This disappearing world

I've had a bout of writer's block lately. The kind where I stare at a blank screen for twenty minutes before relenting to Twitter browsing, and repeat. The main problem, I think, its that I'm a hopeless news junkie. Lately my morning coffee reading has left me with malaise bordering on despair. What do I do that matters? Nothing. What do any of us do that matters? We're just digging deeper holes. Well, you see where I'm at. It's that existential despair that all of us battle, with varying degrees of optimism and denial and faith. And it's not like this every minute of the day. I'm happy where I'm at and generally excited about the future. But the trepidation remains.

 I was in a rut and I wanted to get away. When my friend Corrine mentioned she had Cache Mountain cabin reserved for the last weekend in January, the wanderlust began churning. Beat and I skipped the Christmas training trip for good reason. Could I justify an admittedly frivolous trip one month later? Still, my Iditarod training hasn't been going particularly well, and my confidence has been similarly smothered. One short trip in similar conditions as the Iditarod — altitude, climate, and terrain — would help me understand my readiness one way or the other. And three days in the wilderness with no electricity or cell phone reception or access to the Internet? It wasn't long enough, but I believed a forced information blackout was necessary.

 On Friday, we set out from the Steese Highway on a "quick" route to the White Mountains. The Whites are a small mountain range, stunning in their own way, about 30 miles north of Fairbanks. The summits climb to 4,000 feet, the hillsides are peppered with spindly spruce trees and alder, and the creeks are flanked with limestone spires. I think the White Mountains are one of Alaska's best-kept secrets — managed by the BLM, the area's restrictions are few, wilderness is expansive, and a relatively well-kept network of winter trails travels to recreational cabins. It's one of my favorite places in the world. Why do I love the White Mountains so much? Sometimes I wonder.

 Corrine skied and I borrowed her bike. Although I wavered on taking the sled and hiking, I decided that biking and bike-pushing would be more appropriate testing/training for the Iditarod. Indeed, the trail was steep with a soft base and wind-drifts. In twenty miles there was more than 3,000 feet of climbing, which is light for a Boulder recreational ride, but pretty steep with a loaded fat bike on snow. The soft base meant I could grind along at a maximum effort and 3 psi in the tires, but it was nearly as fast and a lot less effort to walk. Over the course of the trip I pushed probably 80 percent of the time and 60 percent of the distance, and a moving average of 3.5 mph made a 64-mile, three-day weekend feel like a tough effort. Of course, I loved every second of it.

 Cache Mountain cabin is nestled in the shadow of its namesake mountain, from which flow narrow drainages with cool names like Brachiopod Gulch. This cabin was nicely equipped with a shed full of firewood, many pots for melting snow, an ax, a saw, wooden bunk beds, and a propane lantern for which a previous occupant left a can of propane. We basked in faintly foul-smelling light and slept like logs on the hard wooden bunks (well, I did at least.) I read through the entire cabin log and a book titled "Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube," which I didn't love. We ate bland Mountain House meals, talked about adventures and life, and for the most part left politics out of it.

 With two nights at the cabin, we had a free day on Saturday to travel unloaded to Cache Mountain Divide.

 It was a beautiful morning, about 5 degrees above zero, with a patchwork of clouds and subdued sunlight. Having visited Fairbanks in December, March and June — I was surprised by the extent of both daylight and darkness. There's a lot of light compared to just a month earlier, but the night still spreads across 15 hours, opening views of faint Northern Lights behind the patchy clouds.

 The "ride" to Cache Mountain Divide was strange — I stumbled along, taking about five hours to cover 11 miles, and in all that time I didn't acknowledge the passing of time. It was a beautiful sort of mindlessness, putting one foot in front of the other with my shoulders hunched over the handlebars, acknowledging my surroundings and nothing more. The forest was cloaked in a primordial silence that echoed in my impassive mind.

Corrine stayed ahead of me the whole time on her skis. I saw her on the return near the pass, and informed her that I was going to spend as much time as possible on the divide, because I never had a chance to explore while racing the White Mountains 100. I parked the bike on a tripod and attempted to hike toward one of the bald peaks looming overhead. I hoped I'd find a wind crust, but every step off the "trail" — which had only been first broken by two BLM machines, two days prior — sank to my hips in crusty snow. Instead, I walked down the other side of the pass and found a nice place to sit on my backpack, gazing at the peaks until I began to shiver.

 Four to six inches of snow fell overnight, coating the trail with feather-light powder. I didn't think it made the trail any worse, but it did add quad-burning resistance to the parts I could ride.

 Temps started around -5 and rose to 0 by mid-day. This felt toasty at quad-burning pace, and I spent the day gloveless and sometimes hatless with my jacket wrapped around my waist.

 One foot in front of the other.

 The woods near Beaver Creek.

 Corrine skiing out of Beaver Creek.

 That long downhill where I nearly caught up to her. A few snowmachines went through, which really only served to stir up the loose snow and make riding even more difficult and squirrelly.

 Snow-bikers do a lot of complaining about trail conditions. We're finicky to an extreme. Variations that are almost indistinguishable to the eye can make the difference between a 10mph spin and a 3mph grind. That's one thing I don't like about this activity, and I'm guilty of becoming frustrated about uncertainty and lack of control. I daydreamed about my snowshoes and sled, and remembered that I was walking anyway.

 The fresh snow did make for beautiful scenery. Although I mention the typical frustration, it didn't really set in on this trip — I was mindlessly blissful for most of the early miles.

 Of course, as I neared the Steese Highway, reality began to creep back into my thoughts. The world, current events — everything that leaves me staring blankly at a computer screen each day — were still out there.

 And then there were recent observations, in regard to Alaska changing more rapidly than I ever imagined. Recently a friend showed me a current photo of Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. I compared it to one I took in 2009, and felt shaken by how much ice had disappeared in a time period that I regard as a blip. On the Iditarod, people used to worry about 50 below temperatures and hurricane-force winds. You still have to worry about these things, of course, but now there's rain, snowless tundra, rivers with collapsing ice, open leads that could swallow me whole, never to be seen again. What will Interior Alaska become, once it melts for good? Parched spruce forest and swamp, burning where it's not flooded. The White Mountains would be thirsty, low-lying hills — one of my favorite places in the world, but I'm fairly certain winter is what gives them their magic.

And then I realized I'd slipped into negativity again, and tried to shake it off. The White Mountains were still frozen, it was 0 degrees and alder branches were coated in frost, and I was one of the few humans lucky enough to experience it.

 Near the top of the final climb, I stopped to sit on my backpack and eat one of my last remaining granola bars (I mowed through an enormous amount of food over the weekend. Actually enough to run out of food, which is rare for me on a camping trip of any length.) I looked out over hints of sunset light fading on distant hills, and realized that I felt fantastic, physically. There were no hints of breathing problems, and without those, I don't experience much in the way of fatigue. (My arms were sore. I still lift weights twice a week, but yeah, nothing really trains you for hours of pushing a bike, except for hours of pushing a bike.)

The White Mountains can do amazing things for both body and soul.

Corrine near the end of a five-mile descent, where I finally caught her. She has amazing control on those skinny skis. I envy her. Honestly, I would ski if I thought I could. I gave it a chance for years when I lived in Homer and Juneau, but usually I was either shuffling along, miserably bored, or careening with pale-faced terror down some rather benign hill. Still, I do love snowshoeing and snow hiking. Perhaps it's the mindlessness of this activity — predictable steps through an unpredictable world. And snow biking, in many ways, has qualities of both. The careening, the freedom, the frustration, and the slow grind.

Now I'm rambling again. But it was a wonderful respite, worth every air mile. I loved every predictable and unpredictable step. And, even more, I loved spending three days in the wilderness without outside contact. The news I returned to on Sunday was the most dispiriting yet, and I wanted to run back to Cache Mountain as fast as my legs would carry me.

Instead I headed home to Colorado, where life is still good.

Escape to Alaska

Last week in Fairbanks, Alaska, the temperature dropped to 53 below. It was more than 100 degrees warmer in Boulder, where I was mashing pedals through four inches of thick slush on top of mud. My speed stayed firmly lodged in the 2.5 mph range, while I fretted about the state of the world, geopolitical nonsense, and strong desire to not face a certain crushing expedition, now just a month away. I'm not ready for the Iditarod, again ... but of course I've never been ready, and I never will be. But I was desperate for a modicum of confidence. If I could just test my current and mostly non-negotiable state of fitness in real Alaska conditions — a place where the air is rich and cold, where the boreal forest stretches out for hundreds of miles, and I could possibly even tune out the news ... at least for a few days. 

That's how I ended up hovering over the Alaska Airlines Web site, debating mileage ticket possibilities, convincing Beat it was a good idea, and finally flying solo to Fairbanks on Tuesday night. By the time I landed, temperatures had risen to -12. They would be +12 before morning, and continue rising to +30 by Thursday. So much for true Alaska training conditions. But it felt right, all the same.

On Wednesday it was nice and bright by 11 a.m., which seemed quite early  — usually we visit Fairbanks over Christmas break; in comparison, late January seems like practically summer. Of course it does, when temperatures are in the teens when you've emotionally banked on 50 below. I put together my sled for the first time since 2015, and hauled it on a five-hour drag through a few inches of fluff over lightly traveled trails.

Why was I dragging a sled? Because I'm still considering it as a way to avoid that terrifying expedition by committing to a harder — but more predictable — effort on a shorter route. And, truthfully, I missed the quiet rhythm of hauling a heavy load through the snowy woods. The sled pulls me into deep but dispassionate concentration, breathing in and out, thinking only of forward motion and the tidy patterns of a monochrome world.

Five hours was enough to remind me that I haven't pulled a sled more than a few miles here and there since 2014. My hips became sore, my hamstrings screamed and my calves burned. Still, I can't help but appreciate the strain of sled-dragging. It's the only activity I've found where my (meager) aerobic capacity exceeds my (surprisingly inadequate) leg strength. Breathing was easy. Walking was hard.

On Thursday I returned to the familiar, borrowing my friend Corrine's bike for a six-hour spin that of course included hike-a-bike and multiple near-crashes while negotiating soft, rutted trail in flat light. It was interesting to find highly variable trail conditions in a short distance — from the perfect smooth singletrack of O'Conner Creek, to wind drifts on the ridge, to the aforementioned soft ruts and overflow on Eldorado Creek.

 I was breathing really well today, which may have been a result of difficult trail conditions that never allowed me to really "open up." Still, it was refreshing not to experience any constriction, wheezing, dizziness, or even brief bouts of shallow breathing. Lower altitudes probably played a large role in this. It's encouraging, though. I came to Alaska to search for confidence. I may not find it, or even need it, but I keep looking, all the same.

The gray, warm day cleared up and cooled down. I fish-tailed, mashed and crashed my way down Eldorado Creek, taking a multitude of breaks just to gaze toward the orange-frosted trees and think, "How did I get here? I'm so lucky to be here."

Even luckier is our plan for the weekend — a three-day cabin trip into the White Mountains, where there's no Internet and no way to hear whether the world ended while we were away. Yes, I may not gain confidence, but I've already found peace. 

Running on 3 cylinders

My first car was a 1989 Toyota Tercel, which I bought the summer after I graduated from high school. I called the car "Terry." It was my loyal partner in adventure — trips to the Southern Utah desert, snowboarding at Brighton, New Year's Eve 1998 in Portland. For my 21st birthday, my friends and I drove to Wendover, Nevada — a hedonistic outpost on the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats. The following day, while driving east on a long, flat straightaway of Interstate 80, I decided to test Terry's limits. Hot August sunlight shimmered across the white desert as I floored the gas pedal — 100 mph, 110 mph. All four of us in the car were screaming as I buried the needle beyond 115 mph for several seconds, until fear got the better of me.

I'll never know if that Salt Flats speed record was the catalyst, but after that, my underpowered, 12-year-old car with 190,000 miles went downhill fast. First the car started sputtering up hills, and then the gas mileage plummeted. Terry would vibrate horribly while idling, and then wouldn't start on its own. I had to park the car on hills and pop the clutch. While driving, I had to give the car gas at all times; otherwise the engine would die and wouldn't start again. It was quite a contortionist act to keep all three pedals pressed at stop lights. I quickly got used to Terry's quirks, but my sister borrowed the car once and is still traumatized by the experience. Finally I took Terry to see a mechanic, who told me one of the engine's cylinders had burned out. For a car that didn't have a lot of oomph to begin with, it was only going to continue to lose power. I'd eventually end up stranded, the mechanic said, unless I invested in a complete engine overhaul.

Sometimes I think about that Tercel when I am sputtering up a hill. I wonder whether, in the spirit of this seriously contorted analogy, I too have a burned-out cylinder. Maybe I buried my own needle one too many times. It was the death of Terry; I sold it to the Pick n' Pull for $150. Cars can be replaced. Humans have to work with their imperfect engines. Don't get me wrong; I'm grateful I'm still moving. But I need to reconcile the sputtering somehow, in case an engine overhaul never happens.

Since returning from Idaho, I've been mulling what to do about Alaska this year. The Iditarod is a hard thing to quit. I considered leaving my bike at home and starting with a sled and the intention to walk the 350. Perhaps I should delay attempting the Southern Route to Nome until I'm stronger and more ready, should that year ever arrive. If I was on foot, it would be easier to manage my pace and breathing. A 45-pound sled is often less strenuous to manage than an 80-pound bike. Hiking over the Alaska Range offers plenty of adventure without fretting about becoming dizzy and keeling over when I'm truly in the middle of nowhere, like the Shageluk Hills or the wind-blasted Yukon River. True, I've done no sled training and haven't run enough miles this winter to guess whether my body could handle that distance right now. By this point I had hoped to have at least one test sled run, but I haven't even found all of the pieces of my sled to put it together.

Over the weekend, we joined our friends Jorge and Wendy on a climb up to 12,000 feet on Niwot Ridge. Although I was the only one not dragging a sled, I still sputtered up the mountain in my snowshoes, and grumbled at Beat when he teased me for not keeping up. The sky was a dynamic mix of sun and cloud, and the snow was deep in the trees and scoured on the ridge. The weather was warm and almost eerily calm. It was a beautiful day that I probably would have enjoyed more if I wasn't trying to imagine it as "training." I mused about becoming a hobby hiker and never worrying how long these types of outings even take (for the record, 12 miles in just under seven hours.)

It's a strange experience, being so out of shape from a power standpoint, while subsequently feeling like I've never been stronger in terms of endurance. I wasn't sore after 19 hours on the Fat Pursuit course, wasn't tired after a night of sleep, and felt like I was just warming up when the seven-hour snowshoe hike ended. Sitting at home, I'm full of energy and feel like I could burst out the door at a full sprint. Of course the minute I set out, I start sputtering, and the negative feedback loop renews. But if I can avoid the sputtering, I genuinely believe I could just keep moving and not become weary.

So I'm torn about what to do about Alaska, as you can see, and wondering whatever happened to Terry the Tercel. That's the beautiful thing about the Pick n' Pull — parts can live on long after the car is gone.