One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor

Over the weekend, I joined a group of adventurous women for a camping trip in the White Mountain National Recreation Area about 30 miles north of Fairbanks, AK.  The camping trip was awesome and depending on your perspective it was typical weekend outing or an adventure of some varying magnitude.  The group consisted of a veteran of 3 Iditarods and her team of 10 dogs, a local mid-distance club racer (100 miler), a mother and her college student daughter skijors, one bike rider on a “fat-bike” pulling a pulka and a local kid on skis being pulled by the smaller dog team and walking.

 For the Iditarod veteran, the weekend was just a run in the park.  In fact, she made the trip out and back a couple times just to get a few more miles on the dogs.  For the second musher, it was a small adventure running in a new place, with a heavy sled that she had to help push up the steepest hill, plus she was responsible for taking care of the kid who came along.  For the skijors the new snow and a dog that wasn’t sure he wanted to pull made it a bit of an adventure.  Finally, for me it was a great adventure as my first winter camping trip by bike rather than dog sled and my first pulling a trailer.

Do I really have to go outside and take you skijoring?

Sure, I had done plenty of much much longer snow rides on local trails and rivers in and around Fairbanks the prior few weeks.  I had planned out my gear and had figured out how to carry everything I needed.  It wasn't until a day before our departure when someone realized that we needed to haul firewood for the stove in the cabin that the logistics changed.   Between dog food, bales of straw, people food, gear and firewood, the two sleds and my bike packs couldn't carry everything.  

We needed one more small sled.  Enter the carriage on skis that I dubbed, "Little Monster" or LM for short.  LM was hooked to the back of my bike for the first time the day before we headed out.  Empty, LM followed along without much trouble on the hard packed trail where we tested it on Friday night.

At 3 a.m. the morning of our departure, I happened to wake up, look out my cabin's second story window and see that for the first time in 3 weeks, it was snowing and snowing hard.  I watched it snow for a while and wondered how much new snow was falling in the Whites.  I knew that from the trailhead, the trip out to the Lee's Cabin was short - only 7 miles - but as everyone kept saying, there are a few big climbs.  I also knew that a significant part of the sport of fat-biking is pushing the bike through soft new snow. 

I guess I had a pretty good idea how the day would unfold even before we arrived at the trailhead.  With 5 inches of brand new snow and a couple of good climbs, I was about to become a real snow biker pushing my way along.  

The Iditarod driver got to the trailhead first and took off up the trail before the rest of us.  I was next, followed by the skiers and sometime later by the second dog team.  The first climb began at the trailhead.  It was two full miles of climbing on new snow.  I started riding up towing LM, which was now loaded with gear.  On all that soft snow, I found my rear wheel often just spinning and the rest of the time barely moving.  The only way to actually move forward was to get off and push.  So I pushed.  I probably pushed the bike and trailer a mile and a half of those first two miles. 

After another half mile or so, the Iditarod dog team came back out the trail toward me (I sure wished I had dogs at that moment.)  The musher and her team had already been to the cabin and dropped their gear and straw.  She was heading back to the trailhead to pickup something she had forgotten at her truck. She offered to haul the gear that was in LM. I gladly accepted this offer.  We ditched LM behind a tree.  Free of the dead weight of the trailer, I took off like a shot!  Gleefully riding across a ridge and up to the base of the big climb.  I was already pretty beat-up from pushing uphill in deep snow, so the remaining climbs felt tougher than they were.

Lee's Cabin sits in a clearing on a bit of ridge with views in every direction.  To the north we could see the vast expanse of the White Mountains and on to the southern edge of the Brooks Range. At night, we were treated to a huge display of the northern lights spread across a wide-open sky.

 Sunday morning, the White Mountain 100 Human Powered Race (ski, bike or run) came through on the same trail we had followed the day before.  By then, the trail had been packed by our group and by a bunch of snowmobiles that were out at 1 a.m. preparing for the race.  We watched the fastest fat bikers cruise through after only 45 minutes on the trail.  They were faster than even the small dog team the day before.  Some of the groups of racers took a wrong turn off the trail and down the 100 yards to our cabin.  We kept pointing and signaling for them to go back to the trail. The first bikers were followed by skiers and then by a mix of bikers, skiers and runners who were 7 miles in to their 100 mile adventure.  

By midday Sunday, the trail had been transformed from its condition the prior day to more of a snow highway packed by ski, paw, foot and fat-tire.  

The ride back over the same summits and down the other sides was a BLAST.  The snow machines left hummocks in sections of the trail that created rollicking roller coaster like feeling.  The ride passed too quickly, taking less than half the time of the trek the day before. 

Ready to roll!

Before I knew it, I was back at the tree where we cached Little Monster.  I hitched LM back to the bike and took off up the half mile before the long easy drop 2 miles back to the trailhead.  LM still felt like I was towing a piece of carpeting behind my bike but on the firmer trail, we could just cruise right along back to the parking lot.  

After another 20 minutes the smaller dog team reached the parking lot.  By then, the musher and I were working together like a well oiled machine unloading sleds, packing the gear, loading the dogs, loading the bike and hoisting the sled onto the roof of the dogbox.  

Yup. We had had a successful adventure. We decided that the only thing left to do was to stop at the Hill Top Cafe - a famous truck stop on the haul road - to eat a piece of their famously great pie!  Like the bumper sticker says, “Warning – We Brake for Pie!”

This isn't the time to hibernate.  It is time to celebrate!