Cordova

There's a little town in Alaska I had always wanted to visit. I couldn't even tell you why I picked this specific town, for there are lots of little towns in Alaska that would be fun to visit. But Cordova, a fishing village perched on the edge of the Prince William Sound, always stuck out. I think it started when I first learned of an old railroad grade that left this isolated village and followed the Copper River all the way to the main road system, in Chitna. I used to wonder if it was partially passable with a bicycle, until I learned that the railroad fell into disuse in the early 1930s, and I'd be lucky to find a few scattered nails among the thick alder tangles and rushing, unbridged streams. What remains is a 50-mile-long gravel road to nowhere that passes several glaciers. How could that not be a fun overnight ride?

I started the trip by taking the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage to Whittier. I always thought that blue-and-yellow double-decker rail car that rumbled next to the Seward Highway was a strictly tourist-only deal. It only recently occurred to me that I could use the train as transportation, and felt a little conspicuous doing so in my bike clothes with a book as camera-toting sightseers migrated like birds from one side of the train to the other, depending on what animals somebody reportedly saw. I sat across from a very nice older couple from Albuquerque who had just arrived in Anchorage late the night before, and had never before visited Alaska. The woman must have taken at least 200 digital photos through the window. I did my best to point out the attractions and smile with satisfaction as they gasped around every scenic turn. There is something so rewarding about seeing a place you love through the eyes of newcomers.

From Whittier, I got on the ferry, and it was my turn to play the role of a gawking tourist, leaning against the outside railing to watch far-away orcas and rolling sea otters as the boat crossed the Prince William Sound. The ferry arrived in Cordova just before 9 p.m. I rode to the city-owned campground, which was a real pit - full of tightly-wedged RVs and trailers all clustered in a circle around a battered old bathroom like a pioneer wagon train. I rode back to town and asked four different people at the grocery store about "tent camping." They all looked at me like I was speaking Dutch, except for a jovial Hispanic woman who just laughed and said, "Don't ask me; Mexicans don't go camping." I headed out the road until I was a ways out of town, and ended up finding a really sweet spot on a gravel bar of a tributary below the Scott Glacier.

The next morning, it rained. I had to wait around in cell phone range to take a scheduled call at 12:30, so I laid on my thin strip of foam and read "The Living" by Annie Dillard. The call came and went, and it kept on raining. I took short glances outside to the completely-soaked-in grayness. My elbows started to ache, so I turned on my back, until my shoulders ached, and still droplets pounded the rain fly. I started to remember why I never used to go camping when I lived in Juneau. It is one thing to ride in the continuous rain, and quite another to try to live in it, with only a single change of clothing, a single change of socks, a down sleeping bag and a small nylon tent, in a climate where once things get wet, they are never going to dry outside. Even if you stay put, the dampness seeps in anyway, smelling of cold earth and accumulating like mildew. I knew if I packed up and headed down the road in the rain, my body and all of my worldly belongings were going to be a dripping mess by the time the cold night rolled around again. But by 3:30 p.m., I was going stir crazy (I'll never understand how mountaineers huddle in tents for days on end and manage to keep their sanity.) I finally relented to going for a short afternoon ride to break the monotony, thereby soaking one set of clothing but keeping my sleeping bag and the inside of my tent mostly dry.

Hitting the road, my demeanor was somewhere between "moderately irritated" and "grumpypants." The rain pelted my back and I stared down at the wet gravel, which cut an eerily straight line across the shrouded expanse of the Copper River Delta. I knew I only had two days in town, and by leaving my camping gear behind, I was ruining my chance to do the overnight tour I had planned. But I didn't care. I just wanted to get in a 20 or 30-mile ride so I could strip off my wet clothes, crawl into my damp sleeping bag, shiver away the chill and hope against hope that the sun came out tomorrow.

But as I pedaled, my core temperature began to heat back up and my outlook improved substantially. It's a little startling to realize how closely connected emotions are to simple physical states such as body temperature, hunger and fatigue. In a matter of an hour, I swung wildly from woe-is-me sourpuss to enthusiastic reveler of all things Cordova. The previously flat and dreary Copper River Delta suddenly became infused with a Great Plains mystique, and as I looked east toward the mountains, the green cliffs shimmered behind wisps of silver mist. At the time, I was still soaked to the bone and pedaling through drizzle; really, the only thing about my situation that had changed was that I was finally moving warm blood through my system. It's a strange revelation, to realize a person actually can't separate their body from their emotions, even though bodies are easily manipulated and emotions are supposedly more substantial connections to one's soul. It makes one inclined to take themselves a little less seriously.

And then, the sun did start to poke through the thick clouds. Actually, it was still raining on the Delta, but I had ridden far enough down the road to curve inland, toward the glacier-studded mountains. I didn't even really notice the miles going by, and then suddenly, 25 had passed, and then 35. And then I thought, well, might as well go all the way.

As I moved inland, the temperature fell and the snowpack grew substantially, from a few patches here and there to a couple feet of solid snow. It was interesting, because I hadn't gained much if any elevation, and it was strange to see so much snow so close to sea level in June. This is a region dominated by glaciers, where cold wind blows off the ice field year-round, driving back summer's surge even as green pops up regardless.

And then, after 44 miles of near-total isolation (I only saw three cars go by), I reached the Million-Dollar Bridge. It really is quite the spectacle, a massive steel structure, flanked by two glaciers, that rises several stories out of a wilderness no one uses anymore. It was constructed at the turn of the century, at a cost of $1.5 million back then, to support rail shipments from a Kennicott Copper Mine that operated until the '30s.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to build this thing, in the 1900s when Alaska was a frontier of a frontier, using 1900s technology, fighting extreme winter weather and the terror of calving glaciers, which I'm guessing used to be even closer to the bridge a century ago than they are now. I love stuff like this: things that stand alone as living museums to a very intriguing era - the era of Alaska's gold rush, the bicycle boom, burgeoning mountain exploration, and Shackleton.

The Childs Glacier remains thrillingly close to the bridge, close enough that every few minutes I heard a thunderous explosion of cracking ice and erupting water (I only heard the glacier calving; I never turned my head fast enough to witness it happening.)

The only sunlight in all of the wide region seemed to be centered over the river, slowly drawing away the dampness that had dogged me all morning.

I negated the sun's drying effects by venturing on the snow-covered route beyond the bridge. As far as I could tell it was still a road, just not maintained in any way, and I was curious to see how far it continued. I only made it another mile or so of postholing before I decided the snow was only becoming thicker, not fading out. Wherever this route goes, it must only be clear a couple months out of the year. The Million-Dollar Bridge partially collapsed in the '64 earthquake and the state actually fixed it up a few years ago. I can't imagine why they went to the trouble, nor do I understand why they bother maintaining the Copper River Highway (as the gravel road is called) and its many bridges across the Delta. I guess it's just one of those things.

As I crossed back over the Million-Dollar Bridge, I passed a U.S. Forest Service employee who was hauling sonar equipment out of the river. I must have really startled him, because he jolted up from his perch and asked, rather loudly, "Are you OK?"

"I'm great," I said. "It's such a beautiful evening."

He looked a little confused. "So you're just biking around here?"

"Pretty much," I said.

"OK," he said. "It's just that we don't see many people out here on bicycles this time of night."

"Oh, yeah; I got a late start today," I smiled. Then sun still lingered above the mountains and I had no idea what time it was. It was actually nearly 9 p.m.

"You're not going all the way to Cordova tonight, are you?" he asked.

"Not all the way ..." I said, trailing off. "My camp spot is a few miles down the road." (I left out the detail that it was more than 40 miles down the road.)

"Ok, well if you need anything, our camp is just over there," he said pointing to a bank across the bridge. "Anything at all - food, water, flashlight. Just stop by."

"Thanks," I said. "I'll be fine."

I did head down past the USFS camp to get a better look at the Childs Glacier. I sat on the bank of the rushing, silty Copper River and made a tuna sandwich for dinner, which I nibbled on slowly as I waited for more exciting glacier eruptions. It was 9 p.m. and I was in no hurry to get back to camp (although I was sincerely wishing I had just hauled my wet camping gear out here into the beautiful sunlight, so I could spend the whole night.) I had a headlight, red blinky, food and a water filter. I could pedal to stay warm. I had everything I needed.

The road back was quiet and reflective, with nothing but the whir of gravel and a light breeze to distract from the slow separation of my body and my emotions. I fall victim to being cranky in the rain, just like everyone else, but I also recognize that down the line it doesn't really matter. Through the peace of the darkless night and the slow buildup of fatigue, 90 miles all too easily slip away, the world rolls sunward, and life goes on.

I woke up late Thursday morning to more continuous rain, to start the grumpypants cycle anew. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with the day. I had already pedaled out to the end of the Copper River Highway and back, and while I wished I'd had more time to spend out there, I wasn't about to do the 86-mile round trip again. I decided to spend the day in Cordova. While I travel to visit towns, I always end up spending the majority of my time in places outside of town, and end up having no clue about restaurants and music venues and things to do in town. So I pedaled back to the small strip of buildings and walked down Main Street in my rain gear, visiting the museum, sampling local Chinese cuisine and wandering the harbor. The cold chill began to creep back in, and with it my resentment about my lack of real shelter. It was time to get back "out."

I pedaled to the end of town, parked my bike and started hiking up Mount Eyak. I reflected on my trip to Cordova, which I embarked on a whim in my mania to do as much as exploring as possible before I move away. It was too sporadic and last-minute to find a traveling companion, so I went alone. Traveling alone used to bother me, a lot, but it doesn't any more. In fact, I often prefer it for many of the same reasons I used to fear it - it forces me to be self-reliant, makes me accountable for all of my decisions and urges a quiet reflection that I'd never otherwise experience. Of all of my travels in the past few years, my solo travels still stand out the most in my memory. It began first time I did an overnight backpacking trip by myself outside Idaho Falls and realized that I could set up my own tent, and make tuna sandwiches for dinner without anyone complaining about the lack of a hot meal, swim naked in the lake and hike 24 miles from camp if I wanted to. That was only five years ago; these days, I see that the horizon is limitless.

The solo trip also gave me a lot of time to reflect on how I really feel about leaving Alaska. Years from now, when people ask me if I lived in Anchorage, I'm not sure I'd really be able to say I did. I spent an incredible two months traveling around Southcentral Alaska, but the drifter feeling never really wore off. After a while, drifting starts to wear a person down. In many ways, I've felt aimless and drifting for more than a year, ever since I boarded the ferry boat out of Juneau in April 2009. I traveled and rode my bike all summer. I never really settled back into Juneau when I returned. I never even unpacked my boxes in Anchorage. I am ready to anchor myself to a more solid purpose and a place. For this reason, among many others, I really am excited to make the move to Montana. After all, I was born in the Rocky Mountains. In many ways, I am going "home."

I clawed through crusty snow to the Mount Eyak saddle and halfway up the face, but stopped about 200 feet shy of the peak when I decided that the face was too exposed and the hard, icy condition of the snow too unforgiving to go any farther without an ax and crampons. Behind me, scattered rain showers drenched the inlet and its surrounding islands, cast in soft pink light by the setting sun beyond. I caught my first glimpse of the Gulf of Alaska and breathed out a sad sigh for all of the beautiful and wild places I would never see. There are too many to comprehend, and their inaccessibility reminds me that I am only a subatomic speck perched on the face of a yawning universe. I thought about Cordova, with its green cliffs and glaciers, sweeping mudflats and mountains towering over the sea. It was perhaps the most beautiful place of all; but they all are, in their exhilerating moments of discovery. "I could live here someday," I thought. "When I am done riding my bicycle and climbing mountains, and I am ready to settle in a small cabin on the edge of the sea and wait for the universe to come to me."

I came down from the mountain with only about five hours to kill before I had to pack up and catch the ferry out of town. I've become such a night owl that I was just going to stay up and perhaps explore a few more side roads, but then I stumbled across the most awesome camp spot on the muskeg above town. I set up my tent on the soft tundra, where I read, dozed on and off, and occasionally got up to gaze over the panoramic view. The mountains cut dark shadows behind me and the calm inlet shimmered below, so still in the morning that departing fishing boats left white trails that were miles long. At 1 a.m. the sky had almost completely cleared, ever so briefly, and it occurred to me that if it were dark, I'd be able to see stars.

The dark will come again, soon enough - first to me, as I venture south, and eventually to the rest of Alaska. In five short years this state has trickled into my heart; for as much as I've seen and as little as I've experienced, I love every part of it deeply. I dream of a future that's impossible to establish - one that includes a house on the hill in Fairbanks, a winter camp outside Nikolai, a yurt above Homer, apartments in Juneau and Anchorage, a fishing shack in Cordova and regular trekking trips to the Arctic. I want to live everywhere but I know what I carry in my heart are memories, not physical places. I can bring these memories with me wherever I go. I tell myself they will carry me through my time away from the North. I tell myself it won't be forever.

As the ferry churned west, I bid a silent goodbye to Mount Eyak and the rest of Cordova. I knew there was a good chance I would never return to the beautiful little fishing village perched on the edge of the Prince William Sound, and that was OK. Life ebbs and flows like the tide; what it leaves behind is what I keep.

2010 Tour Divide

While I was interviewing with the good folks at Adventure Cycling, one person expressed his concern that I seemed to be very mountain-bike-centric, while the bulk of their organization was dedicated to road touring. I pointed out that my roots in bicycle travel - and, indeed, my roots in cycling itself - were firmly planted in the pavement and panniers culture of the open road. And today, while sorting through a box of old photos in my latest effort to purge, I found picture proof: Standing on the banks of the Colorado River near Moab in September 2002, just before embarking on a 600-mile loop tour of Southeastern Utah and Southwestern Colorado. I love finding (and making fun of) old photos of myself. For starters, I have no recollection of owning that jersey and can't fathom where I obtained it, but I do hope it went straight to the trash can after that trip. Secondly - zip-off pants? Really? Thirdly, I bought that Bell handlebar bag at K-mart and I still own and use it. Fourthly, four panniers and a tent and tarp strapped to the rear rack? Who needs all that stuff? Fifthly, that was the first time I had ever traveled fully loaded and I still vividly recall the 35 miles we pedaled out of Moab as one of the toughest days of riding in my entire life. Seriously. It's still right at the top in terms of end-of-day shock and fatigue. But the fact that I managed to rally for the next 565 miles proved to me that determination runs deeper than physical strength.

On that note, I'm taking off for a short tour of my own on Tuesday, but I wanted to write a quick post about this year's Tour Divide before I go. This year's race begins Friday morning in Banff, Alberta. Forty-eight people have committed to starting this year, including four women. I'm sure at least one of those women is going to absolutely shatter my TD race record, but it was fun to hold it for a year. Many people have asked me if I feel envious or sad that I won't be lining up for the Tour Divide this year. My answer is a genuine "no." Even before I started planning this huge move and job change, my head has been far away from the needed discipline and desire it takes to embark on a long, solo grind across the Divide. I have really enjoyed my unstructured time to have random adventures, and not having a big event on the horizon gives me the freedom to do what I want - go for a hike or join a group for a leisurely ride, rather than put in hours and hours of necessary training miles. I'm not saying I'm never going to train for anything epic again, and I'm not saying I'd never ride the Divide again. It remains one of the most incredible, self-affirming experiences of my life. But for now I'm content to do my small stuff and enjoy an armchair-adventurer stance in this year's race.

Race updates will be posted starting Friday at www.tourdivide.org. If you're interested in reading more about the experience of riding the Divide, Eric Bruntjen put together a collection of Tour Divide stories, interviews, poems and photos in a book called the Cordillera. I actually have not had a chance to order it yet, but I contributed a chapter for the project (full disclosure: it's an excerpt of a book I am working on.) The proceeds from the Cordillera actually go to Adventure Cycling, which I'm all for, since I'm going to be joining the payroll soon.

And just in case AC is still worried about my dedication to the organization, look what else I found:


It's a vintage Adventure Cycling map, from my Salt Lake City-to-Syracuse, N.Y. tour in fall 2003. We actually only followed a small portion of this particular map, dropping into the route about 100 miles west of the Missouri-Illinois border. Finally joining Adventure Cycling's TransAmerica route basically saved me from calling it quits on the cross-country tour, because in northern and central Missouri we found nothing but narrow roads, nonexistent shoulders, heavy traffic and belligerent drivers - i.e. "Misery." The TransAmerica route took us to our saving grace of farm roads and bicycle-friendly towns. I finished that trip happy and hooked on bicycle touring. Now I have a whole set of Great Divide Mountain Bike Route maps still caked in mud. Adventure Cycling really does do good work.

Sub-48 hours on the Kenai Peninsula

I am officially in manic mode. Never mind that I've dangled near the precipice of exhaustion since my second day of six hours of mountain biking in the Fairbanks heat ... and that was before the 140-mile gravel grinder and before staying up until 2 a.m. every night and before the big hikes and rides and runs and whatever else I did last week. It's all blurring together now. One churning mass of summer sickness. No matter! There will be time to rest when that ferry and/or plane turns south. Time is finite and demands the bender to end all Alaska benders.

My friend Sharon has a cabin off the Seward Highway, so on Friday a small group of friends met up for an overnight mountain bike trip. I didn't have time to shop for groceries beforehand so I frantically scooped up piles of calories at the gas station on the way out of town, the way I used to when I was riding the Great Divide. I checked the clock as we left Anchorage city limits: 6:11 p.m.

We settled in at the cabin and then took off for an evening ride on Johnson Pass, whose trailhead is only a couple of miles from Sharon's cabin. My mountain bike is still in the shop, so I had to ride my 37-pound Pugsley. It was a real grunt to keep up with three fresh, fit, experienced mountain bikers with a fat bike on singletrack, coping with sluggish steering, wide tire clearance, jarring descents and general engine fatigue. I think we were all expecting a short "night" ride, because we thought we would hit impassable snow lower on the trail. But 10 miles and two hours later, we had only seen short patches of snow. Instead, the low-light twilight was chasing us. Even though we had nearly reached Johnson Pass at that point, we opted to turn around before dark came. We returned to the cabin just before midnight.

The next morning we were up at 7:30 a.m. and making giant blueberry pancakes and copious cups of coffee in preparation for the Saturday fun, Resurrection Pass. Again, we didn't know how far the snow or weather would let us climb.

By some stroke of amazing luck, a small patch of sunlight seemed to follow us up the pass. The mountains were encompassed by blurry streaks of rain showers, and we later learned that it rained the entire day at Sharon's cabin, but we managed to creep through a sunlit window with hardly a sprinkle for more than five hours.

Two of the riders split off early and Sharon and I continued on to see how far we could make it up the pass. We talked semi-jokingly about pushing our bikes over the pass and descending into Hope, where we would have ~65 miles of road riding to get back to the car, or we could "shortcut" by just climbing back over the pass for a 90-mile singletrack ride. And the best thing about Sharon is, if we had actually brought enough food for such an endeavor, we probably would have talked each other into it. I love Sharon. She's just like me, only faster and crazier.

There really was still a fair amount of snow at the pass, though. We had already committed to at least making it to the high point, so we pushed our bikes through at least a dozen large snowfields. (I was really hoping Pugsley could take on the June slush, since that would at least give me some reward for powering the beast up there. But, yeah, not so much. Big wheels = slower pushing.)

Pugsley poses at the trail junction just below the pass. There was lots and lots of snow up high. Probably a good thing we didn't psych ourselves up about dropping into Hope, because we would have spent half the day pushing our bikes.

Dropping back into Swan Lake was more scenic, anyway. My shoulders and back felt pretty wrecked during the last few miles to the trailhead. I am truly not a fan of rigid bikes on rooty singletrack. Something has to absorb all the shock, and eventually even the tiniest bumps shot electric waves into my upper body. We ended with about 38 miles and ~3,500 feet vertical.

We returned to Sharon's cabin in the pouring rain. I took a brief respite to shower, drink tea and eat chips and salsa, and then I was off again, driving toward Seward. I planned to camp in the Kenai Fjords National Park, so I went for an evening stroll to Exit Glacier. I was hoping to hike to Harding Icefield the following day, so I decided to walk a little ways up the trail to see what the snow conditions were like.

But it was such a beautiful evening, I just kept climbing. It was one of those things where I was wearing jeans and a cotton hoodie, a cheap pair of running shoes and carrying only a bottle of water (I had my small water pack with me, but the bladder was empty. I was simply using it to carry my bear spray.) And suddenly I was traversing up a snowfield, climbing a few thousand vertical feet, and still the siren call of the unknown horizon drove me forward.

It was so peaceful up there, standing on the shoreline of an ocean of ice, bathed in the soft glow of sunset and eternally silent. There wasn't even a breeze, no flowing water, no birds ... a place where it is always winter. I reached a point where the terrain along the side of the glacier began to level out, and in the flat light it was difficult to tell whether the route forward was the snow-covered mountain ridge I had been following, or the icefield itself. I didn't want to wander out on the icefield and its threat of crevasses. Plus, it was 10 p.m. and, while it never gets completely dark here, I also wasn't carrying a headlamp or important warm clothing or, well, anything. I admit it was a reckless way to hike. I wasn't particularly proud of myself for poor planning (Really, I was the worst kind of national park cautionary tale cliche, wandering around in the snow in wet shoes and jeans.) But I also knew what I was doing, and I knew the snow conditions were awesome, and I knew I could be back in less than an hour. I sat down on my butt and ripped down the slush, a controlled fall punctuated with uncontrolled laughter.

Since I had already hiked Harding Icefield on Saturday night, I had to think of something to do with my Sunday morning. I drove into Seward and had a nice leisurely breakfast at a coffee shop, then came up with the idea to climb up Mount Marathon before I left town. Mount Marathon is the site of a famous Alaska race held every July 4. The race gains something like 3,500 feet in a mile and a half. The craziest racers can go up and down the mountain in less than an hour. I admit in a moment of madness I signed up for the Mount Marathon race lottery this year, but my name wasn't picked. I've heard the race route is brutal beyond belief, so I decided to hike around the back way, i.e. the 5-mile scenic route, which wraps around the mountain and climbs into the Mount Marathon bowl. The best part about the long way is that nobody takes it. The route is still mostly snow-covered, and I didn't see another person until I reached the peak, which was quite crowded.

The weather, which had been rainy all morning, really started to clear as I climbed. It's almost as though Alaska knows I am leaving, and so it is putting on its best face as a fond farewell.

I decided to take the race route back into Seward. And it really is as brutal as everyone says - a horrible, leg-sucking scree field that plummets off the face of the Earth. People run down this? All I will say is there is one lottery I am truly glad I didn't win. Mountain running races? What was I thinking?

The afternoon was blue-sky gorgeous by the time I drove back over Turnagain Pass and around the Arm, crossing into Anchorage city limits at 5:34 p.m. for a sub-48-hour trip. What a great two days on the Kenai Peninsula! Did I mention I'm exhausted? Better eat a couple of peanut butter cups so I can rally for tomorrow. I still haven't decided what to do. If I can get out of bed, though, I'm sure it will be great.