Reliving the 1000mi Iditarod Trail Invitational - Day 1

We made it to the Susnita, then the Yentna River sometime in the early and still dark morning hours. That’s where the cold usually hits you like a brick. It wasn’t too bad this time. We passed a few racers who bivied on the river, some even set up tents. Because the cold air sits on rivers, it’s not generally a good idea to sleep there, but sometimes you don’t have a choice. Our goal was to make it to the Yentna Station checkpoint without sleeping. So we did.

I had to get used to Duracell Bunny’s way of moving, or I would be left in the literal and proverbial snow dust. MP moves relentlessly for 5 hours without stopping, drinking, or eating anything. She then takes a short break, snacks on some weird trail mix, and drinks a coffee. All of that takes a few minutes. The process then repeats without mercy. During such a 5h block, I probably peed 17 times, ate 12 Snickers, 1lb of nuts, 67 Oreos, 35 shot blocks, 18 caffeine tablets, and drank 2 gallons of Tang. MP wouldn’t even have noticed any of this. I could have dropped dead, she would not have noticed that I was missing until her next coffee stop.

We got to Yentna Station before lunch, had a hearty breakfast, slept a few hours in one of their cabins, spent some togetherness in the double-seater outhouse, had another meal, and then headed out refreshed toward Skwentna Roadhouse (checkpoint 3, ~mile 85). Our plan was to push through to Shell Lake Lodge (~mile 110) and sleep there for a few hours.