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

by Jill Homer

  Each walking break ended in a snack break. Mike and I would turn our backs to the wind, pull apart face masks and hoods, yank the drinking hoses from nooks deep beneath our coats, and ingest as many calories as we could before the North Wind tore all the heat from our bodies. Full stops were tolerable for three or four minutes at most, so I had to choose which bodily function was most pressing — hunger, thirst, or elimination. After my third pee break, I announced that the task was simply too awful, so I would give up drinking for the remainder of the day. Calorie intake was something I needed to continue, because a bonk could lower my body temperature to dangerous levels. This is what it had come down to. Eating was an excruciating but necessary chore, dehydration was preferable to skin exposure, and stopping was more exhausting than pedaling, which itself was the most exhausting physical effort I’d ever experienced.

  “How far have we gone now?” Mike asked after three hours. Behind us, Shaktoolik was still visible on the horizon.

  “Six now.”

  Mike lowered his ruff and looked back toward town. “I hate that GPS.”

  Still, I felt more relieved with each passing mile. The North Wind was blowing thirty-five miles per hour and the windchill was below minus thirty, but we were managing well. As long as we were moving I felt reasonably well, although tired. My breathing was raspy but controlled. I was thirsty and hungry, but I no longer believed I was going to die. Traveling with Mike helped quiet my doom-fueled imagination and kept me anchored in reality, which was pretty bad, but could be so much worse.

  After four hours and eight miles, I caught my first glimpse of the shelter cabin. It was still little more than an abstraction — an orange square straddling a blurry line between white and blue expanses. I knew the shelter was still six miles away, so I said nothing as we descended from a shallow hill at slower than walking speed, then pedaled toward the shore of Reindeer Cove. Wanting to document the momentous occasion of wheels hitting sea ice, I reached into my vest to grab my camera. The pocket was empty. My stomach sank. I hadn’t used my camera since my first pee break, when Mike and I also took a few moments to document our ridiculous costumes. When I put the camera away, I must have missed the vest pocket and slipped it down my coat instead. There was no way of knowing where it fell out. It might be three hours back.

  “I dropped my camera,” I lamented to Mike. “And I have to go back for it. I promise I’ll only backtrack two miles at the most. If I don’t see it by that point, I’ll just have to be sad.”

  Logging bonus miles out here was an unpleasant idea, but I couldn’t give up on my camera without a fight. The device itself wasn’t important, but the card containing hundreds of images meant more to me than a finish in this race. Without documentation, all of the beauty would be left to memory, and all of my feelings and observations would have to be pieced together from scratch. Documentation is not just important to me, it’s vital. Otherwise life simply slips away, and then what’s left? I create narratives to make sense out of the chaos of life. It’s a selfish endeavor in a world bombarded with so many photos and recorded words that they’re losing all meaning. But this doesn’t matter all that much to me, because stories still give my life meaning. I won’t apologize, but I admit that this passion becomes problematic when survival depends on forward motion, but I opt to move backward just to preserve stories.

  Pedaling south, the North Wind shoved me violently. A thick layer of abrasive snow kept my speed down, and the wind was so powerful that I could scarcely steer straight. But even through shallow, slightly panicked breathing, I could pedal eight or nine miles an hour with ease. At least this confirmed that our extremely slow progress was a direct result of the wind, and not inexplicable inertia. Of course I couldn’t enjoy the tailwind, knowing every lost meter would have to be gruelingly regained. But for a few stolen moments, I was free.

  After a half mile, I spotted a black speck amid the white expanse. My heart leapt. Not only did I recover my camera, but it was much closer than I expected. I celebrated the small victory and turned to rejoin Mike, who was stumbling drunkenly while pushing his bike through ankle-deep drifts. When I caught up to him, he asked how much farther it was to the cabin.

  “About three miles,” I said, gesturing toward the orange structure that now appeared prominently on the peninsula.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “Right there, next to the cliff. It’s bright orange. See?” I’d been staring at that cabin for more than two hours, becoming increasingly more agitated when it never seemed any closer.

  Mike lifted his Chewbacca tunnel and squinted.

  “Wow, you really can’t see anything, can you?”

  “Is it that black thing over there?” Mike pointed at the relatively large landmass to the left of the cabin.

  “I think you’re looking at Little Mountain.”

  We reached the shelter just before five in the afternoon — seven hours and fourteen miles after leaving Shaktoolik. Fourteen miles was an unconscionably short day of travel, but neither of us was in the mood for race heroics. Even Mike was showing signs of deep exhaustion, with glazed eyes and slumped shoulders. Both of us staggered slightly as we entered the plywood structure and removed our headgear. This crossing had been easier than the previous year, but not by much. I still couldn’t conceptualize thirty-five more miles into this wind. We both agreed we needed to rest and replenish first.

  “If the wind dies during the night, we get up and go,” I suggested. “Otherwise, first light is our best chance to not get lost and wander out to sea on some random caribou hunter’s track.”

  “Out to sea” was a relative term. The next thirty-some miles stretched over salt water, but this far edge of the Norton Sound was slightly more protected from warm currents and volatile weather than the rest of the Bering Sea. This allowed a comfortably solid layer of ice to freeze and hold tight to the shoreline. Open water was just a few miles west, and it wouldn’t take much confusion to veer onto thin ice and disappear forever. The thought of navigating a featureless expanse of ice covered in just enough snow to mask fatal weaknesses, in the dark, was frightening beyond words. I was grateful to avoid the task, for now.

  The interior of Little Mountain cabin was significantly cleaner than the previous year, and the stove had been fixed. I put on my down coat and pants, then returned to the gale to gather snow for water. All of the surface snow had solidified, and my aluminum pot couldn’t even make a dent in the crust. Instead, I stomped a hole with my boot and hurried to scoop up shards of snow before the wind blew them away. Back inside, Mike and I fired up our stoves and settled in for a much-anticipated meal. As we shoveled hot mush in our mouths, we heard the high-pitched whine of a snowmobile approaching the cabin.

  The door swung open but the visitor remained on the porch as frigid wind rushed into the room. He wore a bright red snowmobile suit and a coyote fur headdress that draped down to his butt. He stepped into the cabin but left the door wide open, and removed his goggles and hat to reveal a shock of gray hair wrapped in a bandanna. He introduced himself as Lance, a snowmobile tourist from Minnesota. He started his trip in Fairbanks, and planned to drive north until he reached the Arctic coast. Mike offered Lance some Fireball-infused hot chocolate.

  “Wow, you two know how to travel in style!” Lance exclaimed. He told us about his wooden trailer that he built himself. It was heavy, his snowmobile was old, and the bumpy trails were murder on his back. He carried a tent but preferred to curl up in the animal-skin cover on top of his trailer, and loved sleeping outside. He asked how far it was to Koyuk.

  “About thirty-five miles,” I said. “Is that where you’re headed tonight?”

  “I’ll see how far I get,” Lance said. “I may just camp out a few miles from here.”

  “It’s open sea ice like this the whole way,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay here?”

  “Na,” Lance said.
“Cabins are too crowded and hot.”

  Mike explained what he and I were doing and the fun parts of the trail, but admitted that this section was just brutal. I joked about the wind blowing us back to Shaktoolik.

  “You want a ride?” Lance asked. “You could throw your bikes in the sled.”

  I pondered this for a moment — not because I was seriously considering his offer to help us cheat, but because my initial reaction to this suggestion was surprisingly strong repulsion. Even though I still believed that the North Wind could kill me, and even though my heart was filled with dread, the idea of skipping the sea ice felt like a fate worse than failure. I would rather turn around and admit defeat than take a ride with Lance. We all like to believe we’ll do the right thing, but when our ethics are tested during times of weakness, it’s interesting to gauge how we really feel. I may fail and fail again, but I will never cheat.

  “We can’t take rides,” Mike said. “But thanks for the offer.”

  Mike and I ventured outside to inspect Lance’s artisan trailer and decades-old machine, and waved as he puttered away. Twenty minutes later, I glanced out the doorway, and could still see Lance’s speck crawling over the white expanse.

  Mike decided to split two large logs that had been discarded outside, then built a small fire in the stove that was still too dilapidated to emit much heat. We hovered next to the open hatch, holding our rime-coated clothing over the flames. I expected these hours of waiting to pass slowly, but in a seeming instant the sun began to set. I watched pink light spread across Little Mountain from the tiny cabin window, then ventured outside once more to collect snow. A gust ripped the hood off my head, and I gasped amid a bombardment of ice pellets. It never stops being shocking, the North Wind. It never stops.

  The North Wind knocked loudly against the walls all night long. I tossed and turned, anticipating a lull that never arrived. By first light I had again worked myself up in a lather of doom, and packed up my bike as though I were getting my final affairs in order. Mike’s rear tire had gone flat overnight, and he handed me the old tube so I could patch the hole while he installed a new one. There was so much draft inside the cabin that I couldn’t detect airflow, and tried spitting on the rubber to look for air bubbles. Instead, every wad of spit froze within seconds. When I handed the tube back to Mike, it was still leaking and coated in a thick layer of frozen saliva.

  “Sorry,” I apologized sheepishly.

  As we applied our final layers of clothing, Mike observed me struggling to pull my goggles on.

  “How bad is your hand?” he asked, assuming this was the problem because I’d complained about it frequently.

  “It doesn’t take much for it to get cold, and once that happens my fingers go rigid and it’s more like a stump than a hand. When it’s warm, it’s painful and tingly. I’ve never had hand numbness like this. It’s scary.”

  Mike suggested that it was better to have a numb hand than painful knees — his main complaint.

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But a bad hand makes me pretty helpless. It wouldn’t take much to become stranded. Even a flat tire would be an ordeal … I’m not sure I could even change a tube.”

  The temperature inside the cabin was three below zero. As we pushed our bikes outside, Mike suggested the wind was blowing fifty miles an hour.

  “It’s probably more like thirty,” I said. Still, this was the light morning breeze. Pulling down my mask to take a drink of water felt like sticking my face into the blades of an industrial air conditioner.

  We dropped off the peninsula and surveyed the ice. The Iron Dog stakes had become sparse — most likely blown away by the wind — and I was fearful that we wouldn’t locate the trail. Barring this, we’d have to take a compass bearing and cross this volatile body of salt water on an untested line, which was terrifying. Mike was the first to spy an orange stake, and as we approached it, I noticed a blue flag attached to the end. Blue flags were the markers of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Ahead, we could see a line of these blue-flagged stakes. It was clear they had just been placed.

  “The Iditarod trail breakers,” I surmised. “They must have come through last night.”

  In the sled dog race, trail breakers travel a few hours ahead of the leading mushers, marking the trail as they go. They place extra stakes to warn of hazards, or in areas prone to whiteouts. It’s quite luxurious when you think about it, and Mike and I had become lucky benefactors of this service at exactly the right time. Indeed, there were stakes every fifty meters now, lined up along the wind-sculpted snow in a way that reminded me of birthday candles on a frosted sheet cake.

  “Geez, why do they need so many stakes?” Mike said. “Do you think they do this for a thousand miles?”

  “Probably,” I said. “Those mushers sure are spoiled.” But I certainly wasn’t complaining.

  The sea ice was an ocean frozen in motion. Snow dunes were considerably larger on the north side of the peninsula, and the surface crust frequently collapsed under our wheels. The trail broken by Iditarod volunteers a few hours earlier was churned-up sugar snow, and even less rideable than the virgin crust. Negotiating the unpredictable surface in gale-force headwinds required every molecule of mental energy I had left in my reserves. Our steering was too squirrelly to continue the illusion of drafting, and Mike and I sometimes split apart by hundreds of meters as we hunted for the best line through petrified waves.

  Similar to the previous day, I feared the chore of peeing more than the dangers of dehydration, and avoided drinking and eating until my vision began to blur. Mike and I regrouped to declare walking breaks, which continued to be slower and more strenuous than pedaling — but they were less mentally taxing. The best comparison I can make to this effort is small-craft seafaring — riding was like paddling a canoe into breaking waves as a strong current pulled us backward. In such volatile conditions it feels more difficult to pilot a craft than just swim, but when we stepped off our bikes, we were even weaker and more vulnerable to being buffeted by the wind.

  After several hours of staggering, we stopped for a real break. I ate a few nuts out of my top-tube bag, and then walked a few feet away to pee. Upon returning, I hoisted my bike and discovered the bag was empty — a quart-sized bag of trail mix, several candy bars, a cigarette lighter, and a chapstick were gone. As I scanned the surrounding snow, there was no evidence of any of it — not even a scattering of nuts. It was nearly two pounds of supplies, whisked into oblivion in a matter of seconds. I made a mental note to keep a firm grasp on everything.

  Throughout the day, traffic along the sea ice increased. First there were a few small planes, then a helicopter, and then another Cessna circling overhead. A snowmobile with two passengers passed, and the duo stopped to anchor a tripod and camera next to the trail.

  “What is all this?” Mike wondered as we took a snack break several hundred yards past the photographers.

  “The sled dog race,” I said. “They caught us.”

  Sure enough, the first dog team approached a minute later. We took the excuse to extend our break by waiting to cheer the first musher, although his approach took a lot longer than we expected. We’d become so accustomed to being passed by snowmobiles that we didn’t conceptualize the five-mile-per-hour pace of the huskies that were leading the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. I was shivering profusely by the time the dogs passed, heads lowered and tongues lolling out despite the fierce windchill. Their faces were coated in rime and their legs moved in long but protracted strides, as though we were watching a filmstrip in slow motion. The musher was hunched behind his sled but stood as he passed to yell something at the dogs.

  “Dogs are incredible athletes,” I said to Mike as the huskies trotted away at a quarter of the speed they were capable of running in better conditions. “I would kill to be able to run that fast.”

  The photographers passed behind the team and told us there were about fourteen more mile
s to Koyuk. I was convinced the remaining mileage was closer to seventeen. “How long do you think it will take?” Mike asked me.

  “Six hours,” I said. I believed it would be closer to eight.

  “Oh good,” Mike said. “So we’ll get there by nine.”

  A couple of hours went by before we saw the next dog teams — the father-son rivalry of Mitch and Danny Seavey, traveling together. The gap between first and second place surprised me, as I expected to be inundated with traffic once the sled dog race caught up to us. We hadn’t seen a single snowmobile since the photographers passed. The race leader was clearly executing a breakneck pace, and apparently few tourists or media were willing to venture out on the sea ice in this wind. Mitch and Danny were both sitting on platforms on the back of their sleds, with hooded heads lowered so we couldn’t see their faces. When they passed us at waist level, they didn’t even nod. I couldn’t say I blamed them. My own mood was turning sour as survival became more of a sure thing, which highlighted the tedium of pedaling against an invisible wall at two miles per hour.

  “Mushing seems like a pretty good gig,” Mike said. “Just sit on your butt.”

  “I don’t envy those guys either,” I said. “They probably haven’t slept since Monday. Cooking up dog food, doling out snacks, laying out beds of straw, having to take care of sixty-four feet. I have a hard time taking care of my own feet.”

  I respected mushers, but the huskies were more relatable to me. I watched them race toward the horizon with warm admiration. These were new emotions, as I’ve never been a dog person. A couple of biting incidents as a youth and chasing incidents as a cyclist fueled a prevailing fear of dogs, and I’d prefer that even the friendliest mutts left me alone. But these huskies were impressively driven — racing through this windy hell for nothing more than salmon mush, kibble, and the praise of their musher. Before I came to Alaska, I was one of those animal-rights supporters who assumed that sled dogs were manipulated and tortured into this task. But after walking their trails, witnessing their body language and sharing real interactions with them, I have no doubt that huskies simply love to run. They love running with an innocent passion that I can’t quite fathom, but aspire to achieve, all the same.