Day 6: Rohn (187) to Bear Creek Cabin (228)

Slow news day Saturday!  Seems like we all had better things to do today besides report from the trail ;-)  I got to do a deep purge/clean of the Sturgis Bunker (while the cat’s away, I’ll throw out all his things!) and Ryan got to bike some more of the Alaskan backcountry.

Ryan headed out into the cold (all relative though, as reports had it above zero for a significant portion of the day…another heat wave!) about 1:30pm, surrounded by the same gaggle of racers.  Speeds indicated a pretty good first half to this leg, but predictably slowed about 10 miles from Bear Creek.  From there it was about a 2.5 mph slog, but made it to a warm and relatively packed cabin at 1:30am.  As expected, no cell and apparently no need to inReach, so I have no pictures for today.  I do have a couple pictures and a video of Bear Creek Cabin from friend and fellow ITI finisher, Jeff Rock!  Thanks for letting us have a glimpse of what cabin life is like!

Ryan presumably slept, ate, got organized, and swapped trail stories with the six racers also at the cabin.  He departed just after 11am and has a cool 30 miles to Nikolai (mile 259).  And by cool, I mean pretty tough. Tough because this section is known “The Burn”...he got a taste last night, but the Farewell Burn is a 40 mile stretch prior to reaching Nikolai.  It’s name comes from a massive wildfire that burned over a million and a half acres in 1978.  While regrowth is occurring, it still remains a significantly exposed part of the ITI course. Typically, this area doesn’t have much snow…but not this year!  The bikers hitting this stretch have had some significantly slow speeds indicating a lot of pushing the bike (fancy speak for walking) and not much riding. Good news is that when racers get through this section, they find respite in the little village of Nikolai…a real building with power and heat and food/water. Spoiled!

As of this writing (7:45pm MST), he’s at mile 251 and clicking off speeds between 2-4mph.  Horse to the Nikolai barn!