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Pedaling in Granny Gear
Carl Hutchings and the Long, Cold Road to Nome
June 6, 2005

Editor's Note: Author Elliot McAllister recently competed in the 2005 Alaska Ultra, which follows the famed Iditarod route from Anchorage to McGrath (short course) and Nome (long course). Check his dispatches at: AlaskaUltra.

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EM: I got to talk to Carl Hutchings a bit on his record setting ride to Nome, completing the Southern Route in 22 days. He sent me a recount of some of the more interesting parts of the trip…some could be considered more frustrating…but a great read in every sense…almost makes me wish for more snow…Almost, but not quite!

CH: I'm really pleased I asked you why you didn't continue. I heard the sled was holding you back. Somehow, in my heart, I knew it must be more than that. I have been lucky with my knees considering I have no ACL in one and very little cartilage left in both (motocross destroyed them). It would be impossible to make Nome with bad knees; I think you made a good decision."

EM: Yeah, my knees were hurting quite a bit from about day three on. I didn't want to get into a situation where I was 50 miles from nowhere.

CH: I do remember reading a Pat Norwil story where he describes taking silly amounts of pain killers. I'm so happy I didn't take a single pain killer on the whole ride.

EM: Did you get to raid any of my drops? What was most useful for you?

CH: The Kaltag drop—I remember the leather-type dried fruit and Reeses cups. The Glovin one—I left a lot of it for Roberto and his film crew. They were very grateful for the toffees. I have to say, I was so sick of eating by Kaltag I think I was numb to what I put in my mouth. My tongue seemed to lose skin and I couldn't taste anything anyway.

EM: So what was the rest of the trip like?

CH: Ever had to change a tube at -30 degrees Celsius? Plastic pumps become brittle and explode and tire beads freeze, turning a sub-three-minute task into an hour-long chore. A little over 400 miles into the 2005 Iditabike, with a further 700 miles of Alaskan unpredictability before the finish line at Nome, Allan Sheldon was facing that task. You learn fast in Alaska, you have to. Before attempting to use my pump, we built a fire to warm the internals and soften a tire looking more like a 29er then a 26-inch.

Two days earlier Allan had finished the 350-mile Alaska Ultra Sport race, placing second to Mike Curiak.

EM: That's pretty incredible, that you and Allan were that far up and planning on going a bit further.

CH: I think a lot of people will overlook the fact Allan rode a bike weighing 55 pounds to Curiak's 40 pound setup. Allan's goal was Nome. Curiak, this time, was happy to finish at McGrath. McGrath to the Bering Sea coastal town of Nome is a self-supported endeavor. You mail or fly in food to native villages and you are on your own outside of the race structure. The bottom line is: if you perish out there, don't expect someone to come looking for you any time soon. If you can find a phone, the race head-quarters in Anchorage will update their website on your progress. A race to Nome requires everything you need to survive what Alaska is capable of throwing at you for 30-odd days, very different than the four day sprint to McGrath.

EM: Was this your first time on the trail?

CH: This was my second visit to Ultra Sport. In '04 I placed sixth to McGrath and picked up a two-inch scar above my right eye on the way. I had just finished fifth, but this time my goal was Nome, and McGrath wasn't a finish line but a chance to dry clothes and eat before advancing further on the trail.

The Iditarod is really a sled dog race held a week after our race starts. Eighty teams of dogs leave Anchorage for Nome. Helicopters and planes fly above the leaders who are racing for a first place purse of $80,000 and a gas-guzzling Dodge pickup truck. We are parasites racing on a trail that, in places, is made solely for their use. This point was driven home the very same day as Allan's puncture. At 11:30 pm we arrived at the Dishna River and the trail ended abruptly. It turned into four and a half days of sleeping out, rationing our food, drinking pine needle tea and waiting for Iditarod trail breakers to come and make a trail. The alternative was lugging 60-pound bikes through waist deep snow on a compass heading. It was actually quicker to wait. Unbelievably, the Eskimos don't have cuss words in their language. They say their life is not complicated to need them. I could think of a few cuss words at this time. Alaska plays with your mind. Its one of the few places you can go and hallucinate without drugs. Sleep deprivation and the vagueness of the trail I expected. Waiting four and a half days by a frozen river wasn't something I mentally prepared for; this was, after all, a race.

EM: I heard about that. Bill said there was a storm that dumped upwards of four to seven feet of snow a few weeks before we came into McGrath. I was really happy that I didn't have to break trail up there. So you guys had to wait for the Iditarod trail breakers to come in and lay trail for the dog teams? How was the trail after Takontna?

"Alaska plays with your mind. Its one of the few places you can go and hallucinate without drugs..."

CH: I have people back home imagine pedaling in granny gear, uphill, for three weeks. Speeds average four miles per hour, when you can ride. Patience is paramount; snow consistency can change in a matter of feet. There's a fine line in Alaska of what's rideable and what isn't.

Faced with a fresh trail that had no time to set up and harden, it was a long push to the once thriving (pop. 25,000) mining town of Iditarod, now a ghost town with a few derelict shacks. It was also the location of a food drop we had flown in that would prove crucial to travel further.

Sometimes it seemed like an eating race. To sustain the exertion of 20-odd hour days of travel the body needs 8,000 calories, which is a pain. You also need to eat to stay warm, as the body acts like a furnace. Melting snow for water is also a necessary pain and you still spend the entire time dehydrated to a degree. Allan had made what was, for me, a 22-hour ordeal to Iditarod in considerably less time. I hadn't expected to see him again, but Iditarod was to be his Southern curse this time.

EM: So that's where you caught back up to Allan. What had happened?

CH: An Achilles heel injury stopped Allan's race in 2001; now a groin injury would end his 2005 race. Before we parted I asked Allan for his drinking cup, as mine had broken in the cold. When I returned home weeks later I had a letter from Allan telling me to clean the cup before using it, as he had pissed in it the night before…Thanks Allan.

EM: Yikes…well what are friends for, right? So you are in Iditarod and looking up the trail. What next?

CH: I was now the lone biker racing against four walkers. Not much of a challenge on a normal trail, but this is Alaska and I was doing quite a bit of walking myself. I also had quite a bit of company. The dog teams who travel at 10 miles per hour were catching me and leaving me a 700-mile trail lined with dog sh*t to follow.

The next milestone was the mighty Yukon, a frozen, featureless river asking me for only 150 miles of its vast length. It also gave me a southerly wind and above average temperatures, which made for punchy snow. When I reached the Iditarod checkpoint of Eagle Island, on the river, I had been pushing for over 150 miles. I also arrived when a volunteer had found a Sports Illustrated magazine, but not just any edition, the annual swimwear edition, in a cabin set a quarter-mile back from the river. The arrival of a lone biker to a bunch of horny twenty something's was now of no consequence. Fortune did shine though. A northerly wind blew and temperatures plummeted. Now I had a trail to ride. This was just as well. Hours earlier I had removed my socks to dry them and couldn't understand why my feet were dirty. I then realized the dirt was blood.

EM: Ouch. Bad feet are hard to get over…I'm glad that the temps dropped for you. How were the mushers and the rest of the checkpoints?

CH: The mushers have many terms of endearment for our race. The idiot-sport, The insane-a-bike and the I-did-a-hike. All are very apt, but the truth is an Ultra Sport competitor is a creative, obsessive-compulsive, calculating personality type; a headstrong athlete with the ability to focus on a goal for three weeks, when Mother Nature is doing its best to slam-dunk them.

EM: So at the least the athletes have the respect of the mushers. I remember meeting or at least seeing Mattin Brusier as he was finishing in McGrath a few years ago. He was slapping hands with some of us as we were bringing up the rear of the finishers.

You ended up winning the overall, but you were chasing Roberto for a while, how was it when you finally caught him?

CH: Beneath [Roberto's] laid back exterior lies a stubborness and patience not known to many. Italian walker Roberto Ghidoni is one such animal. Standing six foot four with size 48 feet and a glass eye, his ungainly posture has him nicknamed "The Italian Moose." He's able to average virtually 60 miles a day. Since the delay at the Dishna River, which allowed Roberto to catch up, I had been chasing him for a week. With the coast pending and the promise of traditionally hard pack trails including the 60 odd miles of sea ice I was sure to catch him. Other bikers have had to explain how a walker beat them; I wasn't going to be one of them. We both set of from the village of Shakatoolik together to face the Norton Sound and the sea ice. I shook Roberto's hand and wished him good luck. Now the trail was mine and I had a course record to beat. I figured this would give credit to winning a bike race with one biker.

EM: What were you looking forward to the most in the journey North of McGrath?

CH: Riding the sea ice was what captured my imagination. A picture Andy Heading had taken of American Mike Estes in the 2001 race spoke to the dreamer in me. I don't feel I fit my description for an Ultra Sport racer. I'm a dreamer and risk taker—my biggest assets and greatest downfalls. It had, however, worked for me this time. Riding into Nome in a little over 22 days earned me a course record. Despite being stuck at the Dishna River, the weather patterns and trail had been favorable, and I was now one of only six to make Nome on the Southern Route. There was no one to welcome me in. The burled Iditarod finish arch was still erected as a few mushers were still to finish.

EM: I remember that many of the finishers had the same reaction getting to Nome. It was so anticlimactic. But in reality, you are racing yourself. You are the one to beat or be beaten…not anyone else.

CH: Yeah, I asked a musher who had finished days ago to take some shots of me. Almost immediately I hated Nome. The first tarmac road for 22 days, the first traffic. I was homeless...I stank…One bath in 22 days…I had a beard…I hate beards. After six hours I managed to transfer my brain from a primal thinking animal to someone who could arrange accommodation.

The following day I opened my Gmail and there was an email from Andy Heading welcoming me to a very exclusive club. I laughed as I thought this so British, but you know Andy. This time I accept that membership, but does it have leather seats? I'm pretty sick of bicycle ones.

by Elliot McAllister

Go to Alaska Ultra Index

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