Anchorage Daily News

Consider the Iditarod Invitational "The Lost Great Race."

Squeezed in each year between the Tesoro Iron Dog, the world's longest and toughest snowmachine race, and the world-famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the so-called Last Great Race, the Invitational, pitting paltry humans against the powerful and untamed environment of wilderness Alaska, gets overlooked.

Forty-five people set off from Knik for McGrath on Feb. 24 on ultra-fat-tired mountain bike, skis, foot and snowshoes. Twenty-eight made it the 350 miles up and over the Alaska Range and across the desolate Farewell Burn, including 12 who are trying to push all the way up the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail to Nome.

Most of the racers came from overseas or Outside looking for adventure. They all got it.

Winners or losers, they all suffered. Some endured and triumphed. Others went home beaten to lick their wounds, tell their tales and perhaps even vow to return and try again.

The Iditarod Trail is a place that can lead people to do some serious soul searching.

"Out here in Interior Alaska by myself ... is causing some anxiety and has made it hard to sleep even when I am stopped," blogger Jill Homer reported at one point. "I took a hard fall at the Post River waterfall (the trail actually goes up a waterfall) and pulled my right hip flexor muscle.

"This has made it really painful to push my bike uphill, and my pace over the millions of small hills before the Farewell Burn was downright glacial ... take three laboring steps and stop, repeat. Luckily, it is pretty flat from here on out. Hopefully I can get through this without further injury."

She did and eventually pedaled into McGrath. Others didn't.

Anne Ver Hoef might have gotten the worst of it. The Anchorage runner suffered frostbite on and around her eyes.

At one point along the trail, she lost her vision. Biker Alessandro Da Lio found her blind along the trail and tried to guide her into the village of Nikolai by holding onto the back of his bike while he pushed, but they eventually gave that up.

Da Lio eventually helped her set up a camp to shelter her from the weather some distance out of Nikolai and then rode for the village as fast as he could. Ver Hoef's husband, a bush pilot, flew out to get her and bring her back to Anchorage, where she is recovering.

Jay Petervary from Wyoming won the race, or at least the race to McGrath. He checked in there a few hours ahead of Anchorage's Jacques Boutet and Dave Hart, who tied for second.

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