Final trip of the year

We exceeded our expectations for our Fairbanks holiday training week by squeezing in a third overnight trip, this time into the Colorado Creek Cabin on the western edge of the White Mountains Recreation Area. Our friends warned us that this trail was "boring" compared to other routes in the Whites, but it was new ground for us, and was also one of the only cabins available at the last minute during the New Year's weekend. So we booked Sunday night and set out for our solo trip, just the two of us. We're both pretty good at the winter travel thing, but relatively new to cabin living — gathering deadfall, chopping wood, stoking a wood stove, melting snow, cooking a real dinner that isn't just candy bars. I was honestly more nervous about managing this aspect than I was about the fourteen-mile trek in. 

The temperature at the low-lying trailhead, milepost 57 of the Elliot Highway, was a balmy 5 degrees above zero. Someone asked me about this the other day, and yes, I am still referring to the Fahrenheit temperature scale (So -15˚C). It's interesting when you arrive to the cold shock of 39 below zero (-39.4˚C) and freeze your toes during a drive to the store — the internal heat gauge almost instantly resets and suddenly anything warmer kinda feels "warm," whether you're from Interior Alaska or coastal California. We were so toasty that I set out with my minimal layers of a shell coat, single fleece, thin hat, no gloves and the pole pogies pushed down to allow me to vent heat through my bare hands. 

The Colorado Creek Trail gradually climbed through a wide valley that had burned somewhat recently — there was a lot of deadfall and nothing green poking out of the minimal snow cover. The trail had likely been broken only a few days prior and was still quite soft. Travel was slow and tough despite the lack of steep hills.

I am getting better at the sled dragging, though — stronger. I actually wish I could drag a sled as a workout more often. I enjoy the mindless but hard effort, it makes me strong like bull, and it actually accomplishes a useful goal of hauling necessary supplies into incredible winter landscapes. And even though I would likely become an even slower runner than I already am, well ... Alaska doesn't much care if I can run fast or not. No one can outrun a stampeding moose or a grizzly bear.

After about ten miles of slogging through the burned forest, the trail climbed up onto a ridge with our first views of the limestone peaks of the Whites. It was beautiful up there, the kind of spot where I really would have loved to have the time, strength, and opportunity to keep traveling deeper into the mountains. This high valley was also a funnel for a powerful wind, blasting at our side. Single digits with no wind is like summer. Single digits with harsh windchill had my underdressed body well chilled within minutes. It was one of those situations where we were less than two miles from the cabin and I had naively buried my best wind layers in my sled. I had to weigh my reluctance not to stop with how cold I'd become before I reached the cabin if I didn't put on a balaclava and gloves. I waited until I couldn't feel my nose and my numb hands were no longer effective at thawing my cheeks, and stopped to dig around in my sled. Then I took the time to document the moment of frigidity. This photo sure looks cold to me.

Colorado Creek Cabin — our oasis in the valley of The Wind. We started a fire with the meager icy branches left behind by the last cabin user, along with a bunch of Beat's Esbit cubes. Beat set to the task of gathering and chopping wood while I started working on making water. The first batch of snow I gathered had floaties, so I pressed deeper into the woods to look for a clean patch. While I was fiddling with the pot on the stove, I noticed a strange burnt-hair kind of smell, followed by a snowstorm of white feathers. Ahhh! I'd brushed the sleeve of Beat's big down coat against the stove pipe and burned a hole into the sleeve. It happened so fast it was surreal. I took the coat off and darted around the cabin, trying to collect the feathers before they fell on the ground. This was the coat that got Beat through the Iditarod last year, and although he's acquired an even better one since then, I was shaken and upset by what I'd done to this much-appreciated piece of gear. Beat took it well and said he could fix the coat (and in fact, already has), but the mishap did cast a dark cloud over my cabin experience. Cabin living — sometimes it seems easier to just not stop.

The rest of the night went smoothly, though. I made better water and fried up sausage and couscous for dinner, followed by hot chocolate and dulce de leche ice cream for dessert. I wrote a rambling entry in the cabin log about the hilarity of two Californians melting snow and chopping wood in the Alaskan backcountry. Although temperatures were still in the single digits when we arrived, the south wind carried some amazingly warm air; temperatures rose as high as 27 degrees (-2.7˚C) and quickly dropped back to single digits whenever the wind calmed for more than a few minutes. Crazy weather. After ice cream, we went out for a moonlight stroll on the ridge, postholing in big drifts as we marched toward a high point that always seemed right there on the horizon, but the open slope only continued to climb.

The next day was New Year's Eve, and our last full day in Fairbanks, a reality that bummed me out a little. I wasn't ready to leave just yet, not ready at all. In fact, the idea of returning to full yellow sunshine, dry dirt, green redwood forests, and 60-degree temperatures made me feel melancholy. I enjoy my life in California, a lot. Everything is close by if I want it, including mountains and snow. But there's something about Alaska, every part of Alaska, that needles its way into my soul, every time.

We descended back into the burned forest. I didn't even realize how much elevation we'd gained the day before; the trail out was almost runnable, and we moved well. Although I was sad about leaving, I savored the hike out. Winter sled dragging is just my kind of thing. Tough enough to keep me on the edge, but mindless enough to let me turn inward, consistently beautiful, and functional in its own way. Four hours and fourteen miles is just enough effort to leave me satisfactorily knackered, which is perfect because that's all the daylight we have to work with in Fairbanks' December.

Beat was able to squeeze in more gear testing, trying out his lightweight ice creepers on frozen overflow.

The final sunset of the year gave a fitting sendoff for a great trip. Happy New Year. 

2012 in photos

Wow, the end of 2012 snuck up from behind, didn't it? The annual "year in photos" post is one of my favorite to make, but this one is a bit more thrown together than years past. Still, it is fun to view the fading year through the lens of a single favorite photo for every month. I have a lot of favorites from this year, so it was hard to pick only one — especially when it meant choosing between different amazing places that I was fortunate to visit during this full year.

 I took the above photo in early January near Shell Lake, Alaska. Beat and I were killing time while waiting for a plane to pick us up, and went for a walk across the lake. It was 25 below zero, and an ice fog had just lifted off the lake an hour before the sun set. The air was so clear that we could see individual flakes of frost sparkling in the distance.

February: Two cyclists push their bikes up the Yentna River on the second day of the Iditarod Trail Invitational. My pilot friend Dan Bailey and I flew over the river to look for Beat and cheer for racers as they slogged their way through fresh snow on the ice. Although it's impossible to convey the scale of the Iditarod Trail with any photo, I like the effect of this image — tiny snow bikers, a thin white line, and a wild expanse.

March: A winter trail cuts through a burn in the foothills of the White Mountains north of Fairbanks, Alaska. I love stark black-and-white effects in real life, which is one of the reasons I'm so drawn to these winter landscapes.

April: Evening ride with Leah above Rodeo Valley, in the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco. Leah calls the Headlands "magical" and I'm inclined to agree. For a place so close to civilization, these hills offer a quiet respite to go along with punishing climbs and ripping descents.

May: Beat runs along a trail in Point Reyes, California. Life in California has renewed my appreciation of the Pacific Coast. The sparkling ocean instills the same kind of awe I feel when I look at big mountains.

June: Leah rides down Usal Road during our Lost Coast bike tour in northern California. What a great tour this was. In five days, we traveled some of the most remote and stunning terrain that coastal California has to offer.

July: Friends stand on the summit of Peak One in the Tenmile Range outside Frisco, Colorado. Our friend Daniel lives in an enviable location where one can walk out of his front door and in less than two hours climb to this spot, where we watched the sunset from nearly 13,000 feet.

August: My favorite photo of the year — the formidable Mont Blanc, as seen from 12,600 feet at the Aiguille di Midi station on the border of Italy and France. The day before the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, my friends Martina, Sandra, and I spent the whole day riding gondolas and trains to various high points around Chamonix. At the time, I still believed I'd was going to circumnavigate Mont Blanc during UTMB, and took several minutes to stand outside in the subfreezing cold and soak in the scale of this incredible mountain.

September: A couple of weeks after the last photo was taken, while Beat was racing the Tor des Geants in Italy, I embarked on a string of incredible day hikes above the Aosta Valley. I took this photo from the original UTMB route — the Tour du Mont Blanc trail — outside Courmayeur. I've fallen in love with the Alps, in a way that might get me into a lot of trouble in 2013 (more on that soon.) But for now, I can look at photos from innocent times and feel happy.

October: This month was a difficult one to narrow down because it was full of beautiful adventures, but I decided on a photo of the Utah desert. I shot this photo during a bike ride on the Kokopelli Trail above Onion Creek Valley, north of Moab, Utah. I managed to time my autumn travels perfectly with fall colors — late September in Northern Utah, October in the high desert, and November in Southwestern Utah.

November: Beat scouts a route up Mount Timpanogos. I shot this photo during an outing with him and my dad that was supposed to be a snowshoe hike, but turned into a hard day of hiking mixed with light mountaineering. We failed to gain the high meadow we were aiming for, but had a lot of fun trying. (Or, I should clarify — I had a lot of fun trying. Few people love a good slog as much as I do.)

December: Here's a photo I took today, December 29, in Fairbanks, Alaska. Originally I picked a photo of a mist-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge, but I am a sucker for Alaska winter shots. I've been able to embark on some beautiful snow bike rides while visiting Fairbanks, and today's ride took me onto a fun loop of narrow winter trails in the Goldstream Valley. After winding through the trees, I came out into a frozen swamp where I caught my first glimpse of the hills, painted bright red by the glow of the low-angle sunlight. It was a stunning contrast. I'll post more snow-biking photos soon. Until then, Happy New Year. Thanks for reading.

Photo posts from years past:
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010 part one, part two
2011

Tolovana Hot Springs

While enjoying Christmas Eve pizza with friends here in Fairbanks, our friend Ed told us about one of his favorite holiday destinations, Tolovana Hot Springs. The backcountry springs are a challenge to access — 45 miles northwest of Fairbanks as a raven flies, and for humans, eleven miles of rugged trail after a two-hour drive to a remote point on the Elliot Highway. Those who make the beautiful journey up and over Tolovana Hot Springs Dome are rewarded with board game-stocked cabins and access to natural springs that run hot even when it's 30 below.

It sounded heavenly, but Ed offered a caveat — his winter trips are almost never without mishaps. Usually the mishaps involved difficulties starting cars after the long ski out when the wind was fierce and temperatures were minus a lot. Once, somebody brought a pot of moose chili that was not properly food handled, resulting in a "vomitorium" full of food-poisoned people. One guy was so sick that his friend had to tow him out in a sled, on foot. Still, Ed lamented that he couldn't visit Tolovana this winter because was spending New Year's in Juneau. But as we considered it further, a few of us wondered — why not plan a last-minute Boxing Day trip?

We gathered a group of five — me, Beat, Ed, Tom, and Trevor — a former Fairbanks resident who is visiting from Washington, D.C. — and reserved one of the cabins for Wednesday night. Ed promised to make a special dinner and I was excited to see what it felt like to sit in a hot spring in potentially sub-zero weather. I secretly hoped it would be minus 20 or lower so I could freeze my wet hair into a white cone hat, but then I remembered Ed's stories about frigid trailheads and frostbite, and took heart in a forecast that called for "mild" temperatures near zero.

The trail into Tolovana Hot Springs is interesting, in that it draws the straightest line it can to the closest point on the highway. This would be ideal for human-powdered travel, were it not for the 2,120-foot mountain in the way. The result is strenuous climbs and technical descents for skiers, but I thought the hike in would still be relatively mellow. And hey, we get to climb a mountain.

Again, I underestimate sled dragging. We enjoyed a two-mile fast run from the high ridge where the trailhead is located to a low-lying valley. At the bottom, I noticed all kinds of nagging pains from our White Mountains sled-dragging trip, further solidifying my conviction that to be in shape for winter-specific activities, you actually have to engage in winter-specific activities. Beat is much better at adapting to new physical strains than I am, but I struggled to pull with my tight hamstrings and sore lower back.

Since we were in the back of our group, Beat didn't want to leave me behind, but it was clear he was exasperated by how slow I was moving. In this photo, you can see I am about to get in trouble because I am wasting time by pulling my camera out to take a photo. The problem was that Beat would become too chilled when he stopped to wait for me, and I was being honest when I told him I was working as hard as I could.

After we gained the ridge at a saddle appropriately named Windy Gap, we entered a mile-long section of deep, drifted snow. Of course the skiers just glided over this stretch, but we were bogged down by punchy powder that ranged from shin- to thigh-deep. To make things worse, I was dragging the sled that sits atop two skis, so it tipped over whenever it went even slightly off-camber. Every time it flopped on its side, I had to detach my harness, grab the metal frame with my bare hands (since I use trekking pole pogies, I don't usually wear gloves), and hoist the 35-pound sled back onto its skis. After five or six repetitions of this, I finally gave up on putting the harness back on, and just lifted and carried the sled or dragged the metal pole with my hands, still bare, because I was frustrated and too hurried to stop and put on gloves.

The battle with my sled through thigh-deep drifts was a fully anaerobic effort. I gasped and sputtered and pulled my balaclava down to take deep breaths of the frigid air. Whenever I force my body into intense efforts in cold temperatures, an instinctual kind of fear creeps in — subconscious, most likely, but acute to the point of mild panic ... "You're sweating too much! You're burning all of your matches! You'll never make it out alive!" The logical side of my brain fought this overreaching fear, because I had no choice but to torch energy reserves just to get my sled over some of the drifts. Still, the effort finally pushed me to the point where I had to kneel in the snow, convinced I was about to vomit.

It was a mighty struggle that I endured alone, mainly because I was the weakest member of the group. Beat didn't have nearly as hard of a time getting his sled up the mountain. When I finally reached the top of the dome, I expected him to be angry with me for dawdling, even though I had been maxed out for thirty minutes. Instead, I found him happy with his down coat on, watching the moon rise over the mountains.

Photo by Beat Jegerlehner

Beat took a fantastic shot of the moon rising over the trail while he waited for me.


I was shattered by the time I reached the cabin. Beat had been able to run most of the way down the dome, but I could only manage a half-hearted shuffle. I couldn't even join the guys for the first soak of the evening because I had to huddle next to the stove, drink hot cocoa, and shiver my way to recovery. My body temperature had dropped during the descent, because after I burned up my energy reserves on the climb, my body stopped making heat. I knew I needed to eat a candy bar to stop this from happening, but I was still nauseated from the hard effort. If I hadn't been so close to a cabin, I would have stopped and put on my down coat and dealt with it right away. Instead, I just slogged along until I reached the cabin, and by then I was deeply bonked, and thus deeply cold. Really, for an eleven-mile pleasure trip it's embarrassing, but the hike into Tolovana Hot Springs turned out to be quite the epic for me ... and only me.

The guys came back to the cabin about an hour later, and by then I was a little less shivery and more coherent. Ed's special dinner was three frozen pizzas that everyone was quite excited about. These cabins are privately owned and equipped with a source of electricity, so there's a cooking stove and LED lamps. It's quite the luxury. While the group played Scrabble, there was a cooking mishap and two of the pizzas ended up on the floor. We were in the middle of nowhere so we ate them anyway, minus most of the toppings, while joking about rat feces and "floor-tossed pizza." Still, based on Ed's stories, if that's the biggest mishap of the trip, I'll take it.

Ed salvaged the pizza disaster with two dozen fresh-baked cookies and a pint of ice cream. All was forgotten amid the satisfying sugar rush.

We went out after dinner for a moonlight soak, with the temperature at a balmy 6 degrees above zero. So not cold enough to freeze my hair standing up, but still icy. The springs were blissfully warm — funneled into three tubs set on platforms above a gurgling creek. On a dare, Beat, Ed and Tom ran naked and barefoot from the middle tub to the lower tub, a trip of at least a hundred meters on packed snow. The nearly full moon was so bright that the snow-covered mountainside looked like a bluer shade of day. It was heavenly.

The hike out was much easier, at least for me, even though that direction had about a thousand more feet of elevation gain. The trail had been smoothed over by two snowmobiles, and the worst drifts were on the downslope, where gravity made off-trail travel more manageable. At the summit, I stopped to help a guy whose snowmobile broke down the night before. He was traveling to one of the cabins with his wife and two children, towing a big sled, when the clutch gave out near the summit. The poor guy had to help his family walk four miles into the cabin, and then hike out the next day by himself to get assistance. I was able to grab a few bars on my cell phone at the top of the dome, so I waited to see if he could make a call, but it didn't go through. There is something to be said about the self-reliance of human-powered travel. Machines can become big liabilities when they break down.

Of course, I was plenty grateful when I arrived at the trailhead to find the truck had fired up, no problem. It was a great trip without major mishap, a Boxing Day miracle.