"We skied on dry overflow, hard frozen ice, wet overflow, breakable overflow, powder, good crust, heinous stuff that was bad crust, breakable crust; we skied on rocks, we skied over tundra," said Brad Marden of Fairbanks, one of 17 skiers to take on this year's 180-mile race in the Brooks Range.
They skied and skied and skied, sometimes navigating their way through fields of jagged rocks, sometimes carving turns on downhill slopes, sometimes breaking trail through snow one or two feet deep. Some of them, like Mehl and partner John Pekar, who together captured victory for the second straight year, skied parallel to giant grizzly bear paw prints.
They skied under bluebird skies and shimmering northern lights. They skied for 18 or more hours a day, in surprisingly hospitable weather.
"They were all a little sunburned," said Uta Hicker, who with her husband, Berni, runs a bed-and-breakfast in Wiseman that served as the finish line. "And they were a few pounds lighter."
The Hickers sent the racers on their way April 4 with full stomachs after a pre-race dinner Saturday night and breakfast Sunday morning.
From Wiseman, the racers were shuttled to Galbraith Lake, where the race began. There, they embarked on a journey that took them over Anaktuvuk Pass and back to Wiseman, with no set route and no set tracks.
Mehl, 31, and Pekar, 35, both of Anchorage, finished in 4 days, 12 hours, 48 minutes. They beat another Anchorage duo, Kevin Postma and Chris Wrobel, by 92 minutes.
A foursome from Fairbanks -- Dan Carlson, Ed Plumb, John Shook and Brian Jackson -- finished in third place more than a day later.
The rest of the starters didn't finish or were disqualified. Two bailed out early with stomach problems, Hicker said. One called it quits near Peregrine Pass and got a snowmachine ride out. Five others made it as far as the race's lone checkpoint at Anaktuvuk Pass, some 80 to 90 miles into the race, and caught a plane from there to Coldfoot.
Even those who didn't complete the entire 180 miles nonetheless finished with a certain sense of accomplishment -- and an even bigger sense of camaraderie, said race organizer Dave Cramer of Tok.
"It's one of those events, like any of these extreme sports things, that it's hard to do no matter who you are, and it brings people out of the woodwork that may be quite different in a lot of ways but have one thing in common in their willingness to do something like this," he said.
A few years ago, Cramer said, an Army captain who had just finished a tour of duty in Iraq was persuaded to do the race before he transferred out of Alaska.
"He said, 'The only thing I can compare this to is going to war.' It's that kind of experience, and it's also that kind of a bonding thing," Cramer said. "... The camaraderie that comes with the doing of it, what you derive from having accomplished it, is what brings people back to it.''
It's been bringing Cramer, 62, back for two decades. The owner of Summit Consulting, he started as a racer, and then about 20 years ago took over as sponsor and organizer -- all the while continuing as a racer.
Marden, a 28-year-old graduate student, entered for the first time this year. He's done the Alaska Wilderness Classic -- the somewhat better-known summer event that is also a days-long wilderness race -- and had plans to travel with Mehl, an environmental scientist, and Pekar, a civil engineer, when the race began April 4.
The three agreed that if Marden fell off the pace, Mehl and Pekar would push on without him. There was reason to believe he might not keep up, simply because of his equipment. While everyone else traveled on metal-edged backcountry skies, Marden showed up with a pair of skate skis and an old pair of racing boots.
"They were a little too lightweight," he said.
After about 40 miles, the toe bar in one of the boots ripped. Mehl and Pekar helped him fashion a temporary fix -- "I strapped down my boot onto my ski, so I couldn't really lift my heel," Marden said -- and he made do with the modification for the remaining 40 or 50 miles to the Anaktuvuk Pass checkpoint.
There, he borrowed a ski boot and continued to the finish line, even though the outside assistance disqualified him.
"I assumed that would put me out of the running, but that's just a small fraction of why all of us are out there," Marden said. "It's the self-challenge. I didn't even think about stopping."
As it turned out, it was Mehl and Pekar who caught up to Marden in the final stretch of the race. After getting a better boot, Marden was able to move more quickly along his chosen route, the north fork of the Koyukuk River.
Mehl and Pekar, meanwhile, chose a route that took them up and over Tinayguk Pass, where they encountered deep, thick-crusted snow that required exhaustive trailbreaking for two or three days.
The winners impressed others with their hard work. Marden called the effort amazing, and Jackson told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner the two were "real brutes to break as much trail as they did."
Once on the Tinayguk River, Mehl and Pekar came across a trail of grizzly tracks and followed them for a few miles. Even though the tracks might have led to a hungry bear just awakening from a long winter's nap, the thought of breaking even more trail seemed just as daunting.
"We were a little bit brain dead so didn't put any thought into it," Mehl told the News-Miner. "We could get both skis just within the left front and back holes they made in the snow. Anything that had been stepped on before was a little firmer so we were seeking those tracks. Those grizzly tracks were good."
The pair never saw a grizzly, but otherwise the journey through the Brooks Range offered no shortage of wildlife or adventure.
"The adventure was just the whole trip -- everything about it," Cramer said. "We saw hundreds if not thousands of ptarmigan, and gyrfalcons pursuing them. The wolves were there and howling. There were glorious displays of northern lights. Caribou, and just all of those things.
"It's pretty wild country. I've been through most of it before, summer and winter, but for just about everybody else, it was all new country for them. For me, just the idea of being able to organize something like this and bringing in these kinds of people and listen to what they say they saw, what excited them -- that's what I get out of this."
23rd annual Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic
Galbraith Lake to Wiseman via Anaktuvuk Pass
180 miles
1) John Pekar and Luc Mehl, 4 days, 12 hours, 48 minutes; 2) Kevin Postma and Chris Wrobel, 4 days, 2 hours, 20 minutes; 3) Brian Jackson, Dan Carlson, John Shook, Ed Plumb, 5 days, 5 hours, 25 minutes.
Scratched at Anaktuvuk Pass -- Yoshi Nishiyama, Dave Cramer, Rob Kehrer, Robert Groseclose, Andy Sterns. Scratched near Peregrine Pass -- John Trapp. Scratched and returned to start -- Ben Crozier, Dugan Greenwell. Disqualified -- Brad Marden.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.