or almost fallen off a cliff? You did recently get pretty close to a porcupine!

Porcupines are a real hazard! They're low-profile, and they saunter onto trails and don't move all that quickly away. You really have to watch out for them if you don't want to end up with a tire and legs full of quills. That said, I've only been in bicycle situations that felt terrible at the time, but in hindsight were just scary or uncomfortable: Completely bonking at 2 a.m. in an extremely remote canyon in Alaska when the temperature was 20 below (during the 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational), or being exposed to a horrific electric storm on a high Colorado pass during the Tour Divide. But I've always gotten through unscathed.

What type of bike do you ride?

I ride a 2007 Surly Pugsley as a snow bike, a 2008 Surly Karate Monkey as a mountain bike, and a 2004 Ibex Corrida as a touring bike.

Something a little more fun - what's your favorite movie, TV show, and book of all time?

I love "Office Space." That is quite possibly my favorite movie of all time, although I haven't given that subject a lot of thought. My favorite author is Thomas Wolfe. His books really form one long semi-fictional autobiography, and I love those.

If you could go on a cycling trip anywhere in the world - where would you go?

For years I have aspired to travel across Mongolia on my bicycle. Someday I am going to do it. I'd also love to ride in Antarctica, although that requires major bucks I'll likely never have.

Pictures of Denali

On Friday, I traveled with my friend Carlene up to Denali National Park. As we packed up her car in Palmer, I realized that I forgot my camera - actually forgot my camera. I debated driving all the way back to Anchorage to retrieve it, but decided two extra hours of travel when we already had a late start was not worth it. I did remember an old digital camera that I keep wedged in my the trunk of my car for camera emergencies. Its lens is heavily scratched, so not only do most pictures end up blotchy, but it has a difficult time focusing. Also, it had no memory card. I stopped and bought one in Wasilla, and headed for my long weekend in Denali.

We arrived, set up camp, and traveled into the park in the evening. It was after 7 p.m., but the sun doesn't set until after 11 and twilight lingers throughout the short night, so our late arrival didn't stop us from going on a hike and an 18-mile bike ride before our 1 a.m. "dinner." In this photo, Carlene is expressing her extreme discomfort with walking down the talus in heavy wind blasts hitting from direction of that road in the background. I said, "In Juneau, it's like this all the time on ridges around town." And while that's true, I didn't tell Carlene that the 50-60 mph gusts were nearing the edge of my own comfort zone.

On Saturday we joined up with Carlene's partner, Pat, and friends Julian and Tom for a ride up the Denali Park Road, which is still closed to vehicles and tour buses. Although I pitched this trip to Carlene before I knew anything about the park road schedule, it turned out this was the last weekend it was still closed, so this is the weekend dozens of mountain bikers chose to hit it. We again got a late start and had the pleasure of greeting a steady stream of fellow mountain bike tourists on their way back to Teklanika.

The weather was OK - cold and windy with temperatures in the 40s and 15-30 mph winds that drove the windchill down to consistently uncomfortable levels. But the sun occasionally came out and we never got rained on, so in the end it was a great day for a ride.

We saw a lot of animals. We tallied 12 grizzly bears over the course of our ride - seven adults and five cubs, including two sets of spring twins. This is unfortunately the best bear photo I got (yes, I was regularly cursing my lack of professional-grade camera, let alone the fact that I had bicycled all the way into Denali with only an emergency camera.) Since you probably can't see them, they're the two brown dots in the bottom center. Still, we had a good set of binoculars to watch the bears, and frankly, I was glad they remained well out of the range of my camera.

Other animals were not quite as camera-shy as the bears.

Eventually our group broke up and three of us climbed two passes, dropped to the Toklat River and began to climb a third before there was a vote of two out of three to turn around (guess which vote was mine.) We ended up with 53 miles total. I really hope to go back this summer and ride the entire park road.

Pat riding up Polychrome Pass.

The views to the south consistently looked like this.

Pat at the top of our second ascent of Sable Pass, under the first direct sunlight of the day. He might be smiling about the sun, but more likely, he's smiling because it's all downhill from here.

Me, though, I'm smiling at the sun.

Sunday morning, I woke up early with the daylight and killed a couple pre-breakfast hours with a ride up to mile 11 of the Park Road and back. Denali is still experiencing the pre-spring season, which is always the ugliest time of the year. But there is something subtly beautiful about the washes of gray and brown - beautiful, if not photogenic.

Sunday afternoon hike up to Primrose Ridge, back to the wind and cold.

Photographs just do not convey wind and cold. I wish they could.

We found a bit of a wind block in the form of a rock outcropping, and sat for 20 minutes looking out over the Stampede Trail and the deeper Interior as I dropped hints that I would really rather start jogging to warm up my numb toes and not sit around pretending it's summer.

The people with jobs had to head back Sunday afternoon. Carlene and I decided to spend one more day traveling with Tom out the Denali Highway, a 135-mile gravel road that traverses the high plains beside the eastern Alaska Range.

It is very "Wyoming" up there.

We set up camp on a bluff above the Susitna River. Tom set up his spotting scope and we watched a herd of caribou on the gravel bars. Later, Carlene spotted a sow grizzly and young cub high up the mountain behind us. For an hour we took turns watching the two bears crawl up steep talus and snow fields. I was enthralled by the bear "mountaineers," and the scope gave us a clear view of the sow turning around to bark orders at her cub. They bedded down for the night on a thin ledge high up the mountain. Tom theorized that the bears were fresh out of their den, and traveled on the mountain to seek protection from potential predators (including humans. It is grizzly season right now. Although humans aren't allowed to shoot sows with cubs.)

I watched the evening light flicker across the valley. It was becoming late. How late? I don't know. You start to lose track of the time up there.

I headed out for a sunset ride on an abandoned mining road up Valdez Creek. The animals along the route were abundant and bold. This porcupine actually charged me. I swear it did. I'm still convinced it would have tackled me if I didn't lunge at it with my bike, and even then, it only retreated a few inches and then turned around to hold its ground. I skirted wide and slowly around it.

I rode until I encountered a cow moose and calf on the road.

The rode back as the sunset cast its rich pink light on the landscape.

Evening sunset. 11:04 p.m.

Where I was standing on the plateau, watching the sunset, a couple of caribou circled a wide loop around me and then stopped halfway around a second loop, only about 150 feet away, and stared at me. Their behavior was intriguing, and downright spooky. I thought, "Are these caribou stalking me?" I got back on my bike and continued down the road. I dropped into a steep ravine and encountered a cow moose standing in the middle of the road. I stopped 200 feet short and yelled loudly, and still she held her ground. There was no way around her. I walked forward another 15 feet. She did not budge. I stood silently and observed little details about her, from an extra-long waddle hanging down from her neck, to a large scar slashed across her shoulder. I wondered if she had a calf nearby. I began to fret about how I might crawl out of the ravine if she did not leave. Finally, she got bored and trotted away. It may seem I had a lot of animal-anoia during this ride, and that's probably true. But I still think those animals of Valdez Creek were especially unafraid and even aggressive.

The next morning, I woke up feeling groggy, wind-dried and admittedly anxious to get home despite the beautiful weather. Carlene and Tom were a bit slow to get going in the morning, and then the spotting scope came back out. I don't really like sitting around during the morning, whether I'm camping or not, so I said, "Well, I'll go for a ride and meet you guys down the road." I thought the ride would last an hour, maybe two, tops. I packed a liter of water and two granola bars (and, yes, I should know better to be a little more prepared when cycling in such a remote region.) I rode four miles down the road where we camped and entered the Denali Highway at mile marker 80, pedaling east into a fierce headwind. I climbed out of the Susitna River Valley and into the high, rolling tundra above treeline. It's been a dry spring and the dusty, windswept plains filled me with eerie memories of the Great Divide Basin. I kept climbing and descending, the temperature kept dropping, and the mile markers kept rolling by. I drank all my water. I ate both my granola bars. I started to become a little concerned. Then a little more concerned. Carlene and Tom are good people, but I didn't actually know them very well. What if they never showed up? I'd have to pedal myself all the way to Paxon, still 50 miles and a big pass away. I at least had my emergency iodine tablets with me; that was a relief. But I really wished I had food, and extra layers. I was already bonking and starting to feel the chill. It was going to be a long uncomfortable trip to Paxon at best. Finally, at mile marker 41, I came to the McMurren Lodge - a little oasis of salvation in the vast tundra. Luckily I had my wallet with me, so I was able to order hot coffee and a huge pitcher of water and lunch as I waited for my friends to show up, a full half hour after I arrived at the lodge and four and a half hours after I left camp. Turns out they spent the early afternoon stopping along the side of the road and setting up the scope to watch animals. When I told them that I hadn't really expected my hour-long relaxing morning ride to turn into 45 miles into a cold headwind, they said, "Oh, we thought it didn't matter because you do this kind of stuff all the time." I wanted to point out that I like to make my own decisions about the "epic" factor of my rides, but I already had food and water in my belly, so it was easier just to laugh it off.


This trip was a fun escape, and in its own way a very long four days. It was strange to come home after a weekend away from cell phone range to several "heart-fluttering" kinds of voice messages - the kind that jolt you out of your own little world and make you wonder if all of it could actually change, and fast. The first involves progression on something that might be a dream job of mine, but that would involve moving away from Alaska. The second involves progression on moving my book project toward a commercial venue, but involves really hunkering down in the next two days and polishing up materials I genuinely thought I would not have to produce for many more weeks. The third I don't really need to talk about on my blog, but yes, it is strange how my own life can move along without me. It makes me wistful to just remain in the simple world that holds cold winds, remote ridges and infinite possibilities - the world of Denali.

Locking myself inside

I have really been trying to buckle down and work. And no, that work hasn’t involved too many job applications … yet. Because what I really want to do first, why I’m here, open-ended in Anchorage, is to try to sell my book. And write a few articles. And maybe finally buy a Mac and software and see if I can pick up freelance graphics jobs, like posters and brochures. That kind of thing. It’s so hard to be self-motivated, though. So hard. And Anchorage has to be one of the most distracting places I could possibly be right now. There are bikeable roads going everywhere, big mountains and ridges to explore, free time to travel to farther corners of Alaska, and pretty soon, the mountain bike trails are going to dry out and the sun is going to be up until midnight and, oh boy, I am in trouble.

At the same time, it can be emotionally difficult to deal with unstructured time. This is probably why unemployed people end up spending whole days plopped on their couches in front of the Food Network. There really is so much to do that they don’t even know what to do with themselves. I admit I often think about tucking my tail between my legs and slinking back to Juneau and the open arms of the Empire. I do miss my friends and co-workers, my familiar mountains and roads. I realize that as time passes, that potential warm welcome is going to grow more cold. At the same time, I know I should stick this out at least through the homesick phase, and maybe even the poverty phase. (Don’t worry, Mom, that’s not coming any time soon.) I am facing a new homeless phase here pretty soon, which reminds me - does anyone know of a small apartment for rent in Anchorage, cat-friendly, preferably cheap? My roommate is talking seriously of moving and I will need a new place to live soon. This reality is difficult, because I feel like I have been perpetually homeless for more than a year. At the same time, these are the decisions I made, and I made them purposely to avoid anchoring myself to any one place, so transience is what I must live with.

The playing is still going well, though. These photos are all from a “run” I did on Bird Ridge the other day. I am still toying with the idea of entering a few mountain races this summer. I did not get into Mount Marathon, which was not a huge surprise (payment at registration and a low-chance lottery. That race is such a racket.) But there are still others. One of them goes up Bird Ridge. I tackled the trail on Sunday afternoon, just to see how it felt to run up a mountain. I can’t remember the last thing I did that was so horrifically painful. First of all, I wore the absolute worst shoes (Montrail hiking boots are great for snow, which I thought the trail would be covered with, but horrible for hard, dry dirt, which was the actual condition of the trail.) I started up the steep slope at what felt like a mellow jog, but after 10 minutes I was doubled over gasping, clawing up rocks and urging myself not to slow down. After 20 minutes, I was only about a mile (and 1,400 vertical feet) into the 2.5-mile trail. My feet were wrapped in searing blisters, my lungs felt like they were being pinched with hundreds of tiny tweezers, and my legs and knees ached so badly that they shook. Mountain running? Seriously hard! I limped the rest of the way up to the 3,500-foot point on the ridge, just so I wouldn’t feel so bad about myself. But I was beat. I walked slowly and took a lot of breaks. In the end, it would have been faster just to do the whole thing at my normal hiking pace rather than try to “run” the first mile. But I guess that’s what training is for. Will I train to run mountains? I don’t know. It’s nothing like training to ride a bike all day. It hurts more. A lot more.

But I guess that’s half the fun.