Riding the invisible highway, part two

Our first night in the Lake Cabin was my fourth or fifth night without significant sleep. Around 4 a.m. I had read enough Jack London and hiked out the road to search for Aurora. I was wearing my pajamas, down booties, a thin down coat, and fleece mittens. The night was immensely quiet, and filled with a piercing cold that I shrugged off as the overreaction of an unacclimated Californian. I stood on the bridge across the Maclaren River, staring out into the mountain-ringed expanse with faint green light undulating in the northern sky. But stars stole the show, with the full-spectrum depth of the galaxy in clear view. I stood with my neck craned upward until I started shivering heavily, and my hands and feet were numb. I scolded myself for being a wimpy Californian, but in the morning, after sunrise, the lodge thermometer read -18F.


On day two, we decided to take a stress-free day of sightseeing, knowing our hoped-for big day to Alpine Creek Lodge and back would take us the better part of 24 hours to ride in these conditions. Jill M. was invited on a snowmachine trip that she happily accepted. Jenn, Sierra and I opted to pedal down the road. Trail conditions beyond the lodge were even softer and slower, but the route climbed into increasingly more spectacular scenery.

There's a bigness to the land out there that's futile to try to capture in photographs, and even more futile to try to describe. I was beginning to feel the sensation that we'd ventured onto another planet, a moonscape surrounded by the brightest stars of the galaxy, bathed in the severe light of a heatless sun.

I lost myself in the dreamscape, churning along at three miles per hour, imagining Antarctica.

Jenn turned back a few miles early. Sierra and I pressed on until our time cut-off had passed — two and a half hours — in which we traveled to mile marker 51, which was about nine miles from the lodge. As we rode back, it became clear that Sierra was a much more skilled snow rider than me, choosing clean lines and cutting a straight track through the snow more often than not. I, on the other hand, swerved around like a drunk driver, nearly pitching off the trail more times than I care to admit. Sierra's been riding in Whitehorse all winter and I am dirt-spoiled, clearly out of practice. Snow biking isn't all high-resistance slogging. There's a lot of technique, maneuvering, and bursts of power involved.

Thanks to rusty technique, I did take one spectacular crash that no one was around to see. Sierra had a quarter mile on me during the final descent into the Maclaren River valley, and I was laying into the pedals to catch up. The rear wheel washed out and experienced a dramatic few seconds of fishtailing in which I could actually hear the "whoosh, whoosh" of the bike leaning into the swerves. It dipped one last time and tossed me into the snow in an eruption of powder. I wish someone was there to witness that crash. It would have earned me a great nickname, perhaps even better than the one I received ("Jilly-Ho," spoken as though saying "Land Ho.")

On day three we got an early start out of the lodge — the benefit of understanding there was a ten-hour day ahead of us. Jill M. had developed a good rapport with one of the young lodge employees, Sean, and he offered to give us all a snowmobile "bump" up the first 1,200-foot climb to Maclaren summit. I resisted vehemently; I would rather wake up at 4 a.m. and sneak out than take any sort of ride on a bike tour. Jenn and Sierra wanted to pedal but were open to hopping onto the trailer if the climb took too long. Jill M. was happy to take the bump. It's funny — and likely caused by an abnormally high-strung state due to lack of sleep — but during the night I lied awake stressing about this. I didn't want to sprint ahead but I was resolved to reach the top before the machine passed us and made me get on. It was kind of like a race ... but only to me.

It was a cold morning — -11F when Jill looked at the thermometer at breakfast, possibly four or five degrees colder right at dawn. I admit I was nervous about feeling chilled again all day, so I stripped off all of my insulation layers to the point of being uncomfortable just so I wouldn't soak them in sweat during the long climb. I knew body heat would kick in soon enough, but the first twenty minutes are always tough.

I remember seeing road signs such as this during my summer ride on the Denali Highway and thinking, "Great, forty miles, only four hours." On this morning, it was more like, "Wow, forty miles. That's ten hours."

Thanks to the cold morning, the trail was well frozen and in the best shape I'd seen yet. The climb seemed to take less effort than riding downhill had the previous day. We were able to pedal the whole five-mile ascent without pushing, which felt like a victory for my imagined solitary race. Extended climbs really are my favorite kind of pedaling. We stopped to soak in the gorgeous sunrise view at the summit sign — which is actually about two miles and 300 feet below the actual summit. I hastily applied a bunch of layers, which is perhaps why I look so disheveled in this photo.

The morning had a nice rhythm to it, and everyone was in a good mood. We were still traveling just as slow and working just as hard, but we had adjusted our expectations to match reality. Attitude is the majority of the challenge in endeavors such as this, whether racing or touring. The rest is attention to physical needs — food, water, and warmth. Neglect any one of these things and the landscape quickly shifts to a hateful, scary place. But when all needs are filled and expectations are matched, this cold and desolate landscape is pleasant, even friendly.

Jill and Sean caught up to us at mile 13. We were well ahead of our expectations — which we had set so low that even after three hours they thought they might find us only reaching the top of the pass.

We decided we had much more time on this day, so we spent more time goofing off. Sierra even stopped at one point to make coffee, which I enjoyed immensely after our semi-early start, where the caffeine tends to wear off by noon.

We marveled at the amazing weather we had, having planned this trip months in advance and set the exact dates a month earlier. More often than not in the winter, the Denali Highway is pummeled by high winds, ground blizzards, real blizzards, and deeply subzero temperatures. As soon as the sun came out, the air warmed to a few degrees above zero — not warm by any means, but perfectly comfortable without the presence of wind. I managed to stay much more comfortable than I had two days earlier, although I sometimes ran laps when stopped just to avoid the dreaded chill.

Photo by Jenn Roberts

The most incredible moment of the trip happened when we were descending into the place that Jill M. termed "Low Morale Valley" on day one. I admittedly had earphones in, and heard a strange sound that caused me to hit pause on my iPod. Jill M. was stopped on the trail, and I stopped behind her to see the origin of that echoing rhythmic sound — dozens of caribou running across our path just a few hundred yards away. The herd continued moving up the slope, glancing back in our direction occasionally as we continued down the valley. The whole hillside was mottled with caribou tracks, which appeared to me as a kind of abstract snow sculpture. Beautiful, awe-inspiring experience.

And while my rather holey trip plan has since been picked apart by the group as a whole, everyone was forgiving of my unrealistic ambitions and nobody had a meltdown or fight the entire trip. We shared our cozy lake-side cabin ("Oh, I see, it's the Lake Cabin because it's by a lake. I couldn't tell. It looks like every other blank white expanse out here.") We poked fun at each other and told dirty jokes. We enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of the Maclaren River Lodge and left our mark in the form of a one-dollar bill scrawled with images of fatbikers. Pecha Kucha is a gregarious group, and I sometimes feel like the odd person out ... the token introvert. But they are accepting of me and my quirks, and I love that we are making a tradition out of this. Sierra wrote a great description of everyone in our "pack" on her trip report. Here's her take on my role:

"Jill Homer is through and through a husky.  Not a fancy, prancy show-dog husky, a true-blue sled dog husky.   There is no doubt in my mind that she could keep moving for days, or perhaps even weeks; surviving on whatever she needs.  In a husky’s case this would probably involve foraging for garbage and small rodents.  For Jill, it’s foraging for Sour Patch Kids and frozen salami.   If there had been no lodge on the Denali Highway, I imagine we would have eventually come upon Jill curled up nose to tail in a snow bank; or sitting with her nose pointed in the air, smiling at the sky."

Thanks girls. I hope we can do it again next year. 

Riding the invisible highway

At any given moment, if you could trace a path over the contours of your mind, what do you think it would look like? A complex freeway system weaving around immovable concrete structures? A country road stretching across sectioned tracts of farmland? A dirt track cutting into the heart of a mountain range? At the moments I am most content, I imagine this path would appear as a white line across a quiet, open expanse. The place of Zen. The invisible highway. 

The Denali Highway is a 135-mile stretch of gravel road the connects the nowhere towns of Paxson and Cantwell, Alaska, with pretty much nothing in between. It was built in 1957 as what was then the only road access to Denali National Park, but has since been bypassed to the point that it sees almost no use beyond hunters, trappers, adventurers, and the occasional bold RV driver. After I rode a large section of the road on my mountain bike in May 2010, I had a notion that the winter experience would mimic a Zen state of mind — a snow-covered path that rolls through high alpine valleys in the shadow of the massive peaks of the Hayes Range. This year presented enough time to finally try the route during the winter, so when friends asked me about my Alaska plans, one of the first ideas I expressed was "ride the Denali Highway." One of my friends, Jenn from Whitehorse, was particularly interested in the specifics of such a tour. And because we were hoping to recreate the great times we had while riding the Dawson Trail last March, we pulled Sierra from Whitehorse and Jill from Anchorage into the conversation. It would be a grand venue for a reunion of "Pecha Kucha Mountain" — four women on fat bikes in the Great White North. 

Planning trips is not one of my strong suits. In fact, I'm quite horrible at trip planning. There's a reason I was initially drawn to adventure racing, and that reason is not competitive drive. I'm happy to let race directors, friends — really anyone who isn't me — plan a trip for me. But because Denali Highway was my dream, I took on the challenge of planning the tour. After feeling out and rejecting the possibility of shuttles (either a $2,000 charter flight or a 700-mile round trip drive, twice), I settled on an out-and-back to the two backcountry lodges that are open in the winter on the highway, Maclaren River Lodge (mile 42) and Alpine Creek Lodge (mile 78). Sierra only had time for a three-day trip, and I found myself saying "Oh, 80 miles is totally a doable distance in a day with good trail conditions," knowing that the fastest I've ever ridden the White Mountains 100 is just under 18 hours, which translates to a 15-hour day for 80 miles, best case scenario. Fifteen hours is perhaps a reasonable day of travel only in my mind, but I persisted with that idea right up until about two weeks before the trip, when Sierra gently suggested two nights at Maclaren with an out-and-back ride on the second day, just in case we ran into poor trail conditions. Thankfully, Sierra is smarter than I am, because committing to a lodge 80 miles from pavement would have been a disaster for our fun reunion tour.


The two Jills drove from the west and the Canadians came from the east, converging at a tiny hotel room in Glennallen. The gear explosion was just the first of many bursts of giggling and debauchery. The Pecha Kucha girls were together again.


Unfortunately I failed to take a picture of all of the bikes — a major faux pas in realm of fat bike trip reports. But the breakdown was a titanium 9:Zero:7, a titanium Fatback, an aluminum Fatback, and a Salsa Mukluk. Sierra's Fatback easily won the prize for the most stylish rig, with her matching green rims and bike bags. (As in perfect matches. She actually gave the bag maker a pantone number.) Combined with her hot pink ski pants and matching hat, she was easily identifiable from long distances in the stark landscape.

We picked a (in retrospect) rather late time to start driving to Paxson from Glennallen, and then indulged in a long breakfast and more gear packing in front of the Paxson Lodge. The bemused lodge owner peppered us with questions as he served us French toast and omelets, and shook his head when we told him we planned to ride to Maclaren River Lodge that night. "You can't ride all the way out there," he said. "You girls are going to be exhausted when you get there." We just smiled and nodded. He had no idea that we were such fine-tuned endurance athletes. Forty-two snowy miles would be easy peasy for the likes of us.

The snowmobile trail crossed the spruce-lined creek beside Paxson Lodge and immediately started climbing drastically — nearly a thousand feet in the first five miles. On top of this climbing that I expected but didn't quite visualize the extent of its difficulty, the trail conditions were much softer than I expected. The winter lodges really only start to operate for regular snowmobile traffic in March, and it was still early enough in March that the route had only seen minimal use over many feet of soft powder.


For the most part we were able to pedal through it, but our pace was jogging speed (4 to 6 mph), frequently dipping into walking speed (2 to 3 mph) even when we weren't pushing. And of course powering our rather heavy steeds through the mush was hard work — generally expending the effort level of running for the output of walking speeds. I've said before that the whole reason I found my way into trail running was because a few years of snow biking convinced me that wheels aren't always an advantage. Luckily, we were still fresh and excited for our adventure, and no one even seemed to notice the grunt of the first big climb.

That is, until we started down our first big descent, only seven miles in, and Sierra noted how late in the day it was already becoming. "What's our average pace?" she asked me.

"Do you really want to know?" I replied.

She thought about for a minute, and then resolutely said, "Yes."

"We've ridden seven miles in two hours," I said. "Maclaren Pass isn't until about mile 35 and I expect we'll have at least one big descent and another climb in there. This might be the only big descent. Or there might be more. I don't know."

"So seven kilometers an hour is what we might average all day?" she asked.

I paused for a second. "Well, yes," I replied.

Photo by Jenn Roberts

Our pace slowed even more as we rolled toward the path of a cow moose and her calf, who were intent on not leaving the trail. I'm frightened of moose, more so than I am of bears because moose are often more aggressive when they feel threatened, and less predictable. I couldn't muster the courage to approach the animals any closer. The standoff lasted for several minutes until Jill rolled up. As a resident of Anchorage, she deals with moose on bike rides on a regular basis, and was much more bold about riding toward them and yelling "get off the trail!" They moved forward but continued running down the trail for about a quarter mile, stomping up the track and occasionally glaring back at us as we tried to hold a tight pack.

Spirits remained high but energy begin to flag at mid-day, when after four hours we had only ridden the equivalent of a half marathon. We were just beginning what was bound to be long descent to low elevation at Tangle Lakes, which were only halfway to the lodge with another big pass in the way. Jill was feeling sick and Jenn was nervous about the pace and the fast approach of darkness. I was beginning to feel the first tinges of cold that would nag at me for the rest of the ride. The day was gorgeous — clear with temperatures ranging from the single digits to perhaps as high as 20 — and after the second big climb to 3,800 feet elevation, I was lolled into complacency and descended to 2,600 feet without wearing a hat or windshell. By the bottom I was deeply chilled, and the few minutes I spent waiting for my friends sparked that primal fear that seems to irrationally scream, "You need to start moving or you will die."

This started a jostle where I would ride ahead and then stop to wait for my friends, sometimes running in place, or running laps, or doing jumping jacks to try to increase my body temperature. Nothing worked great. I shivered at times. The afternoon got late and the ambient temperature continued to fall. I didn't want to ride too far ahead, but I didn't feel comfortable letting my body temperature drop any farther, and didn't have many options short of crawling into my sleeping bag. As we started the third big climb to Maclaren Summit, I reasoned that as long as I could see Sierra's bright outfit in the background, we were all still close together.

As the sun set, we climbed to a high alpine valley devoid of all visible life save for the occasional alder bush or fox track. As long as I continued pedaling, I felt reasonably comfortable. The silence and emptiness of the landscape, combined with the fatigue of the strenuous day, fostered a blissful serenity. At mile 31 I figured I was close to the top of the pass and stopped to wait until I could see Sierra. The light was low enough that I expected to only see a black dot on the blue expanse, but several minutes went by and I saw no sign of movement. Rationally, I felt strong and happy, but it was surprising how quickly I transitioned from blissful serenity to primal panic when my core temperature started dropping again. "Keep moving!" the fear screamed at me. "You will die!" I tried to shake it off. "You're fine. You have everything you need. You're only two hours from a warm cabin with hot food." But the fear persisted. I don't have enough experience with subzero cold to know how to argue with the fear. It spurred me forward into the growing darkness, feeling blissed out and terrified at the same time.

I churned past Maclaren Summit with the last hints of twilight on the southern horizon, and began the painfully steep descent into the Maclaren River Valley. Knowing it would eventually end spurred me forward, but the screaming cold cut through everything, down to the deepest cells of my core, and I felt like I was being injected with icy fluid. If I was entirely alone or had nowhere warm to stop at the bottom, I would have gotten off my bike to run down the hill rather than ride — even though the riding was finally effortless for the first time all day. It's difficult to describe the joy I felt when I rounded the final bend and saw the profile of a building with a friendly neon "open" sign still lit up. It was an oasis of warmth and love amid the frigid desolation.

My friends showed up about 45 minutes later, as they had more difficulty riding the soft trail on the descent after darkness set in, but they were able to stick together. We ordered a round of burgers and four or five different kinds of drinks each (for me: hot tea, hot chocolate, Diet Pepsi, and cold water.) Life was good out here, miles from anywhere.

Restless rest stop

Wow, Friday night already. I don't have time for a Denali Highway trip report quite yet, but I dislike getting too far behind with my blogging (call it an irrational aversion.) Anyway, I'm in Fairbanks now, gearing up for the Chena River to Ridge 25-mile race. I was going to come directly here from Palmer, but on Thursday I decided to cut the drive in two and camp one night in Denali National Park. Because I'm going through one of my more extended bouts of insomnia right now, I hoped spending a night alone somewhere dark and quiet, curled up in my fluffy down cocoon, would foster a much needed night of sleep. And of course, I could go for some "easy" tours of the park while I was there. 

The weather was warm and extremely windy. Up here, they call this kind of storm a "Chinook" — temperatures were in the low 40s at the park entrance and the wind was blowing 30 mph with gusts to 50, according to the park ranger. She pointed out a few good trails where I could go for an evening walkabout on my snowshoes. After determining that all of her suggestions amounted to about two miles of meandering through spruce trees, I scanned the map and found the trail that crossed the most topographic contour lines — Mount Healy Overlook.

It was insanely windy on Mount Healy. The gusts were manageable in the trees, but above treeline it was a major effort to walk in a straight line rather than stagger about as the wind shoved my body sideways. Because the climb had the wind mostly at my side and back, I didn't quite realize the extent of the wind's force until I turned to face it, and couldn't breathe. Big gusts would hold me like a wall, and even when forward motion was possible, the gusts seemed to whisk all of the oxygen away before I could pull any into my lungs. I just trudged a few steps, then stopped and turned my head around to gasp for air. It was all quite exciting, and a little frightening, because it felt like any moment a gust strong enough to knock me off my feet would come and push me toward the steeper side of the mountain. Based on my experiences with Taku Winds in Juneau, I'd say it was gusting to 70 or 80 mph at that elevation. Later, the Denali Park ranger would agree with me.

This photo is blurry because I couldn't even hold my camera still in the wind. As I was removing the lens cap, a gust whisked it right out of my hand. It actually fluttered around in the air for several seconds before dropping onto a drift about a hundred feet away, then continued bouncing down the slope, never to be seen again.

The Mount Healy hike was only 5.5 miles round trip with 1,900 feet of climbing, but the wind made for an exhausting effort. I was in my cocoon by 9 and actually fell asleep, but Beat called around 9:45 with his own reports of intense wind and wetness, and amid the sympathy and anxiety, I couldn't fall back asleep. I eventually did, after seeming hours of scrutinizing the star-splattered sky for hints of the aurora, and reading my Kindle. It wasn't a fantastic night of sleep, but still one of my better ones.

Friday just had to dawn clear, warm, and gorgeous, tempting me out for another day of not resting. I didn't really want to go hiking in the wind again, but the ranger told me bikes were allowed on the mushing trails along the Denali Park Road. I expected poor trail conditions but figured it couldn't hurt to go out for an hour, maybe 90 minutes. After all, I had a race to taper for.

The trails were so much fun. The park doesn't allow motorized use during the winter, so many of the trails were created by dog sled alone. Apparently little dog feet pack a mean trail, because even the heavily wind-drifted sections were largely rideable, and the more protected areas were downright fast.

There was an incredibly fun segment that wended through a stream bed, swooping around tighter turns and skating across chunks of frozen overflow. I felt like I was mountain biking in a desert wash — blue ice instead of slickrock, wind-drifted powder instead of sand, huge Alaska mountains instead of redrock cliffs. It was all so grin-inducing, I ended up staying out longer than I intended. 

I continued riding the Park Road toward Savage River, to find that some sections were blown completely free of snow — bare pavement. It would have been more fun to ride if I didn't have my tire pressure down at 5 psi, but I bounced along happily with the wind at my back.

Of course, where the pavement wasn't blown free, it wasn't rideable at all. You think that would be enough to coax me to turn around, but I still persisted until enough clouds built up around the peaks to the south to convince me that a blizzard was moving in. That, and knowing I had 13 miles of grinding into the wind to get out of there. At least the return was mostly downhill.

Then I got to do this into a 25 mph wind. It wasn't a long walk, but just far enough to remind me that I wasn't mountain biking in Utah or road biking in the mountains. Snow biking just isn't snow biking without the pushing.

The ride netted 27 miles and 2,344 feet of climbing in 3:45. Going to Denali National Park was both a fantastic and not-so-great idea, as I'm feeling well-cooked already and I haven't even raced yet. Driving the rest of the distance to Fairbanks this afternoon revealed how overtired I am, with a full release of rapidly swinging emotions. One moment I was listening to Muse and driving too fast, and a few minutes later I'd switched to the soundtrack from "Once" and lapsed into tears as I thought about Beat. But for all of those reasons, it was a great two days. I ran wild with a spectrum of powerful emotions, from fear to anxiety to exhilaration to joy to love and sadness. I let it out and now I feel refreshed. Maybe now I can sleep.