<\/a>Competitors in the AlaskAcross 2024 race prepare to depart from Eagle Summit at 10 a.m. on June 8, 2024. From left are Bruno Grunau, Mark Ross, Forest Wagner, Mike Fisher, Sarah Hurkett, Clinton Brown, Tracie Curry and Curtis Henry. (Photo by Ned Rozell)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
That recent Saturday morning, nine people showed up in the Eagle Summit parking lot, a trailhead for the Pinnell Mountain Trail. Most of them were familiar faces.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
After walking us across the highway, biologist Mark Ross asked us to keep a lookout for the rare gray-headed chickadee and get a photo of it if we encountered one.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Someone said go.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Everyone hiked away toward Mastodon Dome wearing daypacks stuffed with enough food to get them to Chena Hot Springs.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Forest, Bruno and I took our place at the back, a standing we would never relinquish. We were all happy with that; our mutual goal was lots of time moving across the country together.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/a>Bruno Grunau and Forest Wagner hike a trail through the alpine in Interior Alaska during the AlaskAcross 2024 50-mile race. (Photo by Ned Rozell)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
AlaskAcross is a “just-add-water” adventure, one in which someone else has provided a plan and invited other people whose tracks are fun to follow and interpret. All you have to do is navigate, eat and drink enough to prevent falling over, and stay on your feet long enough to finish.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
My partners are both longtime friends who had never met one another. It tickled me to hear Forest and Bruno chatting. I let my mind drift off with their current subject, and loved seeing my boys gettin’ on like that.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
While we had seen other racers begin to trot on a four-wheeler trail burned through the alpine at the start, Forest, Bruno and I clicked along with trekking poles, never exceeding 4 miles per hour.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
That plodding pace was necessary for me, mature enough to be my friends’ uncle. I was also the most in need of hearing Fran Kohl remind us that we had dusty tools in our boxes waiting to be used.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/a>Bruno Grunau crosses the Ikheenjik River (formerly known as Birch Creek), the major water obstacle during the AlaskAcross 2024 race from Eagle Summit to Chena Hot Springs resort. (Photo by Ned Rozell)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
One of these was the ability to resist the body’s urge to sleep, something I try to do once a year around summer solstice.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
We were carrying no sleeping bags or tents, committed to pushing through the twilight of high summer. When that time came, we watched the sun dip behind hills to the northwest at 12:27 a.m. while sitting under a rock shelter on a ridgetop, our wet sneakers kicked off our wrinkled feet.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
With a stove and a tiny canister of fuel, we boiled water and enjoyed a coffee there. We were out there together as friends, in quiet country shared with hawk owls, golden plovers, gray-cheeked thrushes and ptarmigan. It was hard to imagine a time six month earlier, when the same spot was devoid of beating hearts, cloaked in darkness, and featured a frigid wind that would damage flesh in seconds.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The coffee filled us with euphoria.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Then came the next ten hours.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t