On a warm and sunny Saturday morning I found myself lining up with Tom in the Chena Hot Springs parking lot along with 25 or so other fellow competitors at the start of the “AlaskaCross Hot Springs 100”. The Hot Springs 100 is a human powered race from Chena hot springs to Circle hot springs. The rules are pretty simple – “No pack animals(except yourself), no caches of gear, carry all gear from start to finish, no sabotage”. It is a “wilderness” race, with no set route, so folks are free to choose their own path. The options include floating sections of Birch Creek, a wild and scenic river, and several possibilities for getting to and from the river. Some people take an entirely overland route and skip out on any floating. I had sounded out Ned and he had given me a bit of route advice. Our basic plan was to head up the Yukon Quest trail until it reached the higher country and then take a ridge down to the Harrington Fork a mile or so before it hits Birch Creek. We would then float down Birch Creek for 45 miles or so, until we reached Harrison Creek, where we would take out, hike up the creek until we encountered a road that leads to Circle Hot Springs. After a brief pre-race chat by the organizer Mark Ross, we were off! The eventual winner of the race, Gerry Hovda, took off running and that was the last we saw of him. He would eventually finish in a little over 21 hours by taking an entirely overland route. The rest of the pack headed out of the parking lot at a brisk walk.
For most people the first quarter mile was spent hiking on the road. The “standard” options involve taking the Yukon Quest trail, or the Far Mountain trail to start with, and both of these routes require a bit of walking on Chena Hotsprings Road before reaching their starting points. The first 15 minutes of the race were pretty interesting – folks were peeling off to the left or right as they sought various options for getting that extra “edge”. Or just took wrong turns – several people took side trails off the main road that don’t head anywhere useful. A little more than half of the racers seemed be heading up the Far Mountain route, which was fine with me, as it meant fewer people on our route. By the time I reached the start of the Quest Trail folks had spread out and I could no longer see anyone. The next several hours the only signs of the other racers were footprints.
The Yukon Quest trail was surprisingly pleasant. I had expected a boggy wet march of doom, but was surprised by how fast the walking was.
There were a fair number of shallow stream crossings..
As well as a number of bogs that needed to be crossed..
But nothing that was very difficult and for the most part it was pretty fast walking. Eventually we passed our first fellow competitor, Larry, who was using his paddle shaft as a walking stick in a very impressive, Galdalf-like manner.
Larry would be the first of three racers we would run into on the trail. It was pretty surprising how remote the race felt – besides the first several minutes of the race we rarely encountered any of the other racers.
We hiked up the Quest trail for 8 miles or so, then headed up a nearby ridge to hit the high country and start our hike down to Birch Creek. The hiking up high was pretty fantastic on beautiful hard and flat ridges that were superb for fast walking.
Shortly after hitting the ridge we passed the race organizer, Mark Ross, who appeared to be having fun, though said he was a bit dehydrated.
After hiking six miles or so on the ridges we started our decent to the river, and alas the hiking got a bit less idyllic, with about a mile of pounding though burned black spruce tussock fields. Eventually we made it to Birch Creek, just in time to see the eventual third place finishers Drew and Bob float by.
They had kept on the main quest trail, and Drew said he was three hours ahead of last year. We inflated and put in. In hindsight we should have walked to the main river, as this section was pretty shallow and pretty marginal for floating. Eventually we reached the main river and got the first surprise of the float – the water was moving pretty slowly. If we paddled hard we could sustain 3.5 mph – it was going to be a long float!
The next 14 hours or so were spent floating. My view for those hours looked pretty much like this:
This is a pretty long time to be in a packraft – after six hours or so my legs started cramping up and it was periodically a bit painful. We ended up stopping twice to stretch our legs and durring our final stop we were passed by Mark Ross.
This was my first all night pack rafting experience and it was pretty interesting. The light on the water was fantastic.
Durring the early morning it started getting cold enough that a small amount of ice had formed on my backpack.
At this point I started holding Tom back a bit, as my hands were starting to get cold enough it was difficult to paddle hard. I should have packed an additional layer – I had all my layers on and still had to paddle fairly hard to keep warm. Fortunately it was not too long before the sun came up, and brought with it warmer temperatures.
Eventually we reached our takeout on Harrison Creek, packed up our rafts, and started hiking to the finish line.
For the first 5 miles or so we followed Harrison Creek, going from gravel bar to gravel bar and occasionally taking game trails though the woods. Eventually we found a faint ATV trail along the creek and followed it to the start of the road that leads to Circle Hot Springs. The road provided fantastically fast hiking, but was a bit hard on the feet.
In the last 6 miles or so I started getting hotspots on the bottoms of my feet, but I pressed on, which in retrospect was a bad idea – if I had stopped to change socks I could have escaped without any blisters. Live and learn I guess.
We arrived at the finish line to learn that Mark Ross has beat us by 12 minutes – which is pretty amazing since we had been going for around 28 hours. We ended up in 8th and 9th place, which is not bad. The finish line is at Circle Hot Springs, which sadly is boarded up and not open. I have fond memories of soaking in the pool went it was still in operation – it was fantastic, with wonderful hot water without the “hot springs” odor that most hot springs in the interior have. We hung out in the parking lot for a while lolling about, drying our feet, and generally relaxing while waiting for our ride. Eventually Ms Marsh showed up and we headed back to Fairbanks.
This race was a pretty interesting and rewarding experience. Surprisingly it was mostly fairly fun and free of any death slogs or doom of any sort. We didn’t have any interesting wildlife encounters, though Tom was buzzed by an eagle, and we had a wolf howl nearby. The banks of the river were lined with lots of wolf tracks. In the late evening a small helicopter spent several hours following the river and flying back and forth overhead. Initially we were a bit worried that something had gone wrong and they were searching for someone. If anyone knows the story on the helicopter it would be great to know what it was doing.
There are a number of things I would do differently next time:
- Have a pack setup that I could run with. The last 12 miles of the race and the first 5 miles and a number of other sections could be jogged without too much effort. My pack setup was a bit too bouncy for running. A setup that allowed me to jog would be a major improvement.
- Too much food – I brought 5 lbs of food, and that was much too much. I ate a little less than 2lbs, so next time I will take a bit less food
- Change those socks – I could have spared myself blisters by changing my socks as soon as we hit the dirt road.
- Trim the pack weight a bit. A slightly lighter pack would have made the hiking a bit faster. As it was my pack was 25lbs with water. I think with a bit of thinking and less food I could have gotten the weight down to 20lbs.
- Plan other route options – we had lined out three options for getting to Birch Creek, but only one from the creek to the road system. If we had spent a bit of time figuring out different options for getting to the road system leading to Circle Hot Springs, we could have taken out earlier and improved our time considerably due to the slow floating on Birch Creek.
A few things worked particularly well durring the race. One of them was the Steripen – once we figured out we could treat water while walking it was amazing time saver – just fill your bottle, zap, and drink, all while walking! This great for staying hydrated without having to carry a lot of water.
I would (and will) do it again, in a heart beat.
Here is a map of our route – click to bring up the large version in its readable glory.
A super big thanks to Ms Marsh – thank you ever so much for picking us up at Circle Hot Springs. It was truely delightful to nap in the truck while you drove us back to town – Thank You! And an additional thank you to Mike for driving us out to Chena Hot Springs – thanks!
