A bit of a warning – this post is on the long side.. ok actually its very long side..
Part 1 can be found here.
In the morning we woke up to a wonderfully clear day in Ruby, with what appeared to be a tailwind – hurrah!
After a breakfast of pancakes and some final packing, Bill, Kyle, and I headed out.
I had been dreading riding on the Yukon river, as I have never found traveling on rivers to be all that exciting. Too much flat endless white stuff, stretching out seemingly forever in front of me.. It always seems to like I am not going anywhere.
We did hear via the grapevine that Phil H., who should have been two days ahead of us at this point, had suffered some bike trouble just outside Galena, and had lost half a day there, but had apparently made good time.
We left The River’s Edge B&B, dropped down on the river, and headed downriver to Galena.
The ride from Ruby to Galena was very fast. The Yukon River was not what I expected, with lots more bare ice, silt, and rocks than I anticipated.
Soon after we left Ruby, Bill zoomed off ahead, while Kyle and I chugged along. I felt a bit guilty at this point, as I think I was slowing Kyle down a bit – he is definitely a faster rider than I am.
The ride to Galena was mostly uneventful, besides some funny signs warning about a “bump” just outside town.
The bump appeared to be a slight bulge in the ice, which was pretty funny, as the ice is anything but flat, and the trail on the river was filled with larger bumps.
We were meet just outside Galena by Bill and Larry, a local who was following the race, who directed us to a local B&B which had a room set up for the racers to crash in. Bill had wandered around Galena a bit, and had picked us up microwave hamburgers, which tasted awesome!
We spent the next hour or so repacking our bikes from our drop boxes, mellowing out, and eating. Before we took off, Larry called ahead to Nulato, the next stop on the route, and got us permission to crash on the floor of the Catholic Church.
Leaving Galena
The ride from Galena to Nulato was pretty interesting — a bit of river, a bit of swamp, a few narrow sections of nice trail looping though the trees, and tons of long, narrow beaver ponds.
I think this section is normally on the Yukon, but the river hadn’t frozen up completely, and the trail was routed overland.
About halfway from Galena to Koyukuk we started seeing lots of snowmachines, and we eventually bumped into the owner of the Galena B&B. After thanking her, and talking for a bit, we learned there was a basketball tournament that evening in Koyukuk, and folks were headed back to Galena and Nulato.
We passed Koyukuk in the early evening, all lit up in the dark, and it was back on the Yukon. About halfway between Nulato and Koyukuk we stopped briefly and then noticed there were lots of eyes staring down at us, reflecting the lights of our headlamps. Kyle thought they might be wolves, but it is hard to say. Regardless, they didn’t seem too traumatized by us, and kept watching.
Just before arriving at Nulato, my bike made a grinding noise, and my gears started freewheeling without any resistance — not a good sign. I took my wheel off, and was amazed to see the lower 10 gears on my cassette had fallen off. I fiddled with it a bit, but I wasn’t sure how to get it back on. I was pretty sure at this point I was hosed. After shifting around a bit I found my lowest gear still worked, and after telling Kyle and Bill to continued on to Nulato, I slowly followed them, spinning away. We ended up spending the night in a Catholic Church, getting a wonderful meal cooked for us by Brother Bob at 1am, and a fantastic pancake breakfast at in the morning.
Brother Bob, and a fellow who gave me some bailing wire.
Bill, who owns the Trek Store in Anchorage, helped me try to put the cassette back together, and we set off in the morning, only to have my cassette fall apart again immediately.
We headed back to Brother Bob’s, where we fiddled with it a bit more, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the lower 10 gears of the cassette to stay on. Eventually, I gave up, and told Kyle and Bill to head out.
This was the lowest part of the race for me — I was pretty sure at this point I was going to end up flying back to Fairbanks to swap out the wheel. I had been told there was a 11am and 3pm flight in from Fairbank, and started spinning slowly up to the airport, which is on a bluff overlooking the river, or so said my gps. After a bit of 3mph spinning, I quickly realized that as it was just after 11am, and I had seen the flight land at 20 minutes ago, I just wasn’t going to make it.
So I made the demoralizing trip back to Brother Bob’s porch to hang out and wait until the next flight. While I was waiting, I took the cassette apart again several more times, and eventually figured out the cassette only fit on in one orientation, and once I got it lined up correctly, the lower 10 gears snapped on – and I was back in business! It was still unclear how it snapped off in the first place, but it seemed solid, and after a few hard mashing sprints to test it out, it looked like it would hold up, and I set off to go catch up with Kyle and Bill. I did pick up a length of baling wire — if worse came to worst I could wire it together, which would hopefully hold until I reached the nearest town.
The ride to the next town of Kaltag was fast, but very uneventful, and a bit boring.
This was the Yukon I was dreading — flat and seemingly endless. Fortunately, it was warm, I had a slight tailwind, and the riding was very good. I tried to put on an audiobook, but my player was malfunctioning, alas.
Eventually I made it to Kaltag, where I just missed the Post Office closing, and ended up stopping by the store to grab some snacks — mainly a bag of bagels, two small containers of yogurt, and a small jar of peanut butter. I ate two bagels and the yogurt which was fantastic for dinner, and after asking for directions on the way out of town from a young guy manning the store, I headed out.
The next section of trail was the Kaltag portage, which leaves the Yukon river (yay!) and heads overland to Unalakleet, on the coast. As I was heading out of town, I was very surprised to see Kyle and Bill riding on a road paralleling me a mile or so off, then watched as they turned off and continued down the Kaltag airport’s runway. I turned around and headed after them, but quickly decided it wasn’t going to happen — it was going to take a while for me to get to the trail they were on, and with that lead, I wasn’t going to catch them. I could see trail markers on the trail I was on so I knew I was headed the right way, and headed back down the trail. A mile or so out of town, I remembered I was supposed to call the ITI organizers when we leave the Yukon river, and stopped to get out my cell. After wasting a bit of time screwing around with my phone I discovered I couldn’t get cell reception, gave up and headed back down the trail. After 20 minute or so, I ran into Bill and Kyle – hurrah! They were super surprised to see me and were pretty happy my bike was working again. They had taken a long break at Kaltag, and were pretty well rested, and quickly disappeared down the trail.
Hopefully I would catch up with them again at one of the shelter cabins along the trail. At the first cabin, the Tripod Flats cabin, I could smell smoke, and knew they were inside, warming things up – hurrah! After a nice evening of dinner and a good night’s sleep, we headed off to Unalakleet.
The Kaltag Portage trail is pretty spectacular — very scenic, and very beautiful. The trail was in fantastic shape, and it was warm and calm, with clear skies and fantastic views. I think this was one of the highlights of the race for me.
About 15 miles or so outside Unalakleet we ran into some bikers headed the other direction.
It turned out two guys were on a overnight trip to Old Woman Cabin to spectate and say hi to the ITI racers as they passed by. After a bit of chatting we parted ways, and we continued on. Unalakleet is famous for Peace on Earth pizza, and we were determined to make it there before they closed!
As we neared Unalakleet, the snow started disappearing, and soon we were riding on bare ice and dirt.
Soon we were riding down the main street of Unalakleet, where I stopped to get some more white gas and some ice cream for later, while Bill and Kyle attempted to figure out where the Post Office was. I came out and they were chatting away with some folks who had been following the race and had come out to say hi as we passed through. They directed us to the Post Office, where we had drop boxes waiting for us. I had been warned the Unalakleet Post Office wasn’t the most friendly, so I was expecting trouble, but as we were waiting in line to get our boxes, the postmaster walked up and excitedly started talking to us about the race, and before we knew it he was outside with us looking at our bikes, and asking questions.
As we talked to him, there was suddenly a deep voice from seemingly out of nowhere asked us if we would like some coffee. After a quick bit of searching for the source of the voice I looked up to see a man leaning out of a small second storey window above the PO looking down at us. I passed on the coffee, but thanked the disembodied voice for the thought. After a bit more chatting with the super friendly postmaster, we headed off to have pizza.
We arrived at Peace on Earth only to discover they were closed for another 45 minutes. Two phone calls later the manager arrived, opened up, and we sat down to unpack our drop bags, and gorge on pizza. The pizza was fantastic, though I was sort of overwhelmed by all the food and supplies in my drop box. I felt a bit like a child on Christmas Day, confronted by too many new toys and unable to decide which to play with first. I only had a limited space on my bike, and picking what I was going to take with me was a bit overwhelming.
Eventually, we dragged ourselves out of pizza heaven, and headed down the trail. Our plan was to stop at the Foothills shelter cabin. The ride out of town was gorgeous, and I got my first real views of ocean from the west coast of Alaska — one of the highlights of the trip!
There wasn’t a lot of snow, and the trail mainly seemed to consist of a strip of ice in ATV ruts, but it was scenic. I was pretty surprised how hilly it was — we seemed to either be going up or down, without a lot of flat in between.
Perhaps I had been spoiled by all that flat river.. We arrived at the cabin in early evening, warmed it up, and enjoyed leftover pizza, and for Bill and I, icecream. Kyle is alas, lactose intolerant, which I wasn’t aware of when I picked up the ice cream as an evening snack.
In the morning we headed out and made our way to Shaktoolik. As we left the foothills, we headed out across a lagoon to the village, and finally hit some real wind. This was my first encounter with any strong wind so far, and I quickly had to rethink a few things. First, I needed more layers on my lower body, and second, while the ruff I had on my puffy jacket was awesome, wearing my puffy jacket while biking at these fairly warm temperatures (teens F) made me much too hot.
At Shaktoolik we biked through town, eventually finding the school.
After asking if it was okay to come inside, we came in, and talked to the kids, had lunch, and re-shuffled our layers for the next section, the ride to Koyuk across the sea ice of Norton Bay. The students and teachers were super friendly, and very excited about the upcoming Iditarod dog race. I ducked out briefly to run across to the store, where I wandered around in a daze, overwhelmed by all the food options. Eventually I grabbed some junk food and snacks, and joined Bill and Kyle in an empty cafeteria for lunch.
I took the time to swap my ruff over to my shell jacket. When I purchased the ruff, I was given the option of setting it up so I could move it from jacket to jacket. I had been given mixed advice about this – several people told me it was a good idea, and others had told me it just made it heaver and harder to deal with, and I would not want to switch it anyway. The option to switch it turned out to be pretty awesome — the ruff turned out to work great on my shell, and it was way too warm (around 5F for most of our ride from Shaktoolik to Koyuk) to ride in my puffy jacket.
The ride to Koyuk was neat, but took forever, and I soon got sick of the novelty of riding on sea-ice.
The wind, while not blowing super hard, was pretty relentless blowing into our faces, and the trail was mostly firm, but had sections where it was too soft or the crust wasn’t strong enough to hold my weight. Bill and Kyle had the advantage of being much lighter than I am, and could float over the soft stuff like angels, while I bogged down like a pig wallowing in mud. The final 10 miles to Koyuk seemed to take forever. We could see the lights of Koyuk, but they just didn’t seem to get any closer. Finally we arrived, and connected up with someone affiliated with the school. Alas, I forget his name — he was super helpful though, fantastic guy! He let us in, and set us up in the preschool room, where we made ourselves at home.
Photo by Kyle Amstadter
Koyuk really reminded me of my home town of Skagway. We arrived at around 10pm, and there was a basketball game going on, giving me flashbacks of being a kid in a small-town in Alaska. The school even had the same feel..
In the morning we headed out, making our way back onto the sea-ice, though this trail seemed much firmer and the riding was much faster. The ride from Koyuk to Elim was a surprise — it was really interesting, with diverse scenery, with sea ice, forested hills, wide open, and wind blasted fields.
Bill got a bit antsy about the idea of missing his drop box waiting for him in the Elim Post office, and possibly a bit frustrated with my slow pace, and he took off. Hopefully Kyle and I would meet up with him again in Elim. Eventually I stopped and added a bit more air to my tires, and immediately I sped up considerably. Kyle and Bill were both running tubeless setups, and I was pretty amazed by the difference they had in their rolling resistance. I definitely had to do more tire pressure adjustment. I think tubeless fat bike wheels must just roll easier than their tubed counterparts. Some tubeless wheels are in my future, I think!
As Kyle and I neared Elim we started seeing signs of civilization — in this case, lots and lots of boats, of various sizes and states of repair.
The last mile into Ellim involved, much to my surprise, biking up a huge hill on a plowed road, but it did provide some awesome views of the ocean.
Elim was a fantastically welcoming town. As we biked, a fellow on an ATV stopped to ask us if we needed directions, and he pointed us towards the school, where Kyle and I had drop boxes waiting for us. Unbeknownst to me, my wife Nancy had called a village elder she knows from the Alaska Forum on the Environment conferences to let her know I was coming in, and she had a group of kids waiting for us to direct us to the school, and help me find the store. Just outside the store I ran into a lady who told me she was just checking to make sure the store was open and was going to check to see the school was open, as Nancy Fresco’s (my wife) husband was biking in. I laughed and introduced myself as Nancy Fresco’s husband, and thanked her. It was surreal experience, being escorted through the village store by a group of 3rd to 5th graders all asking me questions about what I was doing, while I was asking them questions about life in Ellim, all while trying to quickly pick out food from the small but still overwhelming selection in the store. On the upside, I eventually just started asking the kids to help me find stuff, and once I started that I quickly got what I needed and was ready to check out. Just after I checked out, the checker handed me the phone, saying it was for me , and it was the village elder, Emily Murray, calling to let me know my drop box was at the school, and the door was open, and I should just come in and get it, and make myself at home. A fantastic welcome to Elim!
We spend a few hours in the school, snacking and talking to the principal and his family about life in Elim. The discussion reminded me a lot of growing up in Skagway, with the same problems of being an authority figure in a small town, and being unable to escape that role in such a small community. Eventually we pried ourselves away, and headed off to White Mountain, though not before calling ahead to Joanna, a local in White Mountain, which was hopefully our destination for the evening. Joanna has an almost mystical reputation in the ITI. Folks always talk about how fantastic it is to arrive at her house at White Mountain, and I was eager to experience this!
The next section was a bit of a blur. We headed out onto the sea ice briefly, where the for the first time I could actually see the ocean from the ice I was biking on, which was a bit disconcerting.
Fortunately we headed back onto land, where we headed up and over some large hills, before descending down to Golovin Bay and across to Golovin. Golovin Bay was a bit surreal. Last year some of the Irondog folks had major trouble here. I think one team ended up ditching their snowmachines in the middle of the lagoon in several feet of water and having to walk to shore. Fortunately, the ice seemed thick and sound, and the trail was more of a hard-packed runway than almost anything we had been on for most of the way so far. We zoomed across the bay to Golvin, where we briefly stopped out of the wind for a snack, then biked across town and onto more ice for the final stretch to White Mountain. The ride from Golovin to White Mountain seemed to take forever. Although we where making good time, it just didn’t seem like we were going anywhere, possibly due to the featureless terrain and darkness. A few miles outside White Mountain, a snowmachine pulled up, and a woman introduced herself as Joanna. We were unbelievably excited to see her. I think Bill told her “I could hug you,” and she said, “While that would be nice, you should keep biking, White Mountain is just around the corner. She headed off and we followed, and soon enough we pulled up into White Mountain, where we were welcomed into her home, in the early hours of the morning. I ended up crashing on her couch, having I think the best sleep of the race, after a fantastic bowl of soup. Joanna and her family — Liam, Cha, and Jack — are amazingly nice, and it is hard to describe how fantastic it was to be welcomed into her house. While chatting with Joanna, it turns out we have many mutual friends in Fairbanks, and she is even familiar with the neighborhood I live in — it is such a small world!
In the morning we had a wonderful breakfast, and headed out for the last push to Nome. I didn’t know what to expect for the remainder of the trail, but I was pretty surprised by all the climbing there was. After winding through some river and swamp, we were soon climbing up and down some large hills, giving us fantastic views, but a lot more climbing than I expected!
Eventually we descended down to Topkok, where we ducked into the shelter cabin for a bit of lunch. After Topkok, the amount of snow dropped considerably, and soon we were zooming along on firm, hard-packed trail. The next day was the Nome to Golovin snowmachine race, and lots of folks were out riding fast, getting some last minute practicing in.
We didn’t have any close calls, but some of the snowmachines were going pretty darn fast. The rest of the ride to Safety was pretty fun, but largely uneventful. This area is notorious for a short section where there is occasionally a “blow hole”, where the wind can be very strong. Fortunately, while it was windy, the blow hole didn’t seem to be in action when we passed through. Eventually we arrived at Safety, where I hoped to maybe get a bite to eat or at least some pop, but alas, they were not open yet. We were welcomed inside though, and we chatted a bit with the owner, who was in the process of getting things ready for the dog race. They had a very comfortable couch, but while I would have loved to just crash on it, we had to get going if we were going to finish!
Photo by Kyle Amstadter
The last 20 miles were all on a road, which was a mix of very fast, and slow, depending on how much traffic and drifting there was. There seemed to be at least two other options, and I was a bit sceptical that the road was the most reasonable, but it worked out in the end. Parts seemed to take forever. Some old friends of ours from Fairbanks, Sue and Glenn, had offered to let me stay with them in Nome when I finished, and I was on a mission to arrive at a reasonable hour and not get them up in the middle of the night! A few miles out of town, a truck pulled up, and it was Sue and Glenn! After a brief chat, we got back going again — the finish was just around the corner! As the miles counted down, I watched for each mile post.. five, four, three, two, then, alas, there was a loud pop, and I didn’t have any gears anymore. A little over a mile from the finish, my lower 10 speeds of the cassette popped off, leaving me just the big ring again. And since the road was now completely snow free, spinning away at 3 miles an hour was going to be torture. I tried to fix the cassette the same way as before, but no dice. I couldn’t get it back on. The frustration! I suggested that Bill and Kyle continue on, but they weren’t having it, and soon had a tow system set up. Bill towed me into the finish.
Photo by Kyle Amstadter
It was fantastically nice of him, and one of the highlights of the race for me. Thanks, guys!
We were met by a small crowd of folks, including the winner Phil H, who finished just a day slower than the record. I sort of wandered around in a daze, glad to be done, but not quite processing everything going on around me. Eventually we all loaded up into Sue and Glenn’s truck, and drove over to their house, where we spent several hours talking and enjoying some fantastic homemade pizza! Bill and Sue in particular were in heaven — they are both super social folks who love to talk. Eventually we headed off to bed, and in the morning we toured Nome a bit, got our bikes headed back to our respective homes via Northern Air Cargo, had lunch with Phil H and his family and, I saw Bill and Kyle off at the airport. I hung around for the next day, then flew back to Anchorage, where my sister gave me a ride to my folks’ house in Wasilla. I mellowed out for a day before driving back.
Phil had an amazing race. I think he would have broken the record if he hadn’t had two serious issues with his bike. He had a crank fall apart on him outside Galena, and his chain fell apart on the sea ice outside Koyuk. Both times he had to wait for replacements to arrive. A huge congrats to Phil for such a fantastic race!
Just in case it isn’t clear – we had amazing trail conditions. It is hard to imagine the trail being nicer, any my fast time was due entirely to that, so my sub 13 day time should be put in that context. Snow bike riding is mostly about conditions, and I lucked out, the conditions were as good as I think it is possible for them to be!
I finished mostly physically intact. One hand was a bit numb, but otherwise I had no major issues, besides having sore legs for a solid week to 10 days after the race. My knees gave me trouble for the first half of the race, then I didn’t seem to have any issues.
I would like to thank my family for allowing me to take time away from them to train and to do this race. I really appreciate your understanding, and I love you guys! I would also like to thank everyone I spent time with on the trail: Frenchie (Alan), Ken, Morris, Bob, and of course Bill and Kyle. Spending time with you guys on the trail was one of the highlights of the race — thanks guys! I would also like to thank all the folks who helped me along the way: the folks at Yentna Station, Skwentna, Shell Lake lodge, Winter Lake Lodge, the crew at Rohn (Adrian I hope you got your whiskey!) , the Petruskas in Nikolia, Tracy and Peter in Mcgrath, the folks at River Edge B&B in Ruby, Larry in Galena, Brother Bob in Nulato, Emily Murray and the school principal and his family in Elim, Joanna and her family in White Mountain, and Sue and Glenn for welcoming us to Nome. Thanks everyone! You guys made this experience possible for me, and I will be forever thankful for your kindness along the way.
Last, I would like to thank Bill and Kathi for putting on this race. I am sure it is tons of work. Thanks for doing it — it is truly a unique experience!
Photo by Kyle Amstadter
A Post Script of Sorts..
When I finished at Nome, and took a glance at the news, I was saddened to hear about Jeff King and Aliy Zirkle’s encounter with a drunken snowmachiner outside Nulato. When I got back home, I got questions about it. I didn’t spend much time in Nulato, but the 12 hours I was there, I found it to be a perfectly normal place, filled with helpful, nice people. This was true of all the communities I passed through and everyone I encountered on the trail and in the villages. Everyone was friendly and helpful, and I had nothing but positive experiences. That isn’t to say what happened to Jeff King and Aliy Zirkle wasn’t horrible – it was, it just wasn’t the experience I had.
Improvements
There are lots of things I wished I could have improved on, but mostly I think I was under-trained for this race. I think if I do something like this again, I need to work in some structured training of some sort. I also need to think more about the food I put in my drop boxes. I think if I ever have to eat another Snickers bar I will puke! Otherwise I was mostly pretty happy with my performance in the race. I did feel like I was slowing Bill and Kyle down, something which I feel quite guilty for. I might update this later, as I think over what I would do differently if I do this race again.
Folks who are gear phobic, should skip this bit — it is just a discussion of what gear I took. Please, note I am not an expert, and we had really good conditions this year, so your mileage may vary.
You have been warned.. 🙂
The bike
I rode to Nome on a Fatback Corvus, which I was super happy with. The bike isn’t perfect — I wish the bottle cage on the down tube was further down, and I wish the fork had mounts for bottle cages as well, but it rides great, and the carbon fork’s flex is awesome in bouncy tussocks. I love that bike! I was amazed how much more comfortable the carbon fork is vs the aluminum fork I used last year. My setup is a pretty normal stock SRAM XO based setup, with a few unusual bits — a b17 Brooks saddle, and groovy Luv Handles handlebars. The Brooks sort of grew on me — it squeaks, but it is very comfortable, and I had no butt issues of any sort when I finished at Nome. The handlebars are awesome — just the right amount of bend, and I don’t have to worry they will snap in half if mistreated like carbon bars might. If anyone knows of anyone selling one, I would love to buy it!
The one serious issue I had with the bike is the SRAM 11 speed cassette fell apart on me at Nulato, and again a mile from the finish. These “xdome” cassettes come in two parts: the lower 10 gears, and the big 42 tooth cog. The lower 10 gears just fell off the rest of the cassette. I could pedal in the big 42 gear, but it was geared very low, as I run a 26ish (it is an oval ring) front, so if I spin hard I can get up to 4mph — better than walking, but not by much. I was able to get it back together after some fiddling in Nulato, but when it fell apart again a mile from the finish, I could not get it back together. I might be done with SRAM’s cassettes.
I used Northern Air Cargo to ship my bike back from Nome, and alas, they didn’t do a very good job. The bike arrived heavily scratched with a dinged up derailleur. If I ship stuff with them again, I am going to see about insuring it, or at least some “do not scratch, be careful” labels. I think they must have strapped it to something with metal hooks around the fork, as the scratches are deep!
Food
I sent drop boxes to all the villages I passed through on the Yukon, plus all the villages on the coast. I quickly ran out of ideas, and just randomly stuffed the boxes with whatever candy and junk food I could find. Belvita breakfast crackers/cookies, and Oreos were the surprise hits — I ate pretty much all of the ones I sent out. I got pretty sick of Snickers, and of beef jerky. A major oversight was that the drop boxes ended up at places I often spent the night in, and they often didn’t have food there. I should have packed some heavier dinner and breakfast foods in the boxes to eat when I opened them up. Otherwise I was mostly pretty happy. I packed way more freeze-dried food than I used, but that probably was good, as we had fantastically good trail, and if things had taken longer that extra food would have been appreciated. Several times I ended up having freeze dried food for breakfast, which while okay, wasn’t the most awesome — in the future I will pack something for breakfast besides Sweet and Sour Pork!
Gear
For sleeping gear, I packed a minus 40 bag and a regular length Ridgerest pad. For clothing, a light weight puffy jacket , a puffy down jacket, puffy pants, two sets of long underwear pants (one light, one heavy), a long underwear top with a hood, and two sets of underpants. I also packed some “town clothing”:a lightweight shirt and a superlight set of shorts Nancy sewed for me. I was very thankful for the shorts, as they gave me something to wear when staying at schools etc, or when my clothes were getting laundered, which I did once at Ruby and once at Mcgrath. For rain, I packed a rain jacket and rain pants. I wore some Marmot pants that worked great, and a Mammut soft shell that has now seen four ITIs. I love that jacket! I had been warned that I should get a ruff for the wind on the coast. I was initially pretty skeptical, but ended up getting one, and was amazed how big of a difference it made. I didn’t wear a facemask the whole time! Admittedly, it wasn’t very cold, but in the windier sections I probably would have needed something, and the ruff completely avoided this. That was money well spent! I brought some Primaloft mitts, and two facemasks/balaclava, and an extra hat.
For cooking gear, I packed a titanium pot and a new style XGK with an very old pump from one of the original XGKs. I had been told the new pumps don’t work well in the cold, so I used an old one I had lying around. It worked great, though it was loud and heavy. I might take a Whisperlight if I do it again.
For more photos check out my Flickr gallery:
