(This blog post is way late, from late February of 2022, I am just way behind on writing anything.)
In 2021 it seemed like I didn’t do anything interesting. Living in a mixed-generational setting made COVID more high risk for those around me… limiting travel and lots of other fun things. It wasn’t a huge deal in the scheme of things – I was healthy, my family was healthy, and I was employed, but I was feeling “under adventured”. In the late spring of 2021 the Iditarod Trail Invitational (ITI) signups opened up, and on a lark, I signed up for McGrath. The ride to McGrath is simple, with minimal logistics, and if nothing else happened all winter fun-wise it would give me something to focus on and an adventure of a sort. And so, on a late February afternoon, I found myself at Knik lake again getting ready to ride to McGrath.
I have mixed thoughts about the ITI these days. Perhaps I am getting a bit old and becoming an old fart, grumpily muttering about things that are not the way they used to be. I was not excited to see the organizers had added a stop at “Butterfly Lake” in the first 30 miles of the race – it really seems to me that the ITI is pretty uninteresting until after Skwentna – otherwise it is just river and swamp on fairly well-traveled trails, but now with some extra mileage though the outskirts of Big Lake. It wasn’t a lot of mileage though, so I figured it would just be a few extra hours and it would be over – no big deal.
Zooming along with Aaron W a few hours in…
In the weeks before the race started the organizers sent out an “athletes’ guide” as they call it – and I
was pleasantly surprised. There were lots of small changes in how the Nome-bound part was presented that I really appreciated and were, from my POV, very well done. The Nome-bound race after McGrath, to me, is mostly an unsupported bike, walking, or skiing trip. Besides the flown-in drop the ITI provides, mostly they are providing a list of contacts for the stops along the way, and it is up to the racers to do their own logistics and to behave themselves. The “behave themselves“ part has been historically a bit problematic. These communities are small, disadvantaged, and pretty isolated. The ITI racers passing through really stick out, and I think the guide does a much better job of pointing out to the racers that how they interact with the communities will affect how the racers behind them are treated, possibly for years to come. I am still quite impressed by how much time and thought they put into the guide.
The start was chaotic as usual, with people taking off in all kinds of directions across the lake, then folks riding too fast and too slow on the narrow trails just after crossing Knik Lake.
The first few miles zoomed by, and soon I was at the turn I normally took to a road, but instead I went straight and boom, I was on new trails – yay!
The new trails were quite a change – neat, narrowish, and well-used, with little rolling hills. A nice change from the road I normally took. Eventually, I hit the railroad bed, and slowly spun along on some softer trail. Just as the trail was firming up, there was a loud crack and my bike suddenly got all floppy.
Much to my sadness I soon realized that I had cracked the seatpost, and my seat was now in a mostly reclined position. Yuck. My bike had been making creaking noises, and I guess I just finally figured out where they were coming from. I texted my brother John who lives in Wasilla, and a musher friend, Andy P, who lives nearby, but no one had a seatpost that would fit. Double sigh. I texted my wife Nancy who would see about getting me a post sent to one of the checkpoints and posted a photo with a note to Facebook in the off chance someone in the greater neighborhood had a post.
I decided to push to the next road crossing, where I ran into a friend of a friend who let me raid their toolbox to strap random tools to the post in hopes of splinting it up.
Helper Dog helps..
That got me a bit further, but the post eventually was so floppy it was just riding on my sleeping bag roll on top of my rear rack. Eventually, I was forced to just walk my bike whenever there was anything soft, and stand up and pedal everywhere else. I was so slow it felt like everyone had passed me. Eventually, even a skier passed me!
One eternity later I made it to Butterfly Lake, where the owner of Fatback cycles, Greg Matyas, was helping run the checkpoint. He whittled a piece of firewood, while I was talking too much and probably sounding like a lunatic, telling me it wouldn’t be a problem, I could ride to McGrath with the fix! He also got my wife Nancy in touch with someone from his bike shop who would see about getting a post sent out to one of the checkpoints. Thanks, Greg!
I was in a bit of an odd frame of mind. While breaking the seatpost was bad, I was feeling a bit like it was very much a “first world problem”. The war in Ukraine had just started and was very much on my mind. Europe had always seemed to me to be a very civilized place, and it was hard to imagine there was a big land war happening right there. While Ukraine is far away, it is near too – there is a sizable Ukrainian immigrant population in my hometown of Fairbanks. On most mornings I pass a Ukraine immigrant janitor busily cleaning the entryway as I enter my work building. The nearby town of Delta has a large Ukrainian immigrant population (ironically referred to as the “Russians” by most people), and the grocery store (the IGA) has a neat selection of unusual eastern European food my family always stops to check out when we pass through. Growing up in rural Alaska in the 80s the threat of the Russians invading was this sort of an ever-present thing in a small but vocal minority. In 2017 when riding to Nome I stayed with a local teacher who ended a lot of his rants about things going downhill, not working, or just being not quite right with “And then we will all speak Russian!” So while my seat post was broken, at least I wasn’t being bombed.
I left Butterfly Lake, and a few miles later the seatpost repair failed, and the post snapped completely, and that was that. From then on I rode standing up, which was an interesting experience. It was super fast, but my legs and knees hurt so much. By the time I made it to the second checkpoint Nancy had let me know I was getting a post on the “mail plane” to Skwenta the following morning, so I just had to make it there, and things would be fine. I arrived in Skwentna in the evening, had a ton to eat, then slept through the night, and in the morning I had a post!
Yay! I swapped out the seat, and was back in business – hurrah! At this point, I should give a huge thank you to Cindy at Skweena, Nancy, Cynthia from the ITI who took the post from the bike shop to the plane, and Pete Baysinger who told Nancy about the mail plane. Thanks, everyone!
The rest of the ride to McGrath was fun, with great weather, mostly a really fast trail, and my legs kept feeling better and better each day. It was odd – after riding so much standing up my legs and knees actually started feeling a bit better each day rather than feeling worse like they had in the past. I took a bit of the new ice road from Shell to Finger Lake, and a bit more of it to the steps, and was sad to find out I could have taken it the whole way from Skwenta to Helicopter Lake. And even more sad to see the trail up off the Happy River steps was now a road.
I could have driven my Impreza up it, it was so hard, flat, and firm. A bit of a bummer, as while it was easier, it was way less scenic, with a neat single track through the trees replaced with a wide open road. I feel bad for the Winter Lake Lodge operators, as the ice road is visible from the deck of their lodge. Quite a treat for the guests…
It wasn’t all happiness – there was a tiny bit of pushing my bike.
Almost to Rainy Pass Lodge!
On the upside, the checkpoint at Finger Lake now had unlimited burritos (I even took one with me – yay!!) and Rainy Pass Lodge had a wonderful new cabin for us, with lots of bunks – a new stove, power, and bright lights! Spacious luxury, no more drafty cabin cluttered with the heads of African game animals haphazardly decorating the walls.
The ride from Rainy Pass lodge to Rohn was the most fun I have ever had on the Iditarod trail – it was clear, sunny, and calm, with amazing views. The trail was chewed up with footprints, but semi-rideable, but that just gave me more time to enjoy the scenery. So nice!
In Rohn, I enjoyed delicious soup and brats and kept everyone up chatting for way longer than I should have (sorry Petr!), then I left for Nikolia.
Petr sleeping on the trail. Alas, I woke him up, after keeping him up talking too much. I felt pretty bad about it afterwords..
Somewhere after the Fairwell lakes the bumps started.
The Iron Dog racers use a race tactic that involves digging trenches with their tracks to slow down racers behind them. I hadn’t really seen it besides in the treed sections from Ophir to Poorman, after McGrath. This year it was really trenched up wherever the trail was in the trees and narrowish (so where the trenches would be hard to avoid for the Iron Dog racers and thus most effective for slowing down racers behind them) from the Fairwell area to 10 miles out of Nikolai. So. Many. Bumps!
Trench-tastic!
It must have been very warm when the Iron Dog racers passed through and then refrozen, as the trail was rock hard. Iron hard. I could ride pretty fast so long as I stayed in the “ski” part of the track, and not the trench part, but I had a few hard crashes where branches caught me. Riding in the trench was hard, with constant deep drops followed by steep climbs out.
Irondog leftovers… The bumps doing their job, slowing down the folks behind, ha!
At one point I walked around a moose in the trail and was able to go completely around it walking on top of a really firm crust on top of the snow. Amazing! I spent a bunch of time thinking about the mushers who were going to be traveling this in a few days – I hope they were warned!
Fata Morgana..
Manditory Sullivan Creek bike selfie!
Nikolai arrived, and I got a burger and a bit of sleep then headed out again to McGrath.
Looking back at Denali
I was crushed when I arrived in McGrath to see a biker I know from Fairbanks showered and fresh-looking when I was positive he was lying asleep under a table when I left Nikolai. How could I be so slow and out of it that he passed me without me noticing and was so far ahead of me? I was crushed! Fortunately, it turned out I was confused, and it was someone else under the table, and he had left Nikolai hours ahead of me. It was also great to finally catch up with Kevin B, whom I had ridden a lot with to Nome in 2018. He’s a local Fairbanks super-biker. He had an ORV accident in McGrath a year and a half ago, crushed one of his legs, and had a long slow recovery. It was great to see him back on his feet and kicking butt! He had an awesome ride, and finished a day ahead of me! The finish was in a new location, a lodge that is slowly transitioning to an operating state. It was quite a change from Tracy and Peter’s, and I missed their good cheer, but it had its advantages – it has a little coffee shop with actual good espresso! I had a really good latte, hurrah! After a bit of food etc, I was on a plane heading back to Anchorage, where I spent the night in a fancy hotel, back in civilization. Yay!
Leaving McGrath
This year’s ITI really left me so much happier with the event – I had so much fun even with a broken seat post. I think the event is evolving a bit for the better, which was great! Even the new stop at Butterfly Lake is a bit of an improvement, with a bit less road, and less swamp. I left much happier about life, with a good fun adventure under the belt, and a post-trip positive buzz that lasted for a solid month. Yay!
I would like to thank my family for letting me disappear for a week, Nancy for helping me get a new seat post (Nancy you rock!), and Cynthia and Kyle the organizers of the ITI for putting on an ever-improving event (your work is really appreciated!). Cynthia in particular took the time to pick up a seat post from Speedway and get it to the mail plane – that is way, way beyond anything I expected, and I really appreciate it! I would also like to thank Cindy at Skwentna for helping Nancy connect with the folks running the mail plane, and Pete Baysinger for pointing out to Nancy that she could get me it that way. Thanks, everyone!
A Postscript of sorts:
Roughly a year ago I broke a fancy carbon seat post on my commuter snow bike. Perhaps breaking it is an exaggeration, it was an older Easton post where the aluminum head is glued to the carbon post, and the glue gave out.
So I looked through my parts pile, found the heaviest aluminum alloy post I had, used that, and reused it on my new bike. Obviously, this didn’t work out. I have a tendency to just reuse stuff until it breaks, then I am surprised when it breaks. Nothing lasts forever, and I need to start replacing stuff. Hopefully, my lesson was learned, but it now feeling like all my bike stuff is falling apart from old age all at once. As I write this just discovered my brooks cambium seat I love is falling part. Sigh, I guess entropy never stops!