7/9
40 miles
1700 feet elevation gain
With a dark room and a real bed, we slept in until 7am this morning. We enjoyed the breakfast buffet at Coldfoot Camp with the cyclists we met yesterday. We did some bike adjustments and hit the road around 10. This section of the Dalton Highway is a lot more up and down, with some steep punchy climbs. The downhills are nice at least! Paul and I both listened to some music to motivate us through the morning. I had some Disney tunes while he listened to 90s hip hop. We had very different childhoods obviously.
Now that we’re back in the trees, we saw some beaver activity, and tons of white crowned sparrows. No new life birds today though. While the mosquitos are not as thick as they were in the tundra, they are just as persistent and annoying. We learned last night that Caribou lose up to a quart of blood per week to mosquitos! Other interesting facts: frogs up here hibernate in winter by secreting all the fluid from their bodies and then they literally freeze for the winter. The chickadees just eat as much as they can all day long, then shiver through the night to keep warm.
Our initial goal was to do 30 miles today, but we got there early and the spot we chose was lousy with mosquitos, so we ate dinner and decided to push on. We put in another ten miles and thought we might be in a similar situation as the other day when we couldn’t find a decent place to stop as we approached a thousand foot climb that neither of us wanted to tackle tonight. Fortunately, there was a turnoff right at the base of the climb. And with the trees, we were able to set up in a spot with some shade. It’s still quite hot out in the afternoons and evenings, but tomorrow we will cross the Arctic Circle and start to get some reprieve from the unending sun. It’s been cool but a bit disorienting. I like the long days but sunsets are nice.
