Picking up the dream from the previous episode, Casey and I left Rainy Pass Lodge at around 2pm. I had a full tank of fuel, blinker fluid topped off and muffler bearings greased for a long night in the saddle. It was actually a really grouse arvo on the bike as the image shows...despite the constant 30mph head wind and rapidly falling temperatures.
Bundle up in the right gear though and it's not an issue, above all you must manage moisture. Of course yellow snow breaks are common, but the holes on the front of your face exhaust the most moisture and can quickly bind up layers and beards with ice. I start the race with a clean face, I've seen some painful atrocities with racers' beards getting ice crusted to their ruffs and other head gear.
Speaking of beards, I had an issue in '16 across the Norton Sound sea ice crossing, with a quality OR balaclava that had a mesh section in front of the mouth. Now, my genes don't facilitate the growing of an awesome arctic explorer/lumberjack's beard, but that particular year it didn't stop me trying. I had about a 10mm cushion of bristles between my skin and the balaclava, creating a gap for moist air to unknowingly sneak through as the mesh had wetted out and frozen over. Consequently, the balaclava pretty much froze to my embarassment of a beard and stopped me from putting in any decent food or water. The layers had frosted over on the outside fabric too and formed a frozen mask, I didn't want to wreck the garments trying to make a food hole, so I made a small gap under my goggles - in between voluntary tourettes episodes - and just dropped the food in, moved my head around like one of those Laughing Clown games with the ping pong balls. Yeah, laughing clowns. I'm not triggered by them, but getting separated from food on a critical crossing can be annoying at best and amusing for bystanders. It's why I like solo travel so much - sing in the shower, dance in the dark...
Anyways, we were heading up a very exposed section called Ptarmigan Valley, the trail surface was scoured by the wind and was sastrugi hard in many places, so it was rideable, just really slow. The trail climbs up and down over many large hillocks, there are tripod markers at regular intervals to mark the trail but most of them were only a foot or two above the surface - normally they are around 7 feet tall (it had been a high snow year).
Being such a high snow year there was concern before the race started, of avalanche risk in the pass. Only a few days before our race started, a group of specialists from the Iditarod Trail Committee (controlling body for the dog sled race) ventured up to the pass to assess the risk, in case a re route was needed. This is what it looks like from the air:
You get to the last summit of the small hills along Ptarmigan valley, descend to the Happy River which runs year round, it has a gravel bottom, about a foot deep and sometimes has an ice bridge. I've seen people ride through the water - which is risky in itself - the general nastiness is if the ambient temp is below freezing, that creek water drizzles over your bike. You know Ice Magic, the liquid choc coating you pour on ice cream, sets hard after a short while? If you get water in your derailleur mech or brakes, chain etc, it soon freezes like that and you also end up with noisy spokey dokeys on your wheels. Kinda cool, but also not fun when your brakes no longer work and can't shift gears. Carry where you can, but its okay if the tyres get wet, just keep the water off functional stuff okay? So once past the river, you have a mile or 4 of Alder brush and meadow to the mouth of the pass. By this time Casey had ridden off the front, I was starting to conserve a bit from that headwind and my knees were getting aggro. This was the year I promised myself no pain meds unless absolutely necessary, stay in touch with the discomfort and see what affect it had on my other body functions (never stop experimenting). It had taken me 5 hours to get to this point from the lodge, I paused in the lee of some low trees where the icy, bare knuckled wind couldn't arm bar me, before I started into Rainy Pass itself. Dang it, water in my plastic secondary bottle (1L nally in OR coozy) had slushed up. I checked my tertiary frame bottle (1.4L nally in a custom EVA foam and neoprene sleeve, in an insulated bag) it too was slushy so I tipped them out before they became solid plugs in the bottles. I still had 350mL of hot choc in my steel bottle and 1L in the hydration pack. The wind just vacuumed the heat right outta those bottles, despite being covered in some dense 8mm closed cell EVA and 6mm neoprene, in an insulated framebag.
PRO TIP: Hydration is always an issue and would be one of the top 5 questions I get about water storage. Obvs you have to melt the snow, then store it, for a few years I've played with all kinds of insulated storage. Double walled steel canisters remain the best performers, despite the weight penalty. I work off primary, medium and long term storage to go the distance. This year, my medium and long term I'd reverted back to plastic nally's (I used all double walled steel in '18 and '19) and did a lot of work to insulate the nallys, in an effort to reduce some static weight. It was a mistake, suffice to say I recommend double walled bottles if you really want hot water to stay hot over a longer period of time in a sub zero environment. Avoid flip style drinking caps on them as they can leak with pressure - use the screw caps - and store them upside down, because if they start to freeze, the ice plug will start at the top of the water (not the bottom) so with the bottle inverted the water will still be liquid and the cap threads won't freeze the cap on. DON'T drink from a metal lipped bottle - decant into a plastic lipped bottle - otherwise your lips or tongue may stick to the metal bottle.
So I'm out of the wind momentarily and took stock of the situation (whether to fire up the stove, bivvy or move forward) and decided on a quick shiver bivvy and then get to work, use what I had and make the rest up - I knew what was coming and time for more experiments. Just like science class in school, we like to see how close we can get our hand to the bunsen flame. Leaving Rainy Pass early was a poor decision for both of us, but we both felt that we needed to maintain the push forward. I couldn't get any food down, I'd dry-heave-gag reflex when I tried to eat, it was 8 hours since my last decent feed, but trust me on this - I was in familiar ground with energy levels and my metabolism. I changed into my riot gear - clear lens goggles and Cold Avenger mask. Gavan rocked up behind me on the trail (foot athlete), asked if I was okay...but that's not what I heard when he said it (sorry Gav). When Casey and I left Rainy Pass Lodge, Rob left at the same time (Rob was the leading foot athlete at that point). Rob is from Minneapolis, Gavan is Irish. Expecting Rob, but hearing Gavan, my brain got a bit twisted - it expected Purple Rain, but got Riverdance. (PLEASE NOTE: The Proclaimers are Scottish, earworm: 500 miles - we've all sung it at some point on the trail)
It was around 8pm when I stepped into the maw of the pass and the wind got the first round of blows in, the bright moon overhead was no longer a disco ball - it was a single spotlight above a UFC cage and it was time to float like a butterfly.
Who hah that last paragraph made it sound so serious, we should be dancing! Well, Rainy Pass is sort of a big deal, it's a major crux on the way to McGrath, but I get excited in the weather events and like to balance it out with humour too. Years ago, I joked with my friend Jim Barkley that there was a churro stand at the top of the pass, I was eager to see if I would get delirious to the point where the stand would appear.
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| Rainy Pass in 2016 - it's nice when it's nice |
I'd been up Rainy Pass many times, day and night, blue skies and grey flat light, in wind and calm. This night I honestly don't recall much of the traverse, I joke that it was just a series of microsleeps broken by periods of forward motion dreams in REM. Never sit down, just keep dancing and accept that speed didn't matter, this was really becoming a solid cagefight. To remain lucid, I would call out the items I would see in front of me - rock, handlebar, boot, moonlit mountain - no monkeys or palm trees to be seen - which was a good sign. I've had other times in sleep deprived mode, when the snowy trail resembled a beach ride back home, it all looked like sand. With my riot gear on it was like a miniature paradise for my face - warm and tropical - at one point I paused, removed the gear to have a drink and try some food - the windblown snow grit blasted my face and with that windchill: I didn't bother again. I didn't need to have an exfoliation and skin peel on this summer holiday (well, it was summer when I left home if that makes sense) so early in the race, but a bit of tropical holiday food would be nice - I had small pineapple chunks in my Mag Tank top tube feed bag. Some research later on regarding the conditions that night revealed interesting numbers: windchill -60 to -80 degrees celsius with gusts to 47miles/hr, my own temp gauge registered -35C static. Ouchy. I followed a firm snowmachine route I hadn't done in previous years - instead of rounding the final moraine to the left, I went over the top of it and came a lot closer to the busted cabin near the saddle of the pass, in front of the lake. I purposely chose this route as it kept me away from the other path that crisscrossed a stream and also away from the tight part of the gorge, where snow cornices and shelf ice can be undermined by the wind. A nasty place to get caught with this wind and low visibility, an avalanche risk. The last push to the sign was steep and tough, a light had appeared behind and I communicated with an up and down nod of the head. It was Bergur, he caught up just as I began the descent, the wind was still growling away and roiling the snow around my goggles and feet. I could barely keep my eyes open, I knew I was slowly dehydrating and was approaching the 18 hour mark since food, so caffeinating would do more harm than good, it was 3am with daylight still a few hours away. Again, I was in full control of my actions, I knew where I was literally and figuratively as well as my energy levels, I was just so damn eye tired. There was no sign of the churro stand and I was all out of family block.
PRO TIP: Keto. What does going it mean? To me, its a broad term of the body sourcing its fuel needs from its stores, as opposed to sourcing from the GI tract and digestion. How do you do that? It's complicated, but also very simple if you experiment (in training) and understand the principles. My interest and research in this area goes back 30+ years and I love that there is always more to learn from my own body, and it astonishes me sometimes with what it can do when I push it. In a race like this, going 'keto' is something that will happen at some point to everybody as you just cannot put in enough fuel and process it to meet the burn rate. Teach your body to go keto in training, learn what it feels like during the fuel transition and then it won't be so shocking in the field (ie bonking). Is eating fatty foods considered keto? Well, I can't give you dietary advice (except chew your nuts) but I can say look at the bioavailability of the locked energy in a foodstuff. Sure, might be 3500 calories in that jar of peanut butter, but can your body actually digest and convert it to energy in a reasonable timespan for you to use? Experimentation is the key. Become a student of nutrition and a master of your body's metabolism - haha among all the other things you gotta master to be proficient in for the race. This environment is just a series of problems to solve - that's what cold weather travel is all about. Solve some of them in training - cold travel becomes a bit easier, more enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding.
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| Start of the descent into Dalzell Gorge - 2015 |
The first part of the descent was a post hole affair if you went off track, it was something to focus on. Dalzell creek is off to the left as I entered the sharp V of a gorge, the wind started to ease as I lost elevation. In the past I've seen Dall sheep grazing among the steep rocky formations and further down in the alder and willow there are often moose. Again, something to focus on and I would recite these important notes to myself, to stave off sleep monsters. The temperature was falling rapidly, I had -35C on my gauge so I layered up with puffy layers. The pre-dawn glow came with the temp drop, so I decided to ride a bit as I had been still walking the bike to this point. After 1 microsleep fall I decided walking pace wasn't so bad compared to worst case scenarios.
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| Fresh morning at -40 with Rainy Pass behind me. 2020 |
I walked for an hour or so until I felt the disco smoke lift from my senses - it was time to ride and it felt awesome. I love the descent of Dalzell, every corner is a new challenge of glare ice, dodgy bridges and punchy climbs. I'm on studless tyres so my approach on the ice has to be perfect and match the angle, speed and direction needed - there cannot be last moment changes to any factor! The Dalzell gorge is like no other section on the trail, you criss cross the Dalzell creek over the ice bridges, huge voids on either side reveal a fast flowing creek beneath, 7 storey ice walls tower over the gorge and the trail weaves in and out of dark spruce forest with a low, 100% canopy.
The last of the spruce forest spits you onto the Tatina river and then onto the Kuskokwim river. These are mostly glare ice rivers with flowing water underneath the ice. Over time the river heaves and the ice jumbles up, leaving the massive ice sheets tilted on angles. The ice is also drummy and hollow underneath - shelved over the water or a gravel streambed. Sometimes the ice will crack under the point load of your tyres - you clench your teeth, hold your breath while your arsehole puckers to diamond forming levels.
I reached a section on the Tatina that had fresh overflow which was strange, as I'd seen the water level further up and it was low. Hmm, approach with care. There was hoar frost growing on the ice surrounding it - basically these ice crystals grow upwards off the ice surface, it would have been -40C or beyond here the previous night - things go weird at -40C. I hadn't noticed that the trail veered slightly over a gravel bar to my right 20m back, I was focussed on a marker further up on the ice. I was right in the middle of the hoar frost party when BAM, down I go with zero warning. I had lowish pressure in the tyres which gives me surface area and traction on glare ice, I was fully awake, I had no steering input, I wasn't braking nor did I have excessive speed - the frost acted like talcum powder on a polished timber floor - all traction had gone and the tyres just slipped completely. I paused for a moment laying on the ground, still clipped in and hands in the pogies, doing a full body check before I moved. No head impact, landed on right side knee, hip and shoulder simultaneously. Checked the gears and bike, visual on the area in case something had fallen off. No harm done and back to business as usual.
Rohn checkpoint was only a few more miles of river away and the day sure was purty. There was a food drop waiting for me in Rohn, I started going through the mental checklist of what I had in that drop and what I'd need for the next section, and what I'd leave behind.
When you get to Rohn, the first thing you're asked - would you like a brat? Unique to Rohn, the bratwurst in a roll with sauce and mustard is an iconic rite of passage wrapped in delicious calories slathered with the reward of arrival at this remote checkpoint. It was also 24 hours since I'd eaten and I was pretty darn happy with this new block of body performance data. I sat in the sun on a log, ate my brats and drank cold Tang, with a bodyheated Snickers bar for dessert while admiring the view of the Terracotta Mtns behind the log cabin. Life was beautiful.
Rohn is a Tardis-like tent in the wilderness. Manned by Adrian and Beth, outside it's just a canvas tent, but inside it's shelter from the elements, a place to dry gear, a bed of straw and spruce needles to rest on with abundant hot water. It's all you need.
But don't get comfortable, Rohn tent camp sleeps about 5 and is run as a first in-first out deal, where you only get your ticket to rest inside until another racer comes along to boot you out of the space. You can bivvy outside as long as you like, but it can get bitterly cold on this side of the Alaska range in the valleys right next to the river. I planned a 2 hour break here, until the next racers were due - Rebecca and Greg - with 5 more due in over the next 6 hours. Bergur had been in for a while, I racked out for about an hour then got my bike packed (more Cadburys family block!) before the afternoon sun vanished in the valley and temps started to dip. It was around 2-3pm when I left. Sadly, I lost my Cold Avenger mask somewhere on the trail coming into Rohn, the only piece of gear I've ever lost and a critical piece of riot gear for when it goes noisy on the trail. I still had other headgear options to use, but that mask had been to Nome 3 times so I was a bit bummed.
I am still in the Alaska Range - check it:
Down at ground level though, the scenery is just jaw droppingly beautiful. The Northern slope of the Alaska range sees less precipitation, up ahead there would be bare trail and always some dirt/overflow/frozen buffalo shit. The trail remains in the grip of the mountains for a few more miles when you depart Rohn, straight out over the ice of the Kuskokwim River and surrounded by tall peaks.
The trail was hard and fast and more sketchy river ice, legs felt fresh for the blast through the forest known as the buffalo tunnels. As suggested, from here there's a good chance you'll see bison galloping along - they can move fast! You may also see things hanging in the trees, like bottles, soda cans or coloured flags - these are often markers left by trappers to indicate they have laid traps in the area.
The Post River 'glacier' is really just overflow on the slope of a hill, but in low snow years it's a barren, sloping glare ice chute that will have you on your knees - literally - if you don't have any studs in your boots or tyres. Racers have been known to remove their pedals and tie them to their studless boots, in order to gain some traction. Racers have also fallen hard here and slid a long way down the slope before coming to a stop - one year I found a trail of crash candy from the point of impact to the stop point. Of course I "Ibis'd" the candy! (a pop culture icon, the Ibis is a scavenging, protected native bird of Australia - cross between a seagull and a goat - relentless in it's search for bin scraps and will eat anything - it's also lovingly referred to as the "bin chicken") Scavenging crash candy is not classified as outside assistance...
Looking back towards Rohn, the forest in these parts burnt out from the largest fire in Alaska's history - the Farewell fire of 1978. The soil was scorched so badly in places that nothing has grown back, only the haunting trunks remain. Some of the swamps have good grass cover and that's what attracts the bison.
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| Looking back towards the Alaska range, Egypt mountain peak in centre of image. |
Once past Farewell mountain on the left and the towering Egypt mountain on the right, named due to its close resemblance to a pyramid, the Farewell burn, or just 'the burn' hold many stories for many racers. Some racers freak out at night through here, combination of sleep monsters and low blood sugar, or maybe just too many Stephen King novels. Following the burn, there are quite a few lakes and swamps to cross, with freaky eyes in the frozen lake ice.
Then there are many short and sharp climbs to tackle on this section, one particular hill that will give you a clear view of Foraker and Denali, the sunrises/sunsets here are sensational and this was where I paused for a quick melt up of water and prep a hot meal for later. It was going to be a long night and day and then another night before I would reach Nikolai.
Somewhere in the burn, I had to rest a short while as the fog of fatigue was creeping in and dulling my senses. I would have grabbed about 30 mins of shiver bivvy, when Jussi came past just as I was packing up. He was riding strong and soon vanished from sight. Oh hang on, what's a shiver bivvy? Well, instead of going to the trouble of stomping out a chimp nest in the snow for a full sleep, a shiver biv is simple - you put on your puffy layers, you have a quick feed to fuel the furnace and sit upright next to your bike and snooze. Other bivvy types are the REM bivvy: stand upright, eyes closed and straight into dreamy REM; the Zombie bivvy: stand upright, eyes open, stare at the horizon and zone out; the Tripod bivvy: straddle the bike, legs locked, arms crossed and resting on handlebars, head on arms. There are more but I'd be taking the fun of discovery out of it for others, just beware the crash bivvy or the nude bivvy - you're going hypothermic...
My knees started to develop some discomfort, which isn't a new thing for any racer on the Iditarod - we all acquire some issues during the race. But this was affecting the amount of power I could put down to the pedals, I could spin but not grind, after a while the spinning wasn't winning as far as the knees were concerned. No pain meds, too early in the race to be drugging up to get it done, so I just settled into a rhythm that worked for me, ride, then push, then grovel forward as the trail was fairly average. Somewhere near Bear Creek, Petr passed me, I'd been pushing for an hour or so by that point, he asked if all was good, then he kept riding. The trail was marginal - rideable if you could put the power down and float, it was quite windblown and drifted. Another hour or two later, Toni passed me, he was riding albeit a slow grind. Not long after that, a few machines went by and tore up what little rideable trail there was, it was mid afternoon so the trail wasn't going to fix itself anytime soon. I amused myself by dropping into the character voice of chef from the Muppets. Pushing the bike, I started hearing a flubbery flerpty floopin kind of noise. The subsequent temp drop overnight and the low pressure riding had weakened the bead seal and caused a very slow air leak in the back tyre, it was now ger borkin. I mean flat. Sigh. Well, at least it wasn't -40C un der gerfs. 20 minutes of rigorous pumping to get enough pressure in to re-seal the bead, only pausing to quickly circulate the sealant. Yur dur beecycle tyer is sergudd hur der desh floompty schmer. Bork bork bork!
PRO TIP: Tubeless or tube? Another top 5 question I get, my first answer is 'the system you feel most comfortable messing about with at night at -40C'. Both have their +/- and it's outside the scope of this pro tip to go through each and every scenario. But lets talk basics, as I know you wanna hear some answers! Winter sealants are special jazzed up versions of regular sealants - they have more Glycols in them to help stave off the freeze - but they can still slush up, I've had this at around -35C, the sealant puddled and then froze in the tyre. Sealants have some pretty complex chemistry in them nowadays, natural latex has organisms that attack it and break it down, so throw in some antibacterials and fungicides. The sealant needs to coagulate in contact with the atmospheric air, so some ammonia will help that along - but wait a minute, some tyre compounds react with ammonia, so there are low levels of it along with pseudo ammonia chemicals, and as mentioned, the glycols keep it liquid at sub zero temps. CO2 inflation will prematurely cure the sealant - doesn't cure it instantly but it accelerates the reaction over time. Tyre beads can leak due to low pressure running, or from freshly installed tyres where the rim/tyre bead hasn't grown a significant seal of dried sealant at the tyre/rim junction, also from some lighter single wall rims having too high a spoke tension (shrinks the bead seat diameter). Low flow valve stems can clog up with sealant, as can old valve cores, reducing the ability to drop/add air in the tyre, and stems can leak at the base if they are loose. Valve cores can wind out of the stem if you use a pump that has a screw on head - when removing the head they can unscrew the core with it and you lose most of your air pressure. Thin, high flow alloy race valve stems can be damaged with rough pump use, they are quite thin and sometimes, they can develop porosity in the threads, or slight corrosion will make them leak. Some of these issues can be mitigated with Fatty Strippers or ghetto tubeless with thin split tubes, brass valve stems. Studded tyres never seem to wear out the tread, but the sidewalls get a hammering if you spend a lot of cumulative time at low, single digit wrinkle air pressure. You'll see that damage as lots of wetness on the sidewalls from the sealant weeping through (this can also happen with aged sealant, as the glycols start to split off and weep through - if you taste test the weeping fluid, it will have a sweet taste - that's the glycol splitting off. Sealant is dead and inactive, take the tyre off, wash it all down, refit the tyre and fresh sealant). You may also see cross hatching start to appear on the tyre, have a think about the amount of wrinkle work the tyre has done, it can be a sign the tyre cords are starting to delaminate from the rubber. The tyre can live on with a tube in it. Speaking of tubes, if that's all you'll ever run, ALWAYS install your tubes with plenty of talc powder brushed on the inside of the tyre (use a 2" brush and put the powder in an old drink bottle). The talc acts a lube between the tyre carcass and tube, for low pressure work, There is a lot of rubbing that happens at low pressure with tubes. For expedition work, always use a thick tube at the proper size, not a lightweight one or an oversized MTB tube, to save weight. Why? When you inflate the tube, it will stretch out to the tyre. Think of it like a balloon. Half inflate the ballon, the wall thickness is thick, you can insert a pin and the balloon will deflate very slowly. Inflate the same balloon to maximum size, the wall thickness is gossamer thin, insert the pin and the balloon explodes into ribbons. Same thing with a tube - you can field repair a tube with a small hole - a ribboned tube you cannot. Also that thick tube will resist wearing through for longer when there is tube/tyre friction happening. Sure, carry a thin and lightweight spare, as long as you understand the +/- of both, you make the call to suit. In my opinion and experience, putting sealant into a tube does not work. Some sealants work by a log jam effect with fibres to jam against the puncture site and a viscous fluid that gums up (Slime). This log jam can be dislodged with low pressure flexion of the tyre/tube. YMMV. Tyre plugs are rad for tubeless, the smart ones use an insert that is impregnated with a re-agent that is a catalyst for coagulation of the sealant at the puncture/plug site. Beware the plugs that have a sharp tip - if you forget it's there and you need to put in a tube, that tip will obviously puncture the tube near instantly. A tear in a tyre can be temporarily booted with a gel wrapper or similar before putting in a tube, a thick sock is the ultimate as it will conform better with tyre pressure changes and stay in place, I've seen gel wrappers and other hard plastic items scratch and eventually puncture the tubes long term. Tyre pressure? Air up for the night and air down for the day. I detailed this in EP #2, read more there and check out the fancy algorithm - it helped me make better toast among other things.
The trail got a bit firmer for a while, until the snow came down and the knees didn't like the pedalling, that was that. Then, it was a re-run of the Rainy Pass traverse of zombie bivvies and instant REM between 10 steps of forward motion. Painful to watch when you're a dot watcher! The falling snow was a constant feature now and the spruce trees were too small to find a decent tree well, to have a quick bivvy under. This stretch also has it's share of long, open meadows. Auto pilot was set to keep...moving...forward through the deepening fatigue. I ticked off the mile markers as they came - the 20 mile, then 10, then 5 to Nikolai. The day dawned and I started to make more ground, saw some familiar landmarks and knew that proper rest wasn't far away.
Funny thing again though, despite the tiredness, I never have hallucinations and I actually enjoy the multi-faceted challenge of moving forward in this state. Risk? Of course there's always risk. But I keep the risk in the margins, devote the page to my outcome calculations. I choose to look for the solutions to the figurative Rubix cube of race fatigue, mental games, mechanicals and body issues. It's an intrinsic reward that's satisfying to me, to maintain equal measure of control whether it's bad or good - it truly excites me - but I'm no adrenaline junky. Weird brain, huh? We are all wired differently, I don't drink alcohol and Nyree always beats me at chess.
Don't get me wrong - I love to bivvy and prefer being outside than in, but I needed to accumulate some solid rest in a short space of time and out here wasn't optimal for that rest. There are some spectacularly moody/creepy Birch forests at this point on the trail that I've always wanted to bivvy in...one day. I've heard there is a wolf pack around Nikolai too. The scene was incredibly beautiful: spruce trees were heavily laden with snow; the temp was mild; the cloud was thick so the light was soft and had a neutral colour temperature; snow was falling in big, slow flakes, the trail was entirely filled in and it gave you this feeling of intense serenity and purity, like nobody had been here before. Lol, nope I wasn't off track either.
I rounded the river bend and Nikolai came into view, it was about 9am. A figure approached by bike - it was Nicholas Carmen, a very experienced traveller and he was volunteering at the checkpoint. After checking on me, he rode back to the checkpoint, he had a burger ready on the grill when I arrived. Every checkpoint has it's own style, cuisine and accom level. The Nikolai Grill was proving itself as a contender for the title, no doubt! I'd planned a few hours rest here and a decent feed, I racked out in the corner for a bit.
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| Nikolai community centre, looks empty now before the hordes. |
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| George G. (checkpoint Master host and master foodie kept us fed) on the left, David F. (tech guru, drone captain and cameraman keeping the socials fed) on the right. |
About an hour after I arrived, word filtered through that George Adams had an issue with his bike. The details were sketchy, but he couldn't ride it and was pushing from around Bear Creek. I built this bike for George around 6 weeks prior to the race and he was going to Nome with his lifelong buddy, Graham. My focus instantly shifted from my own goal, into doing everything that I could to get George's bike fixed and back to 100%. The dream adventure for two people was on the line here as George and Graham were racing as a pair. With 4 Nome finishes under my belt, I knew how much work they'd done to get here and also how important it was to continue - those that know, know. When you are in the theatre of Iditarod, there is a lot of camaraderie between racers that gets magnified in situations like this. George's Muru Canning build spec was modelled around my own Muru Iditarod LE, and if it meant taking parts off my own bike to keep him on track to Nome then that's what I was going to do.
At his rate of travel, George was due into Nikolai the following day...sometime. There was no way to get a message to him on the trail that I was waiting for him, to assess and hopefully repair his bike, so George unfortunately had to wallow in push mode for another 24+ hours. I had to wallow in eat and sleep mode until he arrived, but also the anguish of seeing my own race effort and potential adapt and evolve.
I also had a message from Nyree. The situation with COVID-19 was worsening worldwide, DFAT had issued a request that all Aussies abroad should make moves to return home, should borders need to close. We'd all been in an eat, sleep, rave, repeat bubble for a week or more, so at that point I was like, 'yeah nah, she'll be right ay, I'll keep heading to Nome'. I ate another apple and added another page for calculations...
