Hello from Rainy Pass
Written by Herman after his win in the Iditarod 350 during 2023.
Nicholas entered the Bear Creek shelter cabin only seconds before he recognized a soft snore and me, emitting the noise from its corner bunk. I woke up to his voice, dialed into the word he knew would reach my subconscious mind…
“Passed a few walkers near here.” He paused for effect, and I rose.
“Did you say ‘walkers’?”
Having put in what I’d perceived to be significant effort over the Alaska Range, in an effort to bury what remained of my competition, this news couldn’t be true. On the other hand, a trail breaking snow machine that met me on the near side of the range cleared a fine path for everyone behind me, including Nicholas and his fat-tired bicycle.
“Yeah, Daniel, Beat, and Sonja, who is only a couple of hours behind you.”
Certainly not, I thought, brushing away long-dried mouse turds and cobwebs of fatigue. I hadn’t seen any of those racers in days, and I’d jogged the last fifteen miles into Rohn and pushed on, as second place, Thierry Corbarieu, settled into his sleeping bag on a stack of hay bales in that checkpoint’s walled tent. How long ago was that? A week-long twenty-four hours, it seemed. What concerned me more was the notable exclusion of any reference to the Frenchman. The absence of his name meant that he had passed us by, opting for a direct and sleepless approach to Nikolai, the penultimate checkpoint in this endeavor.
These thoughts tumbled over each other, bumping into a weak barrier against hallucination I had purchased with ninety minutes rest. They accompanied me as I withdrew from warmth, in pursuit.
Some Context
This race wasn’t the beginning of my foray into human suffering, but it marked a significant milestone, crossing yet another barrier, one between survival (read: simply finishing) and a competitive effort. Two years prior, I signed up for Moab 240, nearly twenty years since my last race, an 8k I ran my sophomore year in college.
Moab was about survival. I was wildly underprepared for the distance, unsurprisingly. Numerous times, I wanted to quit, internally authoring my retirement speech between aid stations. I didn’t, however, thanks to a busybody volunteer and my entire family showing up at mile 120, including my dog. What I received in return was deep insight into my character, no kidding, the essence of my being.
As I crossed the finish line, in Moab, I was already plotting my next excursion into pain and that beautiful place I found myself at mile 180, coming to the realization that, deep down, I was actually a good and decent person; I was worthy, inherently; and, yet, I knew I was capable of more, I wanted more… more miles, more pain, more introspection and, ultimately, self actualization in its purest form. That’s how I found myself in the bowels of endurance hell that is a response to the search phrase “most fucked up race on the planet”.
The Iditarod Trail Invitational - “The World’s Longest and Toughest Winter Ultramarathon”
I wanted two things from this race. First, the absolute worst weather a late February in the Alaska Range could offer and, second, someone hard as hell trying desperately to beat me. This was my recipe for Barry Kaufman’s self-transcendence, knowing that the wolf inside me would rise to the occasion, and this time I was prepared… or so I thought, flattering myself.
It wasn’t more than an hour into this human-powered version of the dog sled race across “The Last Frontier” that I knew I’d found the latter.
Part One: The Frenchman
I was jogging at a good clip for a 350-mile race, pushing five miles per hour to gap the field and create a big enough lead going into the second day that it would require a late stage “all-nighter” to beat me. I didn’t see that happening. But I still didn’t know jack about ultrarunning, much less running 300 miles, much much less winter ultras, having completed only a single qualifying race that I ran the month prior to receiving my last minute invitation. I couldn’t have cared less. My mantra? “I came for the suck.”
So, when I heard the Frenchman jogging softly, steadily in the snow behind me, I was both intimidated and turned the fuck on, channeling a David Goggins version of my childhood hero, in his yellow wrestling tights - “Hell ya, brother!” I kept my composure, casually commenting on the weather. My competitor simply stared, sizing me up, and I picked up the pace to punish a perceived slight, not knowing that he didn’t understand my comment… or really much English at all.
Still not recovered from that qualifying race, 124 miles through the Caribou-Targhee Continental Divide, outside Island Park, Idaho, my knees cracked and crinkled like a bag of glass, stepping into the crunch of cold snow. Each step left a footprint and reminder that I felt like hot trash. Whatever. The Frenchman had me maxed, and it was on.
Less than twenty-four hours later, I got the weather.
Forty Below and Here We Go
In the wee hours of that next morning, I found the coldest temperature in my time on Earth. At around 40 below, my zero degree bag felt like a single warm breath delivered from Yukon Cornelius to the Abominable Snowmonster of the North. In other words, it did nothing to keep me warm. Yet, it offered a cushioned respite for those precious few minutes (ahem, four) I needed to mentally reset and make the push to Yentna Station, an unofficial checkpoint and welcomed retreat from the arctic clime. I tried to rest. It wasn’t moments later, however, the station’s proprietor and our gracious host ordered a medevac helicopter for three racers well into hypothermia and frostbite that would claim nine fingers in all.
Again, a mix of emotions. I was both deeply terrified and inspired to push on, harder and faster than before. I reminded myself, I came to move and keep moving, not for a relaxed, snoozy vacation. So, screw the fact that I was wildly underprepared and already wearing all of my clothes. Again, I came for the suck.
And suck it did.
Over the next two days, the course was buried under a foot of snow, wind ripping all tracks to shreds just in time to cross Rainy Pass, Denali visible in the distance.
Part Two: The Grind
When I arrived at Puntilla, over a hundred miles and misgivings later, racers were approaching from both directions. Those abandoning their attempt on the pass looked retired already. Morale was low with a stomach bug making the rounds, and I caught a couple hours rest to the soothing sounds of respiratory illness, deep congestion, rearing its ugly head. Nearly half of the field had dropped or worse. I consumed two cold cans of lentils I found in a nearby shelter and left as quickly as possible, setting off into a setting sun, driving deeper and deeper into the night, my mind.
After ten miles of post-holing through rolling foothills, slowly rising, I remembered I was carrying snowshoes. I donned them into an upward grind, my specialty. And with no sign of human travel, I was alone, ultimately, what I wanted and unknowingly had come all this way for. Everything burned in a frozen fire of pain, gails of wind somehow embodying a mental presence that overpowered my inner dialogue. It was all symbolic of the beauty that is pain, suffering that is proof of life - or whatever one postures to believe, until… butt stuff.
In the final push over Rainy Pass, my own tummy’s trouble began a separate, simultaneous push, calling for evac, immediately thereafter painting a barely managed snow hole in abstract design, brown and red. It was a marvel of post-modern expressionism, authored by one chafed and actively bleeding to betray even Seneca's stoic mind. And not a stoic myself, I took the opportunity to give a middle finger, one loaded up with Squirrel’s Nut Butter, to a raging winter storm recording 80mph winds… and that other place the sun don’t shine.
I came for the suck? A literal pain in the ass.
Yet, I raged on, your not-so-heroic narrator, into the white, carrying with me a gleeful madness born of necessity and its requisite dissociation.
Highpoint’s Lowpoint - And Back to Bear Creek
As I jogged out of the mountains and into Rohn, I had traced the trail of a wolf, jogging the same path not long before me. And now, I was the wolf, hunting the Frenchman, hungry for his footsteps, which I measured to be moving at a slower pace than my own. Each of the inches I added to his stride only increased my appetite, for the cause was primal and desperate. Ravenous, I had reached a singularity in my focus, borne of survival and the contest, a gauntlet of pain and suffering birthing my present form. I was Ancient Man for the first time. I was coming of age in an age without ritual.
Still in pursuit, I peaked on a rush of what remained of my hormones. It was in this moment of peaking, high on the good stuff that comes only from the bad place, that my doubts and fears transformed into gratitude. It was the doubt and fear itself for which I was grateful, an opportunity to push harder than I would have pushed myself, in the contest created by my foe and mind. That solitary moment of doubt, wading into the unknown with outcome uncertain, offered a glimpse of the wolf inside me, enough to tilt my head back and become one, none.
Howling, chasing the prey of my primitive experience, I drove my poles more firmly, focused, into the South Fork of the Kuskokwim’s frozen sheath. I and he only, a hunter… and the hunted.
It was day six begun.
—
A Mad Reflection on Being Tamed
We live in a socially marketed embrace of comfort, sweet things with instant gratification, “having fun” being that all-the-time goal. But that’s not me, not really, and I don’t feel the inherent sense of self worth that I’m told I deserve just for being me. Meanwhile, every day in the rest of my life is a routine of getting more or less exactly what I want.
Go figure.
I feel unsettled because I am a direct descendant of the ones who forged a path through hundreds of thousands of years of suck and struggle, in pursuit, finding a less complicated, singular focus. First, to survive - they push on, under a spectacular display of Northern Lights, juxtaposing human suffering with ribbons of color, both rhythmic in vibration; closing and opening their hands and curling their toes to fend off frost from forcing itself into their veins; and that thought of wonder, “what am I even doing here”, all alone.
I realized that it was me, bleeding and dying in real time.
Second, to compete - in contest, to conquer.
Also, me.
And somehow, in the suck, I found the courage to grind deeper into myself, rising to the challenge, my challenger. Transcending.
And when frigid climes bury trail and landscape, so too the trappings of a socio-normative experience, quietly draped beneath a fresh perspective. Present, reflecting on my position, I am able to journey into a more basic, fundamental self to see who I am, what this mortal coil authentically boasts: a man. Transcendent.
That next morning, the sun also rises on my soul.
