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Will I do a similar trip in 2022? As long as health and strength allow, I'll be riding onward to some destination. I know by now that bike-packing is in my blood.
And so I did. It all began with a chance January 2022 encounter with Bianca Graver at an Appalachian Montain Club lodge in the Maine North Woods. We were both there to enjoy the Maine winter on skis and snowshoes, and we were staying with others in the lodge bunkhouse. In a chance conversation, I learned that she is also a bike-packer and was planning to ride with a friend from the Florida Keys to Deadhorse, AK, on the Artic Ocean. That got me thinking, and I decided to do something similar. Instead of south to north, I chose to go north to south. Also, my goal was modest compared with Bianca's. I didn't need to go all the way to Florida. Montana was good enough for me.
My adventure started with flights from Maine to Anchorage and then Anchorage to Deadhorse. I started riding from Deadhorse on June 19 and finished in Montana in September. The hardest part was at the very start: the nearly 500 miles from Deadhorse to Fairbanks on the largely unpaved Dalton Highway that exists for one reason only: to service the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay. Unlike my previous bike-packing journeys on the Northern Tier and TransAm, this was a trip that required careful advance planning of food. I carried a week's worth of dehydrated and freeze dried food with me to Deadhorse and then staged other boxes that I mailed ahead to post offices along the way. Despite the challenges, this was the bike-packing trip of a lifetime.
As on my past trips, I wrote missives to family and friends along the way. What follows below is the first of those missives that I wrote from Coldfoot, AK, about halfway from Deadhorse to Fairbanks. After the missive itself, I have transcribed the day-to-day log that I kept in a spiral notebook as I inched southward. You will also find a link to a slideshow of photos taken along the way.
Also, this year I rode for a cause in support of independent Russian-language journalism at TV Дождь (TV Rain), the self-styled optimistic channel, that was forced to move its operations outside of Russia after Putin's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. For this reason, you will see the TV Дождь symbol in the lower righthand corner of my slideshow videos. Please consider donating to this independent channel that is providing much needed objective reporting in the Russian language. You can find out how on the station website: https://tvrain.tv/donate-en/ .
Will I do a similar trip in 2023? Do I even need to answer that question?
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Slideshow
A slideshow of photos from my Maine departure through Coldfoot can be found at https://photos.app.goo.gl/qKRP6Wbi77bvpVkRA
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Missive No. 1: A Week in the Tundra
This is it, my first missive from northern Alaska. I am nearly a week into my journey and am taking my first rest day in Coldfoot. Note I didn't write "the town of." Rather, Coldfoot was a work camp during construction of the Dalton Highway during the 1970s after the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay. Since the 1970s it has transformed into the only location with services of any kind on the Dalton Highway in the nearly 500 miles between Fairbanks and Deadhorse.
There is a truck stop cafe, a gas station, and an inn built from prefab blocks. Oh, and there is a post office. I camped for free when I arrived last night but am enjoying $250/night luxury in the inn tonight. Taking a shower and doing laundry are today's prime tasks. For both it's the first time since leaving Deadhorse five days ago. I'm becoming familiar with and not noticing my bodily smells in a manner familiar to Appalachian Trail through hikers. And that's to the good!
There is so much I could write about this week, but I am limited by the practical tasks of this rest day and the fact that I am pecking out this missive on my cell phone, not at a keyboard. Please forgive my brevity.
To date all has been going so well that it's scary. Departure from Maine with Ellen's help getting me and my boxed Atlantis, aka WoodsWoman, went without a hitch. The same can be said of my flights from Bangor to Anchorage even if I had to jog between my gates in Chicago due to a weather-delayed arrival. I spent two nights in Anchorage, making one trip to REI for localized bear advice and to buy an extra fuel bottle, a purchase that proved wise given how much I have been using my stove.
The flight for the hour and a half hop to Deadhorse left at 5:45 a.m. on Saturday. Denali was impressively visible, poking above the clouds. The moment of truth came when I received my boxes at the airport in Deadhorse. WoodsWoman arrived intact. Nothing had broken in transit. I spent the next several hours putting her back together and then rode over to the Aurora Hostel/Hotel to get a room for the night. Trips to the gas station (over $8/gallon here) to fill my fuel bottles, to the general store to get my bear spray, and to the post office to get the box of food I had mailed ahead. My new friend Ibrahim shuttled me around town.
On Sunday off I went onto the Dalton Highway for a 60 mile day, the first fifty of which were on a paved surface on the flat coastal plain without a tree in sight. After all, this is the tundra even if the temperature was in the balmy 4-6C range (lower 40s F). I did glimpse musk oxon but no grizzly bears even though a trucker slowed to tell me he had spotted one. Even this flat ride wasn't trivial given the wind and the fact I had not ridden in a week and a half. Then the pavement ended and the uphill onto the North Slope began. The roadside pullout where I intended to stop for the night turned out to be further than I expected. But I got there!
Dinner the first night? Lentils with veggies and sausage on tacos. Make that dinner for three nights. What I thought would be a single portion was triple that. Breakfast in the morning was my homemade gran-oatmeal and blueberry muffins that I baked on the camp stove. Not bad for a first night, but I was and am continuing to learn that I over-planned the amount of food I needed to carry.
Monday and Tuesday brought me further up the North Slope to the beginning of the climb over Atigun Pass. Setting up the tent on Tuesday was quite the challenge given a strong wind and rocky ground that would not take a stake.
Wednesday was the big day, the crossing of Atigun Pass. At over 4000 feet, it's the highest roadway pass in Alaska. I lucked out with the weather. Despite clouds and wind, there was no rain or fog. That's not to say that I had an easy time of it. Climbing a pass like this on a dirt road with loose gravel is not simple. Most of my day went into getting up and over, and I did have to push WoodsWoman up for more than a mile. But the stark Arctic views were simply stunning and well worth the climb!
My reward for crossing the pass I can give in one word: trees. I had left the tundra behind and entered the boreal forest in the Dietrich River valley of the Brooks Range of mountains. That night I camped at a beautiful spot on the banks of the Dietrich River.
And Thursday brouht me the final 50 miles to Coldfoot. The last thirty miles of that were on pavement that felt like silk after the bone-rattling previous days, but an ever-strenghening headwind meant it took effort to go the final miles.
Which brings me to an observation. I'm above the Arctic Circle where the sun won't set again until sometime in August. It's daylight 24 hours each day. (A good pair of blinders help me sleep through the "night.") That said, there are daily patterns, one of which is the wind. It strengthens during the "day" as the sun rises higher into the southern sky and slackens as it sinks lower in the north at "night."
Oh, and the people! I have been offered water and fruit by passing motorists. A young group of hydrologists gave me apples and an orange. An older gentleman with his grandson stopped when they saw my roadside campsite with WoodsWoman standing there. They wanted to know if I was the solo woman bicyclist they had heard about in Deadhorse. (Note to Ron -- In this first week I've given away almost all the plastic bicycle pins you gave me. I should have taken more!)
My laundry should be done. Time to get on to the next task of this rest day. Tomorrow I start the next leg to Fairbanks with many hills yet to climb. Cell service along the Dalton is virtually non-existent for AT&T subscribers like me. I'll write my next missive from Fairbanks.
Total distance so far is 240 miles. That's $24 so far that I will be donating to TV Dozhd' (Rain), the self-styled optimistic channel. Speaking of which, I arrived to Deadhorse in the rain. I take that as an optimistic beginning of this journey. Why not join me in pledging to Dozhd' based on my mileage for this trip? Let's keep independent Russian journalism alive! The donation link is
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Daily Log
Starting odometer reading: 316 km
Thursday, June 16, 2022 -- 316 km cum - 0 km/day
And so the adventure begins. I now sit at an altitude of 30K+ feet somewhere over Canada, most likely over British Columbia. We land in another three hours, nearly at 10 p.m. in Anchorage. Make that 2 a.m. Friday according to my body clock that is attuned to Atlantic Time. I'm "sort of" watching "The Great Escape" as I write. It brings me back to my childhood when Steve McQueen was a dashing, handsome hero. The "Great Escape" theme may well be a theme for me as this adventure begins.
Ellen was such a help to me these past two days. She came to Burlington on Tuesday afternoon just as I was doing the final sealing on my crate and two boxes. On Wednesday we loaded them onto her truck and headed down to Bangor. On the way I tried to make a phone call . . . and discovered that my phone could no longer connect to the AT&T network. Thank goodness I had decided to go down to Bangor on Wednesday! There was time to stop at the AT&T store where the young woman technician knew the solution as soon as I described the problem. My sim card somehow had gone bad! She replaced it, and my phone was as good as new. If I had only discovered this problem in Alaska, I may have headed into my summer with a non-functional phone.
Ellen and I had dinner at the Seadog in honor of pre-Covid SAGE days and then checked in at the airport hotel. Checking in for the flight to Chicago this morning was trouble-free and came with the nice surprise that my overweight / oversize / excess baggage fee was only $150, not the $750 I expected.
The Chicago flight landed late due to weather, and I literally had to jog to make it to my Anchorage flight before the gate closed. I barely made it, but I did. And so now I sit at 30K+ feet enjoying service in the business class section, a first for me on a domestic flight. And why not? Starting the day after tomorrow, I will be on a dehydrated / freeze dried diet for may days and even weeks to come. But that is part of the challenge, part of the adventure.
Indeed the adventure, or at the least its prelude, has begun!
Ellen was such a help to me these past two days. She came to Burlington on Tuesday afternoon just as I was doing the final sealing on my crate and two boxes. On Wednesday we loaded them onto her truck and headed down to Bangor. On the way I tried to make a phone call . . . and discovered that my phone could no longer connect to the AT&T network. Thank goodness I had decided to go down to Bangor on Wednesday! There was time to stop at the AT&T store where the young woman technician knew the solution as soon as I described the problem. My sim card somehow had gone bad! She replaced it, and my phone was as good as new. If I had only discovered this problem in Alaska, I may have headed into my summer with a non-functional phone.
Ellen and I had dinner at the Seadog in honor of pre-Covid SAGE days and then checked in at the airport hotel. Checking in for the flight to Chicago this morning was trouble-free and came with the nice surprise that my overweight / oversize / excess baggage fee was only $150, not the $750 I expected.
The Chicago flight landed late due to weather, and I literally had to jog to make it to my Anchorage flight before the gate closed. I barely made it, but I did. And so now I sit at 30K+ feet enjoying service in the business class section, a first for me on a domestic flight. And why not? Starting the day after tomorrow, I will be on a dehydrated / freeze dried diet for may days and even weeks to come. But that is part of the challenge, part of the adventure.
Indeed the adventure, or at the least its prelude, has begun!
Friday, June 17, 2022 -- 316 km cum - 0 km/day
It has been a quiet day in Anchorage. My only outing as such was to REI, not so much to buy anything as to ask for advice. In this, my short outing was a success. I met Angela, a bike-packer who has ridden from Fairbanks to Nevada. She put my mind at ease regarding bears and urine. She told me not to worry about using a pee bottle in the tent. She said she used an open yogurt container **outside** the tent with nary a problem.
My flight to Deadhorse is at 5:45 a.m. tomorrow. That's local time, which makes me glad I've kept myself on Atlantic Time, by which the flight is at 10:45 a.m., a much more human hour. In a place where the sun never sets, time zones lose their meaning.
What will tomorrow bring?
Saturday, June 18, 2022 -- 316 km cum - 0 km/day
I'm in Deadhorse, in Prudhoe Bay! I'm spending the night at the Aurora, a hostel / hotel for oil field workers.
The early morning flight from Anchorage was short and easy. It took me about 5 hours to put WoodsWoman back together in the terminal. Doing so was easier than I expected. I had no problems. Still, it was 5 p.m. Atlantic by the time I was done, hence my decision to spend the night here and get going tomorrow.
Putting WoodsWoman together went so well that I kept expecting "the other shoe to drop." And it did. When I picked up my box at the Deadhorse post office, I discovered to my horror that I had **not** sent my medications. In particular, I hadn't sent my Divigel. I'm about to find out what going off HRT is like.
How did I manage this? I now recall that I mailed a large supply of meds to Fairbanks and had intended to **carry** a 2-week supply with me to Deadhorse. It's the **carry** part that I forgot, somehow having assumed I had **mailed** it.
Well, it could be worse. Kelli is going to send it express mail to Dalton Highway Express in Fairbanks for them to send it up to Coldfoot. If this works, I will be without my HRT for only a week, not two. Perhaps I can survive that long without hot flashes.
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Crisis averted! When I was waking on Sunday morning, I remembered I had packed my meds in a different place than usual next to the bear canister. I have enough to get me to Coldfoot, maybe further.
Forgot to mention that it was raining when we landed on Saturday. That's notable because this is an Arctic desert where rain is unusual. Given that I am dedicating this trip to ТВ Дождь, this was an "оптимистическое начало."
Sunday, June 19, 2022 -- 414 km cum - 98 km/day
A 60-mile day. Not bad for a start, but it wasn't exactly easy despite the road being flat until the last 5 miles. Moreover, the road was paved until those last 5 miles.
Why wasn't it easy? It started well with a good tailwind, but later the wind switched to a cross-wind with a hint of a headwind. But this was not the real reason. The true reason is that I am out of shape after a week and a half of no riding. Shades of Williamsburg to Richmond on the TransAm last year.
But the weather was superb with a bright sun and temperatures in the upper 30s and low 40s. Also, no bugs.
Setting up camp and cooking took a long time, but my dinner of lentil tacos was not bad even if the "10-minute boil-in-bag" rice was tough.
All-in-all, this was a good first day.
Monday, June 20, 2022 -- 488 km cum - 74 km/day
A harder day in terms of climbing and dirt road conditions, but somehow today seemed easier than the first. I'm camped for the "night" at the side of the road a bit beyond Pumping Station 2. (What is night when the sun never sets?) The only hill I walked up was a steep one called Oil Spill Hill.
I'm now in mosquito country and fully covered head to toe despite temperatures that must be on the order of 16C or higher.
At my campsite this morning I met a father/son Romanian couple.
Today is Meruert's birthday, and she is in Russia -- at Dubna!
PS -- After dinner, I met David and his grandson Taylor from North Carolina. They pulled over in their ATV to ask if I am the woman cyclist who had stayed at the Aurora in Deadhorse. It seems I've become a minor sensation at the Aurora!
Tuesday, June 21, 2022 -- 558 km cum - 70 km/day
A good but tough day that finds me on the lower rise to Atigun Pass. I'm actually further than the 70km would indicate. There was a 16-mile construction zone through which Paul the pilot truck driver took Woodswoman and me.
It's late, and I'm too tired to write coherently. Here are a few bullet points for the day:
-- Camped "tonight" beside Atigun River with beautiful mountain views.
-- Camping for free at the side of the road isn't easy. Had to go many km to find a decent spot that was flat without large rocks.
-- Wind was so strong when I arrived that I had to use rocks to hold the tent down. Was afraid the poles might snap. Couldn't lite the stove due to the wind. Fortunately, it has died down since.
-- Rough road with some insane grades in the first part of the day. Had to walk up a few.
Wednesday, June 22, 2022 -- 607 km cum - 49 km/day
Barely a 30-mile day but for good reason: I'm over Atigun Pass, the hardest part of the first half of the Dalton Highway. I've just finished a "Backpacker's Pantry" lasagna dinner. For the first time on this trip, I had a voracious dinner appetite, and that's after having enjoyed a full breakfast of scrambled eggs and hash browns this morning. My dinner venue? I sit on the banks of the Dietrich River looking west as the sun makes its way north over a spectacular mountain view.
The climb up Atigun Pass was tough, no two ways about it. The grades were reminiscent of Road to the Sun in Glacier NP. The loose gravel road surface was not bicycle friendly, and there was a stiff headwind. I must have pushed WoodsWoman at least a mile and a half to the pass' highest point (~ 4700'). The cold did not help, but I was spared the rain, snow, and mud that others have experienced. The gravel road surface also meant I had to control my speed on the descent. There was no breakneck descent from this pass.
But now I am down and am enjoying the first trees, in fact a forest, I have seen since flying to Deadhorse. I have left the tundra behind and again enjoy the warmth that only a forest of trees can give.
Thursday, June 23, 2022 -- 687 km cum - 80 km/day
I'm in Coldfoot after a good 50-mile day. It should also have been an easy day given that 30 of the miles were on a paved surface, but a headwind that only got stronger as the day went on made sure it wasn't. Today's ride was a slow slog headlong into the wind. But the stunning scenery while riding through the Brooks Range made up for it.
Highlight along the way was a group of young hydrologists at a roadside pullout. They gave me two apples and an orange, and I gave them each one of the bicyclist pins that Ron gave me before the trip.
I'm tenting in Coldfoot, but I gave in to a $27.50 (!) buffet in the Truckers' Cafe. I just couldn't bring myself to drag out my camp stove when there was prepared food at hand.
Deadhorse to Coldfoot in five days! I'm happy. Will take my first rest day here tomorrow.
Kicking ass, great pictures. Hopefully, there is more to read.
ReplyDeleteGreat read. I got directed here from crazyguyonabike. small typo: your June 17th log entry appears to be labeled June 27. I'm off to read Missive 2, now.
ReplyDeleteOh gee, Roderick, thank you for catching that typo! And apologies for only now, in January 2024, seeing your comment from October 2023.
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