Onto the adventures

 With Beat now making his way to Nome, I'm planning to bounce around various locales in Alaska until the White Mountains 100 at the end of the month. As such, I've been enable to embark on a few great rides amid the work I *am* trying to complete (thus limited blogging, still.) Since my first post-ITI physical effort, a two-hour fat bike ride on Thursday, I went for three more longish rides (first was 3.5 hours, the second was nearly 7, the third on Sunday was another 3 hours) with few issues. My body is well-equipped for endurance right now, but I seem to have no power in areas where I am usually much stronger, such as steep climbs and bike pushes. However, spinning pedals and breathing cold, crisp air has been fantastic for recovery. I feel great.

Dave Johnston, the runner who finished the Iditarod Trail Invitational in an unfathomable record of 4 days 1 hour 38 minutes, told me, "You must have had a pretty easy time out there if you're already riding this much." I had to laugh. Maybe I did take it too easy out on the Iditarod Trail, but traveling 350 miles on foot was unknown territory to me, let alone doing it in a week, with a 45-pound sled, in highly variable winter weather conditions. I stayed where I thought I needed to stay to survive and reach the finish, which I did. Now I know a whole lot more than I used to.

As for Dave, hearing his stories about the experience were absolutely mind-boggling. I think it would be generous to say that I ran 5 percent of the trail (and this was often shuffling, not a whole lot faster than my walking pace.) Dave walked 5 percent and ran 95 percent of the time, often up to 9-minute-mile pace. Even after his sled broke into two pieces on the dirt at mile 220, he lashed it together with rope and dragged the shattered remains another 130 miles. And he did it nearly without stopping. He slept a total of six hours, basically only ate just a little more than once a day in checkpoints (because he couldn't eat on the move without getting sick, he hardly bothered with trail food!) and when he ran out of water, he didn't stop to melt snow — he was just out of water, sometimes for many hours. He justified this with the explanation that, back in ancient times, people traveled without stopping for days, and they didn't get food and water every thirty minutes. And they lived and went on the reproduce the offspring that became wimpy us.

"People think they need all of this stuff, and they don't," he said.

I said, "Dave, what you did out there doesn't seem possible."

He replied, "I know. Everyone told me I couldn't do it, and even now people still tell me it's not possible. But I did it."

In my admittedly biased opinion, I think Dave's feat on the Iditarod Trail to McGrath is one of the most incredible ultra-long-distance running accomplishments by anyone, anywhere. I hope to write a longer article about it when I get a minute to breathe. Hopefully soon! I'm falling behind on everything.

And I'm falling behind thanks to this — Alaska, and its incredible playground at everybody's back door. On Friday, my friend Jill M. in Anchorage had this great idea to try to ride snow bikes at Turnagain Pass, an area popular with backcountry skiers and snowmachiners. Her reasoning was that recent warmth and sun might have left rideable crust, and thanks to lack of snow, the snowmachine area was currently closed to motorized use. We initially tried the Tin Can drainage along an old skin track. But I was not faring well with the steep pushing, and it was beginning to look like that's all it would be for the foreseeable future. We were able to ride the mile downhill at a grin-inducing clip, but I'm glad we didn't commit to doing that with our bikes all day long (it's funny, because usually I am all about long and punishing hike-a-bikes. But on this day, my legs and feet said no.)


Instead, we crossed the Seward Highway to hit the nicely packed and blissfully quiet snowmachine side, rolling along the valley on punchy but fun crust.

Jill shot this photo of me busting across an open creek. We had a ton of fun doing what often felt like sandy desert / slickrock riding on an incredible bluebird day in the Chugach Mountains.

 On Saturday, Jill and I joined her friends Scott and Sue near the Portage railroad station to look for a winter route to Spencer Glacier. We initially tried to follow a faint snowmachine trail next to the train tracks, but found mainly breakable crust that seemed reluctant to support my weight. Scott, who is a big guy, was also busting through, but Jill and Sue fared much better. All of the women were about the same size, so I can only assume crust-floating technique is an acquired skill that I currently lack thanks to my limited snow bike practice during the past few years. I tend to mash pedals and feather the handlebars too much, which quickly plants one of the tires deep into the snow.

 Even the frustrating trail scouting took place in a beautiful setting, with sparkling hoarfrost and mountains surrounding us on all sides.

 Temperatures were in the single digits rising to the low teens, and winds were light, which meant ideal conditions fat bike travel.

 About 2.5 miles in, it was beginning to look like we'd have to bushwhack across the valley to locate the main snowmachine track, which we avoided because we knew it crossed open water in several spots. At the time, Jill was a half mile ahead and seemed keen on crossing the valley even though it meant also crossing the Placer River, which was likely to contain a lot of open water and thin breakable ice. As it turned out, she just wanted to scout out a potential route and head back to the railroad tracks if necessary, but all I could see were sketchy ice crossings in our future and I wanted no part of that. Scott and Sue also weren't thrilled about our current bike-pushing route, so the three of us opted to turn around, cross the highway bridge, and try the snowmachine trail. Jill continued forward.

After an hour of essentially backtracking, we made it to the other side of the valley and a veritable snowmachine highway. Riding was super fast and life was good.

We crossed a few open or thinly iced-over streams, but thought we had it made until we hit the first open braid of the Placer, which looked to be about knee deep even at the shallowest crossings. I had brought a pair of lightweight waders with me, which allow me to keep my feet dry in stream crossings up to thigh deep. But this first crossing was more than a hundred feet wide, and there was no way for us to share one pair of waders. We walked up and down the bank, looking for an ice bridge, when we encountered a snowmachine tour group crossing the river. They splashed down as water rose well above their own boots, and I walked over to talk to the guide while he waited for the group to make it across. He told us there were five such river crossings, and they were all about equal depth. Ice shelves on both sides would prevent us from riding bikes across, and even if we were willing to ride or wade, the risk wasn't worth it. Wet feet for hours in single digits is a good way to get frostbite.

 So, we turned around. And of course, Jill — who chose to stick close to the tracks — was able to cross the river on railroad bridges and successfully accessed the Spencer Glacier. Scott, Sue, and I were a bit bummed to put in all that effort for a "DNF" (all-in-all, we rode or pushed thirty miles over seven hours, albeit at a relaxed pace with lots of stops.) But I can't deny that it was a grand day out in a beautiful valley. I would have liked to see some blue ice, but I don't regret leaving the railroad tracks to follow the more aesthetic trail. The scenery was incredible.

And no shortage of picture taking opportunities, either.

Scott took this picture of me riding back down the valley. This encapsulates what I love so much about being here: Wide open spaces, wild terrain, mountains, big skies, and an environment that makes accessing these beautiful places deeply challenging — and worth it. 

Mindblock

Recovery is an interesting thing. You can stay on the move for eighteen-plus hours a day and somehow feel a few notches stronger every day — the aching hamstrings and stiff knees stop their protests; the sore back, wrenched by dozens of miles of sled-halting roots and rocks, also gives up the fight; and shin pain, which at times became excruciating, just needs a few minutes of walking to "warm up." Even hurty feet that always hurt stop occupying every other thought. Bodies somehow find an equilibrium that is neither fresh nor stale. It's just shelf-stable: Your body is a walking machine, that's its job, and with a determined brain at the helm, it will do what you ask it to do. A friend once put it, "Your legs are the dogs and your brain is the musher." I echoed that phrase a lot out on the Iditarod Trail. "Mush, legs, mush."

And then, somewhere in there, your brain tells your legs it's time to stop. It could be seven hours, it could be seven days, maybe it could even be seven weeks — but somehow the thought "I'm done" sets off a chain reaction of physical events that are difficult to quantify. Suddenly I can't sleep more than two hours without waking up drenched in sweat, so much that I have to change my clothes, presumably because my body is flushing out an enormous buildup of toxins. The hurty feet that always hurt again become very good at reminding you they hurt, so much that you hobble around and hold your bladder to the brink of emergency just to avoid the unsavory task of walking. The legs stiffen up and fatigue sets in so deep that not even long-neglected appetites have enough spark to spur you to action. "I walked fifty miles yesterday without issue, what happened?" I'd think. Suddenly I couldn't fathom walking another step. Why? Because I told myself I didn't have to walk anymore.

And thus, I flew back to Anchorage in a daze on Monday evening, watching through the last light of sunset as the Kuskokwim River Valley, the Alaska Range, and the Susitna River Valley unfolded beneath me in a blink. Ever since then, it's been a scramble to put together enough cognitive energy to catch up on obligations and work, and try to set a plan for the next month. Even just one week out in the wild in "walking machine" mode makes it difficult to return to regular life routines, and I feel overwhelmed by the simplest tasks. I made all these plans out on the trail for a book proposal I want to write, and I can't remember any of them — of course — but I sit at my computer staring at a blank screen all the same, willing them to come back. There was a full day of deadline work on Tuesday that I thought would be simple enough, but somehow felt so stressful that the night sweats came back even though I was awake.

All desire to move was gone for two days, but that didn't take long to come back. Today I set out for a bike ride along the Chester Creek and Coastal Trails. Surprisingly, or maybe predictably, I felt fine, and ended up spinning twenty miles out to Point Woronzof and back. The feet were irked at being stuffed into hard-sided boots, but beyond that, there were no problems or even muscle fatigue. I was sleepy when I got home, but then again I might just be sleepy because I haven't been sleeping well. The night sweats are finally gone, but I still wake up with a startle every two hours, mind racing with thoughts of "time to go."

So where does recovery begin and end? There are people that did the same thing I did every day for a week, and they're still out there, pressing deeper into the wilderness. I stayed off my feet for three days, so I should feel even stronger than them, that much more recovered. But somehow the recovery process moved my body from shelf-stable to stale. I'm like Pilot Bread that got left out by a hot wood stove a bit too long.

Through it all, I haven't even attempted to start a race report. I value my habit of keeping a prompt and fresh journal, but it all just feels too far away right now, and it's still a puzzling challenge just to decide what groceries to buy at the store. So it may be a while yet, if too much else gets in the way. I don't know. Maybe if I just start walking again, it will all come back ...

Iditarod, again

In 2008, I wrote this passage about the Iditarod Trail for my book, "Ghost Trails:"

The trail was soft and deep now, but eventually the cold would sink in. The trail would set up and harden, only to be blanketed by fresh layers of snow. The racing dog teams would come through and stamp it out again, followed by recreational snowmobiles tracking it out until the warm air of spring left the surface rotten and unusable. Then summer would come and take the rest of the snowpack with it, leaving behind only open tundra and narrow passages through the alder where the trail wound through a canyon below Rainy Pass. In a few short months, there would be no sign of the winter trail or anybody who followed it. The Iditarod Trail was a ghost itself. But that night, beneath the moonless twilight of the Northern Lights, the Iditarod Trail was more of a ghost than any trail I had followed before. Not in the way it frightened me or battered me, but in the way it haunted me, even as I lay beside it, like it was some distant part of my past and inevitable part of my future.

Six years later I was back, traveling the trail by different means, seeing the landscape through different eyes, experiencing the world as a different person. But just as the trail and life are ever-changing, so much remains, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to return. Beat and I stayed together for the duration of the 350-mile trek to McGrath in the Iditarod Trail Invitational, and finished together in 7 days, 7 hours, and 50 minutes. There's more to say about the experience, of course, but for now I wanted to post a few of my favorite pictures from the race.

 Carole Holley and Beat run the rollers of the Susitna Valley, heading toward Mount Susitna.

 On the Yentna River, looking toward Mount Foraker and Denali.

 Finnbear Lake.

 Rainy Pass.

 Tim Hewitt enjoying some alder shwacking in the Dalzell Gorge.

 Sketchy passage at the bottom of the Dalzell Gorge — wet, thin ice and open water for more than a mile.

 The "new burn" heading up Egypt Mountain. We saw barely a skiff of snow for more than 40 miles, and the surface ground had thawed after two days of temperatures nearing 50 degrees. We dealt with dry dirt, roots, rocks, puddles, bison-stomped mud, tussocks, knee-deep stream crossings, wet swamps, gravel bars, and glare ice. Muscling my 45-pound sled through this section was by far the most physically difficult segment of the race. It was the most mentally challenging as well, because I am deeply afraid of open water in winter travel, and we had to deal with a lot of that, all while knowing that it could easily drop back to 30 below on the Farewell Burn overnight. Still, traveling through this kind of terrain, on the northern side of the Alaska Range in February, was downright surreal, and became the most memorable part of the journey.

 Crossing one of the Farewell Lakes. Race director Bill Merchant scratched this "trail" for us on his return snowmachine trip from McGrath that morning, which was helpful.

 Approaching the village of Nikolai with Loreen and Tim Hewitt, and Rick Freeman. The five of us more or less traveled in a pack, with our friends Steve Ansell and Anne Ver Hoef just a few hours ahead. This made for a fun and social journey through a remote part of the country.

 On the last morning on the Iditarod Trail, with Denali and Foraker behind us now.

A wonderfully rejuvenating mid-day bivy on a slough of the Kuskokwim River, during the final leg into McGrath. Even an hour of rest does wonders for resetting tired legs and hurty feet, making for a more enjoyable afternoon.