Day 5: Puntilla/Rainy Pass Lodge (153ish) - Rohn (187.5)

Happy Friday everyone! And happy Spring Break to all my Augie friends 🙂

Since I last updated, Ryan got good and rested up at Rainy Pass Lodge, traveled up and over Rainy Pass, and arrived at Rohn late last night.  He’s currently en route to Nikolai (mile 259).  We’ve seen from the tracker that this section is particularly slow going due to tons of snow and exposed trail. I sadly don’t have any pictures to share, but I’m lifting a few from previous attempts in hopes of giving some sort of visual.  He’ll have cell service in Nikolai (I think) and hopefully will send me some pictures!

Ryan had a great night/day resting up at Rainy Pass Lodge.  I messaged him that there was no hurry, as Rohn checkpoint was currently packed with racers…his response was perfect: “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’ve not been hurrying.”  I told him we may have noticed ha! He was reunited with good buddy Jeff Goldstein, caught up with Aussie George, and prepared what was going to be a long haul over Rainy Pass and through the infamous Dalzell Gorge.  Rainy Pass is the high point of the race, typically featuring gnarly weather (wind and snow…you know, a typical mountain pass).  This year was no different, as racers were reporting heavy snow and drifts galore.  Minnesotan biker Kendall Park left in the morning, only to return a few hours later…she decided it was better to wait for friends, as the trail had completely disappeared.  Side bar: check out this amazing picture Kendall shared…she and three other female bikers stopped to help change a flat tire…in -35 degrees on the river…with the northern lights.  So bad ass!

Kendall and Ryan ended up leaving around the same time (11:45am-ish), along with Jeff (on foot) and a few others.  The following picture was taken of Kendall’s departure from Rainy x2; hopefully it can give you a sense of what it looks like out there.

Thankfully (!!) they inadvertently timed it just right, as the race’s snowmobile left Rohn to come to Rainy Pass…such luck having the broken trail!  Ryan made quick work of this section, a cool 12 hour push, arriving to Rohn way earlier than I anticipated, about 11pm AKST.  Knowing there was no cell to which he might text me, I slept like a little, ignorance-is-bliss baby :-) 

He didn’t comment about what the Rohn checkpoint was like, but at one point there were probably 3x as many racers as the simple wall tent can hold.  Probably the most remote part of the 350 mile course, the wall tent checkpoint is famous for beds (and air fresheners) made of evergreen boughs, tight quarters (6 racers makes a packed house), and brats. 

Ryan broke out the inReach to send a few messages. He reported Rainy Pass was “awesome.”  I messaged back asking for a different descriptor, as “awesome” doesn’t really tell me anything.  He replied it was “great.”  Thanks Ryan, glad to see your sense of humor hasn’t frozen up ;-)  He also enthusiastically reported he had three brats (his enthusiasm leads me to believe he was able to get them without mustard this year!). 

Despite the tent clearing out and a pretty large gap before the next pack of racers, Ryan decided to head out and tackle the next section…he thought it was going to be a cold day and so I’m guessing he wanted to get most of the work done during the day.  Forecast had a high of -2, low of -15, so he’s not wrong.  He told me at 12:30 CST he would leave in the next hour and three hours later we saw his dot fire up.  Hahaha, I’m sure there was a lot of packing, repacking, self-talk and motivating going on.

He’ll almost certainly stop at the Bear Creek shelter cabin (mile 228) available for racers.  The cabin is not an official checkpoint and is not a shelter cabin he’s utilized in previous years, but the snow is significant and the trackers show everyone crawling through this section to the official checkpoint at Nikolai….and then more crawling from there to Nome.  He also has an affinity for shelter cabins after last year, as they are a frequent respite for the more remote sections of the 1000 mile course.  Again, there isn’t much urgency on his end, as the lead biker is still in McGrath waiting for a snowmobile to rebreak the trail west of McGrath.