In 2010 an absurd ultramarathon dubbed the White Mountains 100 was created north of Fairbanks, Alaska. A 100 miler through a ludicrously remote tract of land, it is known for cold temperatures and enthusiastic volunteers. The race has grown so popular that there’s a lottery and a wait list for a coveted roster spot. Thanks to a lucky lottery pick, I found myself in possession of such a spot this year.I had entered the lottery on a whim, and now that I had a spot I wasn’t sure I could pull the race off. A few months prior, I’d spent the night after my first ultra bent over a birch tree, barfin’ up a salmon burger. And that was only a 50 miler. But everyone says the second half of a 100 miler is all mental… and worse comes to worst, I could pull out at any point. (This was before I found out about the $200 evacuation fee..)
Participants can fatbike, ski, or run the race, and initially I registered as a runner. But between my epic burnout this fall from an over enthusiastic race schedule and my plan to hike across Scotland this spring, I eventually decided to save my legs and ski.
On March 27 I toed the start line, skis in hand, a pack on my back, and 89 hours of audio books in my ears. The race started at 8AM and after some embarrassing binding troubles that resulted in me cursing in the parking lot for ten minutes, I was off. The first 40 miles were uneventful. Besides a steep downhill that left me in a heap in the side-trail shrubbery, the trail rolled by easily as I munched salami and listened to my audiobook.
After mile 40, the trail turned steadily uphill and my body went steadily downhill. I’d been skiing for 10 hours and as the sun went down it got cold. I had -20F mitts on but my fingers were painfully numb. Balling my hands into fists around hand-warmers, I shuffle-stepped along without poles.Up and up into the mountains. Darkness fell as I trudged on, my kick wax worn off and my fingers too cold to do anything about it. I stopped eating and drinking as my IBS reared its ugly head, leaving me feeling 11 months pregnant with a demon baby. I got down some frozen gummies, but barfed them up before they even hit my stomach. Ultras are a GI nightmare. When you add in my body’s refusal to digest anything other than rice, they become an intestinal hell the likes of which I’ve only experienced after a night in a Vietnamese street market. I needed to eat, but couldn’t keep anything in.
Lourdes and Eric, two lovely runners I’d seen at previous checkpoints, caught up to me and we began a 60 mile game of leapfrog. It was full dark by the time I got to the mountain pass, and the sky was lit with the green fire of the Northern Lights. Thick bands of green and purple wriggled across the sky and showers of fainter streaks shone down to the horizon. The show lasted until dawn and I spent a good portion of the night staring up in exhaustion-addled wonder.I made it to the top of the pass and hit the “halfway” sign after 14 hours. I’d thought I was a lot further, and the fact that I still had 50 miles to go was a punch in the gut. The last 50 miles were all mental, huh? My brain was already mush from the first 50! On top of that, I was cold. Like “this is no longer fun” cold. I hadn’t a clue what the temperature was, but given that I comfortably ski in -20F I figured it wasn’t the 5F that I’d seen on the weather report. My ass was frozen and I hadn’t even started downhill. In desperate need of something to thaw it, I wrapped my down jacket around my hips.
Loins suitably girded, I took off down the other side of the pass. I was too cold and tired to execute a solid pizza to slow myself and spent the downhill miles swearing and praying around every corner, my down kilt flapping in the breeze. Howling started up in the woods, and I vainly tried to figure out if it was my imagination or not. I finally decided there must be a husky at the next checkpoint… one with impressive vocals. The howls picked up. Okay maybe a team of huskies, I thought, as I turned up the volume of my audio book and peered through the dark for cabin lights.Eventually I hit a sign that said the checkpoint was 1.6 miles away, which might as well have been 160 given that I was 17 hours in and had an icicle for an ass. I contemplated chucking the sign into the woods. That’s it, I thought, I’m quitting. Wait, no. $200 evacuation fee… $200 buys a lot of beer. And chocolate! $200 is a plane ticket! Nope, not quitting.
Thankfully, just as I was really losing it I saw the cheery twinkle lights of the Windy Gap Cabin, a volunteer welcoming me in. Not a dog in sight.So, wolves then. The volunteers at the cabin half-joked that we should go out in a buddy-system. Personally, I was more upset that there was no doggo at the cabin than I was about having just skied through wolf territory. My stomach still felt awful, but I managed to get half a bowl of meatball soup down before reluctantly starting into some chicken teriyaki from my pack. I crammed down a few mouthfuls to justify carrying the damn stuff 60 miles before crawling up behind some water jugs to snooze for a few minutes.Lourdes and Eric came in after I’d clambered down from my perch, Eric sporting a blister big enough that the “Blister Lady” was woken up from her tent in the snow to deal with it. Alas, I trudged back into the wolf-infested forest before I could see the Great Draining. Any longer in that cozy cabin and I would have never left.
I spent the rest of the night looking over my shoulder, convinced I’d see glowing eyes behind me every time I did. I didn’t know if I was scared or excited about the prospect. As the sky lightened, I passed through limestone crags and made foggy mental notes to come back and play on them when it wasn’t a billion degrees below zero. At mile 70 I spent a solid twenty minutes determining what some absurdly shiny thing in the distance was before deciding it was a street sign. Then another twenty minutes was spent trying to figure out why there was a street sign in the middle of the wilderness. It turned out to be Christmas lights, heralding the medic tent. I trundled by, feeling a faint satisfaction that the medic looked colder than me.The last cabin checkpoint was at mile 82. My eyelashes and hair had frozen solid by the time I arrived, eyelids drooping under the weight of ice and exhaustion. I felt like Leonardo DiCaprio in the Revenant when I slung open the door, though I probably looked more like Olaf from Frozen. Bodies were strewn about, but I managed to find a corner for myself. As my fingers thawed, I peeled off my boots and socks to find a surprise. Both of my heels had ripped off, leaving what looked like hamburger meat, and the tips of my toes were covered in blood blisters. I stared in dismayed surprise at my ruined feet.
Until that moment, I had never gotten a blister on my feet. Ever. Tough feet are (were) my super power. When I step on a tack, the pointy-bit bends rather than pierce my skin. One time, I scampered through a glass-strewn motorcycle rally barefoot without getting a scratch. And now both my heels had fallen off. I slapped on some mole skin and a fresh pair of socks. Good to go, right?Eric and Lourdes showed up, and we commiserated over how cold the night was. Beat, a runner, had a thermometer strapped to his sled and told us it was -28F.. “not bad” in his words. Given that Beat routinely runs a 1,000 mile race across AK in -50F, maybe it wasn’t bad. But for me? Pretty f’ing bad.
But at this point the sun was up and stepping outside no longer felt like rolling in dry ice, so I headed back out for the last 20 miles. I bonked immediately. I was already bonking, but this was like running face first into a wall. I’d been up for over 24 hours, with only meatball soup and a bite of chicken teriyaki in the past 12. Not even my audiobook could drown out the nagging voice in my head and I started counting each sliding step I took..one, two, three, all the way up to 100. Then I started over. My head was still chanting “quit, quit, quit” but at least my feet were moving forward.Hills became impossible. My kick wax wasn’t holding, and my legs were too tired to propel myself up. My poling downgraded into awkward straight-armed push, the nerves in my elbows so pinched that it felt like I had carpal tunnel. (I had to sleep like I was on a crucifix for a week after the race to keep my arms from falling asleep.) I started hallucinating sounds, mostly laughing and joking behind me. Lourdes and Eric must be creeping up, I thought. How can they be laughing at a time like this? I kept rubbernecking, straining to find them on the trail but always coming up empty. I began to see shapes weaving in the burn areas.. last night’s wolves? Cruelest of all, a tree stump transformed into my cat, Mike Jones, and the eventual realization that my furry friend was not, in fact, on the trail crushed me.
It was in this ridiculous manner that I slowly waddled past the 90 mile tent, not daring to stop in case I never started again. Then I spent the next mile berating myself for not stopping, convinced I had been incredibly rude and now the volunteers hated me and they’d never give me meatball soup again.The last seven miles were largely uphill which was an awful, though expected, kick in the balls. I hit Wickersham Wall like a brick, strapping my skis to my backpack and pulling myself up with my poles. 100 steps walking forward, 100 steps walking backward, I 180-ed my way up the mile long hill.
My skis came off for every other hill from there on. It was on one of these endless hills that I decided I needed a good cry. I’ve been up for 30 hours.. I certainly need a cry, I thought. I screwed up my face, getting ready for a full-on ugly cry. After a few heaves reminiscent of a cat purging a hairball, I dissolved into half-hearted coughing. Alright, no crying then. Damn would these hills never end? Maybe if I quit they wouldn’t charge me $200…there were only a few miles left after all. What if I quit but got a ride from a snowmobiler? Is hitchhiking on a snowmobile trail a thing? Surely someone would pick me up.. crazy-eyed and bedraggled as I was, I hadn’t quite achieved serial killer chic yet. One, two, three, four… I counted all the way to one hundred.
Finally, FINALLY, after counting to a hundred more times than I care to think, I hit the 1 Mile to Finish sign. I need a selfie! I thought. And proceeded to spend the next ten minutes figuring out how to get myself into the frame with the sign. In my mush-brain state I forgot that there’s a countdown to take a selfie and kept jerking my head away before my phone took the picture. So I have ten pictures of the sign with my blurred head in the corner, and one good one.
The trail was downhill from there, and I kept forgetting which corner was the last before the finish, resulting in a lot of premature, triumphant arm-raising. At last, after a total of 32 hours, I spilled out into the parking lot to absolutely zero fanfare. A volunteer scampered by, ringing the bell that announces a finishing racer as he went. There’s a photo of me smiling broadly and another of me grimacing as I took a few steps on heel-less feet. I was finally done.
It was an incredibly anticlimatic ending and exactly what I wanted. I was exhausted and empty and very thankful to no longer be moving, and even more thankful that I never had to ski again (though I’m sure I will.. someday.) I threw my skis in the car, ripped off my boots and stuffed my swollen feet into sneakers. Then I sat my happy ass in the heated finisher’s trailer and double-fisted a burger and a beer. This time, it all stayed down.
Chelsey Cook 