Learning to run

It occurred to me during the long drive north to Fairbanks that I haven't really trained this year for running on snow, at all. There was that one 22-mile run in Yosemite, a couple of arduous sled-dragging hikes, and a lot of good intentions once I arrived in Alaska. But just like the rigors of snow biking have caught up to me as a wholly different sport than mountain biking, my trail running muscles felt weak and not tuned to the demands of snow. Plus, I was exhausted. That one was my fault so I tried to shake it off. The Chena River to Ridge 25-mile race loomed. 

I decided to sign up for this race partly because I needed a shakedown training run for the Homer Epic, at some point. But mostly I signed up because it gave me an excuse to visit Fairbanks, which is perhaps the most fun community in all of Alaska. And I mean this genuinely — you need to have a good sense of humor and an adventurous spirit in order to survive this stark and cold place. 

My arrival felt like a homecoming of sorts, even though I've never lived here or even spent all that much time in the Fairbanks area. One of CR2R race-directors, Ed, let me stay at his place during my visit. I credit Ed with helping re-spark my passion for adventure racing when I was disillusioned with a lot of things, because he invited me to sign up for the White Mountains 100 in 2010. I had a lot of fun staying with Ed. He's an animal on skis and packrafts, and has completed numerous amazing wilderness trips throughout the Arctic. At home he's a weather forecaster who loves pop culture. While I was there, we indulged in silly movies and television such as "Pitch Perfect" and "The Biggest Loser," and top-40 radio is always pumping when he's awake. It was great fun. 

Chena River to Ridge had 55 entrants on skis, bikes, and foot. There was a 25-mile race and 45-mile race run concurrently, encompassing two different trail loops in the recreation area. There were about an equal number of starters for both distances, but the majority of runners were in the short race and bikers in the long race. At the sign-up, a number of people asked me where my bike was. I think most who have even tried skis or snow bikes can't imagine why anyone would leave these beneficial pieces of equipment at home. Snow running is just slow and strenuous, and only those who really love running would bother with it. After several minutes of gleefully describing my Willow, Denali Highway, and Denali National Park bike adventures without a single mention of running, it was probably clear I am not one of those people.

But the challenge — the sheer amount of difficulty running causes me — is exactly why I love it. The first five miles of the Chena River to Ridge trail were sublime. Rolling through frozen swamps into a canyon surrounded by round-top mountains, the trail was just soft enough to feel like a cloud under my feet, but still packed enough to allow my untrained legs to kick up some 12-minute miles. The effort level was still high and my mind slipped into a peaceful daze — the mindless serenity of running. And just when I had decided this run was going to be amazing and maybe even sorta easy after all, the warm sun peeked over the mountains.

By the time the climbing really started, the trail had softened considerably and was churned up by several dozen runners, skiers, and bikers — many who were reduced to pushing after the lead pack enjoyed smooth trails. The steeper climbs weren't bad for me — similar to hiking up a slope with loose talus — but anytime the trail leveled out and I tried to run again, my forefoot would stamp a hole into the  mush and my knee would wrench sideways. Lifting off the snow was equally straining and pulled uncomfortably at my hips. Within a mile of this I was already hurting, only seven miles into the race.

Around mile nine I caught my cyclist friend Dave Shaw, and tried not to sound too chipper because I know it sucks to be caught by runners. But the truth is despite my aching hips and sore knees, I was still in a great mood. It was a beautiful, warm morning and the endorphins were running full-tilt. "Are you sure this race is in Fairbanks?" I chirped. "It feels like Juneau in the spring, or California." Dave smiled back at me; he wasn't even crabby. "At least it's a beautiful day to take my bike for a walk," he said. Two days later, Dave would take me out for an incredibly fun ride on the Corral Creek Trail, near his cabin in the Goldstream Valley. We weaved through trees and dipped into icy stream beds, pedaling until the trail got steep and it was time to start pushing our bikes. Dave observed that he'd had enough of pushing for a while, and I fully agreed.

I passed a few more bikers and began to wonder if my knees and hips would hurt less if I could resume the bike-pushing position, which I'd had at least some conditioning for. It sounds idiotic to envy a bogged-down cyclist pushing a bike, but I was willing to try anything to soothe my aching hips. I moved my trekking poles to the side and leaned forward, but it was awkward to walk that way without an actual bike to lean on.

By mile thirteen I was grumpy, aching, and done with slushing. Before the race began I strongly considered wearing snowshoes, but didn't because it was a short race that I wanted to try to run. Also, I already had trekking poles, and the snowshoes would have made me look like a complete dork among the well-tuned Fairbanks runners. I rarely worry about how dorky I look, so I'm not sure why the snowshoe thing mattered. Next time.

Luckily, there was a high ridge aid station with friends to lift my spirits. I didn't even recognize John Shook in his Jesus Christ Superstar outfit, and his wife Andrea had abundant enthusiasm for the semi-broken back-of-packers. I stood there eating bread and butter, enjoying the sweet relief of not moving my hips for a few minutes. Then I started to worry about the bikers catching me, which is humorous because I knew they would not only catch me but start riding again as soon as the trail trended downhill, and finish two hours before me. Ah, well. Bursts of irrational competitive spirit — that's what racing is all about.

I was about three miles from the finish, walking downhill to reduce the posthole strain on my knees, when my cell phone rang. Beat was calling from the long traverse of hills before the Yukon River, and lamented the warm weather. He had been rained on the day before, fought slush for more than a hundred miles, waded through ice-choked overflow up to his thighs, and maxed out his capabilities for a walking pace that I could stil achieve relatively easily. He asked if I was still out on the Chena trail.

"Aw, we're both in a race!" he said with silly excitement.

"Not much of a race for me," I grumbled. "I'm still going to try, of course, but I think I'm screwed for the finishing the Homer Epic under the cutoff if trail conditions are similar at all, which they probably will be because it's spring down there. The trail is just so soft. This is really hard."

Beat just paused for a few seconds. I thought the line had cut off because he didn't respond, but then he burst out laughing. I started giggling, too, because my complaints were ridiculous in comparison. If Beat can bust out his slog for a thousand miles, I can certainly work my way through a measly 25 miles of soft snow.

I finished in 7:30, which was still under my guessed time of eight hours, but admittedly well over the hoped-for six hours I thought I could achieve in good conditions. According to my GPS the race actually came in closer to a marathon, 26.1 miles with 3,100 feet of climbing. Although painful during the race, the hip and knee soreness mostly worked itself out within 48 hours, although my legs retained a deadened, tired feeling.

But, above all, the Chena River to Ridge race launched what turned out to be an incredible week here in Fairbanks. I regret nothing.

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.