Alaska Ultra Sport on MountainZone.com

Pages

I looked up at the dark ceiling and saw a completely dust covered, antique pair of tele skis. I found a pair of boots to go with the bindings that were close enough to a fit. There was even a set of poles with powder baskets. This was my way out. I didn't need a trail anymore -- I could do it myself. It's funny how fate works when you stop believing in it.

I loaded up and slapped on those 220 cm skis. They must have weighed 15 pounds, but they were actually really fast in the deep snow. Halfway across the river the snow started to turn to rain. My heart sank a little. Well, maybe a lot. Rain in Alaska is the worst. Once your gear and clothing get wet there is just no way to get them dry again, except by building a fire which is really hard to do in pouring rain. I knew I had to ski until I got to Ruby no matter what--there was no stopping now. And of course, the wet snow it started to stick to the wooden skis. I tried to wax them but it just wouldn't stick to the wood base--the skis kept balling up.

"I was completely soaked, and my feet were floating in water and now freezing cold."

After hours of struggling I had to pull out my skate skis. I strapped the wooden ones to my pack and continued down river. At least with the warm temps the snow was compacted so I wasn't sinking with the skinny skis. All day it went, back and forth between snow and rain. I was completely soaked, and my feet were floating in water and now freezing cold.

After 25 miles my back just couldn't take carrying those wood skis in addition to all of my other gear. I decided to stick them up in the snow and when I got to Ruby I would pay someone to snow machine back and put them in the cabin -- bad karma to take someone's skis and then throw them away, I thought.

I finally came to the crux of this leg - a 9-mile island. As I got to it the wind reversed direction and started howling from the west. Then came the sheets of rain, and thunder. I couldn't believe things just kept getting worse for the last 6 days. Every day the challenge became greater.

I got a little down thinking it was going to be like this all the way into Ruby and then saw an amazing sight. Through the torrential sideways rain the sun was trying to come through. The wind picked up even more, like the sun was blowing this storm through. It felt like I was in a dream or hallucinating. And then it was calm, the rain stopped and the sky cleared right at sunset. It was perfect until I realized that with clear skies at night comes extreme cold and here I was soaking wet. I picked up the pace. As the temp dropped the snow started to freeze solid and I was able to double pole - that was all I could do because there was no way to wax for this kind of snow.

I made it into Ruby around midnight and found the checkpoint after an hour of wandering around town in the dark. They were pretty relieved to see me, since I hadn't been heard from or seen for a couple of days. I called my wife back home, who had been informed that I was missing and she told me she had spent the last couple of days thinking I was either sitting in a cabin somewhere or dead. Not something you should do to your wife who is 9 months pregnant.

I had promised her I would do this race in 5 days and now I was at day 7 and still had 50 miles to go. Those 50 miles could take another couple of days and I just couldn't bear to put her in the position of not knowing where I was or how I was doing. I decided the right thing to do was to quit and go home and take care of the family. For me, racing is now a passion, not a profession. Instead of racing for first, I put family first. Racing is fun until it begins to negatively affect other people.

I called the race director and gave him my update, and he was greatly relieved to hear that I was alive and well. They were a little panicked that I was out there without a sleeping bag and hadn't been heard from me for 3 days. They tried to send search and rescue but the weather was too bad to fly, and no one wanted to snow machine up the river without a trail in a whiteout. When the weather cleared they decided to send a 'search and rescue team' from Ruby on snow machine to look for Eric and the other two bikers, Peter Bassinger and Rajmond Kovac, who were somewhere behind me.