Back from Denali Highway

The awesome women of Pecha Kucha Mountain: Jenn Roberts, Sierra Van Der Meer, Jill Homer, and Jill Missal

Wow, the Denali Highway is an incredible place to visit in the winter. And, depending on how you choose to travel, incredibly strenuous.

I've been struggling with an extended bout of insomnia since I arrived in Alaska, and I'm nearing that point where everything becomes dreamlike and confusion abounds. In the midst of this I can't string my thoughts together effectively, so I won't attempt to write much about our Denali Highway tour quite yet. But yes, it was incredible. We rode lots. And by lots, I mean lots of hours.

Our 102 miles in three days amounted to almost 24 hours in (or near) the saddle. Right now I feel like I ran that far in that amount of time, on snow. The snowmachine trail was recently groomed over deep snowpack and only lightly traveled. The surface was soft and punchy; I had one of the heavier bikes and I occasionally ground the rear wheel into the snow until it stopped moving altogether. Pedaling was hard work; a very slogtastic snow bike tour. But everyone took the conditions in stride and it helped that the weather was ideal and the scenery was just ... incredible. We lost ourselves in a white expanse, set out at sunrise when the thermometer read 11 below zero, watched a herd of caribou run across our path, won a standoff with two moose, enjoyed the bemused but generous hospitality of the MacClaren River Lodge, gazed up at a seemingly endless horizon of huge mountains, all in fantastic company. In a string of inside jokes we've come to call our winter gathering the "Pecha Kucha Mountain Summit." Next year Sierra, Jenn, and Jill want to relocate to a sunny and warm beach. I told them I already live near sunny and warm beaches, but I will go just to hang out with them.

There's a great trip report lurking beneath the insomnia haze. But for now, I wanted to post an update on Beat, who is still trudging along the Iditarod Trail. While I was out of cell phone range on the eastern side of the Alaska Range, Beat checked in and out of McGrath and continued into the deeper wilderness of the route. His first messages out of McGrath were punctuated with apprehension. It's no longer about physical fatigue or pain at this point - the overwhelming challenge is the unknown, along with fear and loneliness. Happily Beat has found a companion in an Italian named Marco Berni, and the two have been traveling together. As of Wednesday night they were pushing toward a shelter about 14 miles outside the ghost town of Iditarod, which is mile 432.

Unseasonably warm weather continues to present unique challenges for ITI racers. Today temperatures climbed into the 40s and the snow was so soft and sticky that it clumped on the bottom of Beat's snowshoes and sled. He said just out of McGrath, he and Marco were keeping a steady 3.5 mph pace, but that's dropped to about 2 mph. Marco is also contending with severe blisters, but Beat said his feet have held up surprisingly well despite the wet conditions. The trail is not well-packed and they are running into frequent drifts. Weather is supposed to deteriorate in the region, with a storm system bringing freezing rain, high winds, and blizzard conditions. He and Marco are pressing late toward a shelter cabin tonight and may take a shorter day tomorrow depending on weather. Bivying in freezing rain is worse than 40 below.

Beat also saw the first Iditarod Dog Sled Race mushers go through, and actually stopped for a bit to chat with Lance Mackey - who at the time was in the lead - when Mackey stopped to attend to his dogs. The dogs suffer in the warm weather as well; they're built for cold and suffer in the "heat" the same way humans do when it's 100 degrees. Beat said he felt some solidarity with the dogs.

I'm headed to Fairbanks this weekend for the Chena River to Ridge 25-mile race. Hopefully I can snag some better sleep soon or I might lapse into nonfunctionality. I think my insomnia is partly caused by the continuous changes of traveling, and also by some mild anxiety about Beat's expedition. I worry about his physical safety, but I also wonder what the world will look like to him when this is all over. Even after a simple and comfortable three-day tour, when I close my eyes, this is what I see:

Headed north

On Friday I spent more than four hours arranging Beat's first two post office drop bags beyond McGrath, along with $287 on mostly junk food (some of this food was for me.) It was a chore, but a great sign, because it means he's becoming more committed to the full trek to Nome. I received a call from him at 10 a.m. Saturday morning from Salmon Camp, which is about 12 miles outside of Nikolai. He said he was enjoying a beautiful morning, with a bright pink sunrise over Denali, no wind, and temperatures near 10 below on the Farewell Burn. However, he's feeling extra sleepy this morning and said the trail has been rough across the burn, with snowmachine moguls and bumps. The tendon pain in his toe has started to level off, but now his hip flexor is giving him grief. "It's like my body keeps trying new things to see what will get me to stop," he said. But he sounds as determined as ever, assuring me that McGrath "is just a checkpoint." I expect he'll reach that milestone checkpoint by Sunday evening.

I was meeting with friends for dinner in the evening but couldn't resist a quick jaunt up Lazy Mountain on the way to their house in Butte. Lazy Mountain is a stairmaster of a hike, gaining 3,200 feet in about two miles. The trail is generally packed by other hikers, but the top 3/4 mile is always wind-drifted and results in lots of postholing without snowshoes, which I can't wear because the lower trail is too slick (I wore microspikes. With these icy conditions I'd even prefer crampons.) So it's a grunt, but I know I can do the out-and-back to the 3,700-foot peak in two hours on a strong day, which I was having. It snowed on and off all day and the mountain was enveloped in fog, but I caught about a ten-minute window when the clouds cleared out enough to reveal sunshine. It was a great hike — colder than it looks from the photo, but I was working so hard on the climb I couldn't wear more layers despite the icy breeze.

In about two hours I'm leaving Palmer to head north for a three-day bike tour on the Denali Highway. I'm traveling with the same three women who I toured the Dawson Trail with last winter, so I'm excited. Girls, snow bikes, and backcountry cabin/lodge debauchery is always a recipe for good times. Our trip runs Sunday to Tuesday and I expect I won't have any online access or even much cell phone access during that time. I'm bummed I might miss Beat's arrival in McGrath, but I'm hoping he'll be well on his way toward Nome by the time I return. Updates will be sparse during this time, but I'll be tracking my own trip so you can follow our progress at this link:

Jill's SPOT page

If I get out any mid-trip text updates at all it will likely be to my Twitter account.

Beat will be in a black hole of communication himself, but there may be snippets of information about his whereabouts at these links:

ITI Facebook updates

Nome Leaderboard

Leaderboard graphic

Mush in the slush

Quick update for tonight as I need to start going to bed earlier than 2 a.m. But I received a call from Beat at 5 p.m. just as he was arriving in Rohn, near mile 210. He left Puntilla Lake at 3:30 Thursday morning, meaning it took him only 14 hours to travel over Rainy Pass. This narrow pass through the Alaska Range is notorious for bad weather — deep cold, ground blizzards, foggy whiteouts, high winds and windchills lower than 70 below. The trail is usually drifted in above treeline, and the Dalzell Gorge below is full of treacherous creek crossings and other spooky obstacles. I had been anxiously anticipating Beat's report from the pass.

"It was 40 (explicative deleted) degrees up there," he said with a bemused growl. "I was down to my shirt. I had to use chapstick for sunscreen. The trail was kinda soft but mostly it was well-packed."

This year's ITI is exceptional for many reasons, but one of them is that not a single racer has scratched yet, now nearly five days into the race. "It's about half as hard as last year," Beat said of the effort, but then caught himself in his own lie. "Actually, it's just as hard because everything hurts as bad." When I offered that he was still more than a day ahead of his 2012 pace despite his Nome rest schedule, he said, "It's hard. But it would be easier if it weren't so damn hot. I'm sweating like crazy."

He said his feet hurt but there are no issues that aren't manageable. He planned to set out toward Nikolai in the early morning hours. I expect he won't reach that checkpoint until Saturday evening.

In other news, I went on my first-ever dog sled ride today. My friend Andrea has four Alaskan huskies that have been retired from competitive teams. Her lead dog, Cedar, has run to Nome three times. The other dogs are Ash ("they're both from the tree litter"), Chum ("the salmon litter"), and Volcano ("the natural disaster litter.") Andrea is a veterinarian who loves animals, so she mainly just keeps them as outdoor pets, but they do go out for the occasional jaunt on local trails.

Since four dogs can't pull two full-sized people in a sled very far, Andrea set me up to go out alone. She showed me how to set a snow hook (sort of like a dog anchor), demonstrated how to use the brake, and told me how, under no circumstances, was I to let go of the sled if I fell off during the run. The dogs would keep running, and I'd have to chase after them. She showed me the basic commands and sent me off on a loop that I hoped the dogs understood, because I didn't have a clue where we were going.

Riding a sled wasn't entirely like I expected it to be. The frame was quite flexible and the runners moved independently. I felt like I was skiing — which is not a comfortable movement for me — but I held on for dear life and leaned into the turns. I shyly called out commands that I think were largely ignored, but the dogs went the right way anyway. Whenever we ran by another dog yard, the dogs sped up to show off for their barking friends. My humorous moment happened when Volcano got her front leg tangled up in the line. I stomped on the brake but I honestly forgot the command for stop. I kept yelling "Haw! Haw!" as the lead dogs glanced back at me with confused demeanors. ("Haw" means "turn left.") I managed to set the hook and untangle Volcano's leg. When I returned to the dog yard, I dragged the brake to a slow halt. Once we were no longer moving, I asked Andrea, "I can't remember, what was the command for stop?"

"Um, whoa," she said, looking at me like I was drunk.

"Oh, yeah, whoa. That makes sense."

Later in the afternoon I loaded up my Fatback and set out for a test ride. Three friends and I are embarking on a three-day tour of the Denali Highway (in the winter just a snowmachine trail) starting Sunday, and I figured I should make sure all of my gear is in working order. I could barely lift the thing as I hoisted it out of the garage, but once we got rolling it wasn't so bad. This ride was supposed to be an hour tops, but once again I got wrapped up in my explorations, then became a little bit lost, and before I knew it, the sun had long since set and I had three hours and eleven minutes on my watch. 23.4 miles. Ah, I love this stuff. It's difficult for me to explain why churning through soft snow at 5 or 6 mph is such a soothing activity, amid a pleasant chill of evening and the last wisps of orange light creeping through the spruce forest. It's a kind of Zen peace that, for my own reasons, only the quiet winter wilderness can release.

But I'm so tired. It's probably good I opted to postpone my Skwentna tour, as a 180-mile ride just days out of my California softie gate probably would have set me way back for upcoming adventures. The effort that Beat is making right now, I can barely imagine. But I do empathize ... and envy.