Into the North Wind: A thousand-mile bicycle adventure across frozen Alaska

by Jill Homer

  These were all positive developments, and yet uncertainty was like quicksand, sucking me deeper the more I struggled against it. I was thirty-six years old, and it seemed logical that my health and vitality had already passed its pinnacle. This was the downward arc of life. My body was aging and breaking down. Before 2015, the inevitability of my own decline had been a distant notion. Now it had a tangible presence in my lungs, and there was no denying that I was less fit than I once was, despite my best efforts. Declining fitness was just the first step on that rapidly steepening slope toward death. Like many people do when they ponder their own mortality, I kept my more outlandish dreams closer to my heart. There was still great adventure in me. There was Alaska.

  The Alaska dream deserves a backstory, because it’s not a particularly common dream, even for an endurance athlete’s mid-life crisis. The endeavor lies on the far fringes of what is already a fringe sport. “Winter ultra-distance cycling” doesn’t end up on many athletic resumes. The combination of long distance, absolute self-sufficiency, difficult trail conditions, remoteness, cold temperatures, and intense storms tend to be a strong deterrent. The Iditarod Trail Invitational is more of an expedition than a race. The average cyclist takes more than twenty days to reach Nome. Challengers need not only a strong desire to succeed and a willingness to suffer, but also the time, funds, and gear it takes to finish. Since the inaugural year of the thousand-mile race in 2000, sixty individuals have completed the route at least once. Thirty-nine rode a bicycle, fifteen were on foot, and four skied. Only seven were women.

  Although only a small number of athletes participate in the human-powered Iditarod, its roots run deeper than many modern sports. People first rode bikes long distances across the frozen North during the late nineteenth century, when prospective miners sought inexpensive modes of travel to gold fields during the Klondike Gold Rush. Northern gold fever coincided with an era when bicycles were the hottest new technology, not unlike television in the 1950s or personal computers in the 1980s. Bicycles were so trendy that newspapers in Seattle advertised Klondike-ready bikes, specifically designed to be ridden in extreme conditions. These models — dubiously upgraded “safety” bicycles with heavy steel frames, solid rubber tires and a fixed-gear drivetrain — sold by the hundreds, and several miners actually rode them across Alaska on tundra and ice.

  One of these men was Max Hirschberg, who rode from Dawson City to Nome in 1900. Hirschberg followed the “two-inch trail” set by the slim runners of dog sleds, pedaling the distance in two and a half months. Along the way he suffered from snow blindness, exhaustion, and exposure. He nearly drowned crossing the Shaktoolik River, struggling in frigid chest-deep water for two hours and losing all of his money — fifteen hundred dollars in gold dust — in the process. The bicycle’s chain broke while he was crossing the sea ice of the Norton Sound, so he rigged his coat as a sail and coasted with the wind on top of glare ice the rest of the way to Nome.

  The Gold Rush ended and most miners left Alaska, but the pathogens they brought with them remained. Alaska Natives had no natural defenses to these germs, so outbreaks of flu and diphtheria were rampant in villages. Nome was hit with a diphtheria epidemic in 1925, prompting the “Great Race of Mercy” as a relay of dog teams shuttled antitoxin serum to the village on Alaska’s remote western coast. Dozens of lives were saved thanks to the teams’ persistent progress in horrific weather and trail conditions. Mushers were hailed as heroes and their lead dogs were memorialized in bronze statues. Fifty years later, the serum run became an inspiration for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race.

  Flu and diphtheria outbreaks abated, but not before killing thousands of people. By the 1930s, populations in most rural Alaska towns were a fraction of what they were in previous decades, and land-based mail routes saw less traffic as planes became more widely used. The largest of these mail routes was the Iditarod Trail, which connected the port town of Seward to villages in the Alaska Range, the Interior, the Norton Sound, and Nome. The Iditarod Trail had all but disappeared when the snowmobile was invented in the 1960s, and the use of sled dogs began to decline rapidly. A homesteader named Joe Redington Sr. fretted that Alaska was losing touch with its cultural heritage. Redington was a sled dog advocate, and believed the tradition of mushing could be preserved through sport. He was a quixotic figure with big dreams, and went straight to the most outlandish: A thousand-mile race across Alaska on the historic Iditarod Trail. Redington overcame a fantastic number of obstacles to see his dream through to reality. The Iditarod Trail was restored and the first Iditarod Sled Dog Race was held in 1973.

  As sled dog racing gained popularity in Alaska during the 1980s, Redington challenged a local group of cyclists to organize their own race on the Iditarod Trail, competing in what was then still a fledging sport: mountain biking. The first Iditabike race was held in 1987, with twenty men and six women taking on the 210-mile challenge. Two riders from outside Alaska set a blistering pace for the first forty miles of packed trail on what these days would be regarded as terribly skinny tires for snow riding. Farther out, trail conditions worsened, and the cyclists spent the next fifteen hours pushing their bicycles sixty miles to the halfway checkpoint. Thirteen of the twenty-six starters went on to finish the race — the winner in thirty-three hours and the first woman in forty-two.

  Iditabike changed to Iditasport and continued to draw respectable fields through the late eighties and nineties. The organizer added multiple disciplines — foot and ski — and longer distances — a 350-mile race to McGrath in 1997, and the thousand-mile race to Nome in 2000. The race’s organization fell apart in 2002, but one racer who had finished the 350-mile distance four times was committed to keeping the event alive. With the help of several other racers, Bill Merchant formed the Iditarod Trail Invitational — a no-frills event with no required gear, no set course, limited support, and no prizes. Merchant’s wife, Kathi, now manages most of the logistics of this event, while Bill is happier with the title of “trail crew,” working behind the scenes.

  I stumbled onto this scene, largely by accident, shortly after I moved to Homer, Alaska, in 2005. While shopping at an outdoor retailer in Anchorage, I came across a brochure for a hundred-mile bike race on the Iditarod Trail, the Susitna 100. I had no experience with endurance sports and no idea that riding bikes on snow was even a thing, but I was captivated. I signed up for the event, trained through my first dark winter in Alaska, and finished the grueling slog in twenty-five hours — soaking wet, dehydrated, depleted, and exhausted. Everything about the experience should have been a deterrent. Winter endurance cycling is one of those activities that looks fun from a distance, but in practice, actually is not — similar to heavy drinking. And yet, similar to heavy drinking, it continues to draw people back, almost against their will. Is winter endurance cycling an addiction? I’m inclined to say no, and yet I can’t deny that I was hooked.

  Since 2005, every year has involved some form of racing a snow bike or racing on the Iditarod Trail. I completed my first 350-mile race to McGrath in 2008, and dropped out of the race with a severe case of frostbite in 2009. I completed the Susitna 100 on foot in 2011 and 2012, and went on to challenge the 350-mile distance on foot in 2014. By 2015, I’d raced more than a thousand miles on the Iditarod Trail alone, and six hundred more on other Alaska routes. Through all of this, the full thousand-mile distance was always a pipe dream — a step too far. It was too remote, too dangerous, too much time in the cold, and too difficult. I told myself I didn’t want this. And yet, I can’t deny that I did.

  Finally voicing this desire and signing up for the full distance was a major investment of everything I’d committed to the sport over the past decade. That alone may be why it was so difficult to let go. My training progressed nicely as fall settled into winter. Pulmonary function tests continued to show slow improvements. Beat and I spent Christmas in Fairbanks on a gear-testing trip that inspired confidence. In early January 2016, we’d both signed up for
a two-hundred mile snow bike race in Idaho. Organized by an Iditarod cyclist and southern route record-holder named Jay Petervary, the Fat Pursuit followed groomed snowmobile trails through the Greater Yellowstone area.

  Beat was already feeling uncertain about riding a bicycle on the Iditarod Trail. Although our Fairbanks trip went well, he had some issues with cold feet and hands. The forty-five below cold snap of the previous year was still fresh in his memory, and he expressed concern about managing a bicycle in temperatures that low. The lowest temperature I’d experienced on a bicycle was thirty-five below, and I conceded that my own experience was limited. But I’d managed to keep myself warm then, and figured I could survive.

  We traveled to Idaho in hopes of better testing conditions, but temperatures were perplexingly mild — overnight lows of fifteen above, with highs in the thirties. The Fat Pursuit had a required gear list, so our bikes were loaded with sleeping bags, stoves, and extra food. I hadn’t taken the time to cull my gear, reasoning that I needed the training, and the load was nearly as heavy as my full Iditarod set-up. The race started in a hotel parking lot at 5:30 p.m., just in time to catch the pink rays of sunset before darkness cloaked snow-frosted pine forests and the granite spires of the Tetons. Beat surged ahead with the rest of the pack, and I fell off the back almost immediately.

  “It’s okay,” I assured myself out loud as I pedaled atop soft snow along a wide power line corridor. “Steady pace, deep breaths.” But inside, I agonized over my position. It was far too soon to be in last place.

  The route veered away from the power line easement onto a narrow cross-country ski trail, then wove around streams to cross a valley. I could see cyclists’ red taillights blinking in the distance, and became more dismayed at how far ahead the closest one appeared. I was clearly crawling. This was embarrassing. I stood out of the saddle to add more power to my pedal stroke, and chased the taillights into low-lying hills. I was winded even on the flatter terrain, and then the trail began to climb and descend a series of steep drainages. My option was to either max out my effort to pedal to the top, or get off and push my bike. Anxiety steered me to the first option. After three hills, no matter how hard I gasped, all of the air seemed to disappear before it reached my lungs. My vision flickered briefly and I panicked, throwing my bike down and kneeling on the trail until I caught my breath.

  This just wasn’t right. I was three months into Iditarod training that had been going well, and six months into recovery from the Tour Divide and pneumonia. My allergy season had long since passed — even if the weather was somewhat mild for Idaho, it was still the middle of winter. I’d only been racing, slowly, for three hours. Many of my training rides were far longer than this. There was no reason to have such pronounced issues with my breathing so early in the race — unless I had a more serious problem than I’d anticipated.

  I was concerned about my overall health and the implications of pushing my lungs too hard. But I also knew the Fat Pursuit was my last chance to prove myself. I had too many failures. If I couldn’t pull this one off, then I had no chance of completing the ride to Nome. The Iditarod Trail Invitational was less than seven weeks away, five times as long, and probably ten times as difficult, if not more.

  “Breathe, just breathe,” I chanted. It would become my mantra.

  Just as it hadn’t for any of my prior last-ditch efforts, my breathing did not improve. I no longer cared that I was so far behind the field, but I still couldn’t ride slowly enough to soothe the huffing or slow the hyperventilation. The course veered steeply downhill to a waterfall on an out-and-back journey of more than three miles. On my way out, I didn’t see anyone returning. I was at least an hour behind the next rider, and likely falling farther behind. The worst part was that I still needed to reach the first checkpoint at mile ninety of the course, which was still sixty miles away. I leaned against a metal railing — part of a scenic overlook that was closed for the winter — and gazed toward the quiet roar of a waterfall that I could not see through the darkness.

  “Well, that’s just great,” I muttered, speaking aloud as though I were scolding an indignant child who never learned. “You do these things to yourself.”

  The night passed as these breathless hours do, in tedious desperation. I overheated despite the fifteen-degree temperature, so I removed my hat, gloves, and outer coat, leaving only a base layer and light jacket to shield my body from the icy breeze. When a chill set in I felt grateful — because it was invigorating, because it distracted from my breathing difficulties, and because warm blood rushed from my extremities to my core, which almost felt like strength.

  The route crossed the Warm River — which was mostly frozen — and climbed into the foothills toward a ridge that would top out above seven thousand feet. I stepped off the bike and pushed for miles. In doing so, I actually managed to catch a handful of riders. One was sleeping, two were hunched over their stoves and melting snow for drinking water, and one woman was weaving all over the wide trail. She was pedaling slower than I was walking. I thought my condition was improving, but when she asked how far it was to the first checkpoint, I could barely speak the words between gasps.

  “Bout … thirty … miles. I think.”

  It began to snow, and then the flakes started to fall hard and fast. The hat went back on even though my body was overheating again. A thickening layer of fresh snow made progress even slower. The trail had been soft to begin with, and several inches of new snow buried the lower rims of the bike. The effort is similar to plowing through mud or sand — any time surface resistance deepens, energy expenditure increases at what feels like an exponential rate.

  My mind slipped backward, drifting to the past in re-imagined memories that nearly tricked me into believing they were real. I was back on the Tour Divide, in 2009, riding the sandy ATV trail where it drops into the Warm River Valley just a few miles away. Aspen trees towered overhead, with green leaves fluttering in the breeze. The sandy moguls had reminded me of the Iditarod Trail, and I rode them like a BMX rider positioning herself to catch big air. I was strong then, and remembering this invincibility caused me to sigh. But then it was 2015, just after sunset when I left Island Park and resolved to ride until I dropped from fatigue or oxygen deprivation or both. A drought year had dried the sand. It was churned up and deep, like a bottomless bowl of sugar, slower than even the slowest snow. I cried that night. Actually, during the 2015 Tour Divide, I cried nearly every night. But that night I continued to cry as I drifted to sleep in my bivy sack, hip throbbing from a recent crash on the sand, and lungs filled with dust and phlegm.

  I snapped back to the present as snowflakes brushed against my eyebrows and nose. The route launched into a long descent, and the new snow was slippery and uneven. The bike was all over the trail. I could scarcely hold on, but the adrenaline did offer a fresh hit of badly needed energy. This didn’t translate to oxygen, though, and as soon as the trail veered upward again, I had to step off the bike so I could breathe.

  Some fifteen hours after the race started, the sky was still dark — because it was January — but strips of violet light were beginning to appear through the trees. Snowfall had ceased, but low clouds remained. Dawn came in a barely perceptible lightening of grays. I kept looking at my watch and attempting to calculate arrival times. The first hard cutoff wasn’t technically until West Yellowstone at mile 120, but I had to gain some certainty that I could make it. I wasn’t going to force my ragged lungs into thirty more miles over the Continental Divide if all was doomed.

  The failure math checked out; even my slow pace would suffice, but I wasn’t going to be able to rest. Similar to UTMB, it meant two nights without sleep, and no guarantees that my condition wouldn’t worsen over that length of time. It was daunting. My ego, common sense, and the guilt-ridden inner comfort-seeker were locked in a fierce battle to either drive my body forward or convince it to quit. Despite being outnumbered, ego was winning.

&nb
sp; “Just go to West Yellowstone,” I said aloud. “It will take all day, but at least you can make it that far.”

  First I had to reach checkpoint one, which was a tent camp in the woods, ten miles from the nearest road. The trail returned to a power line easement, where I could see ahead for miles. All was gray sky, black woods, and white ground, with only hints of mountains through the fog. The horizon seemed to prove that I was not making any progress, even though my legs continued to turn the pedals and my throat was raw from hard breathing. I pedaled harder, but nothing happened. The next five miles could have taken one hour or seventeen. I lost track. I lost heart.

  Beat was standing next to a small propane heater when I arrived at the tent camp. He had been there for almost three hours, and continued to wait for me because he was worried.

  “You … need to go,” I wheezed. “I … am crawling. You’ll … never … make the … cutoff … if … you stay … with me.”

  “How are you doing?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Breathing. … Having … trouble. Again.”

  “I knew it,” he said. I could see he was shivering in his down coat and tights. Morning temperatures were in the twenties, and he’d been standing outside in his damp clothing.

  “You … shouldn’t have waited,” I breathed out. The wind was returning to my lungs, slowly, only because I’d stopped.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I’m going to head for West … Yellowstone,” I said. “Need to at least try. I can’t … stay here long. But I need more water. Maybe … some soup.”