AK to AZ Day 24: If You Wanna be Hardcore, You’ve Gotta Live Hardcore

July 27
42 Miles
3200 feet elevation gain

Today was cold and wet, and I often thought of something one of our trail family used to say way back on the Appalachian Trail. If you wanna be hardcore, you gotta live hardcore. A fitting mantra for today.

It rained in the night and today’s forecast said it would rain in the afternoon. We dried everything the best we could before packing up. We had peanut butter and jelly on bagels for breakfast, but we only had to ride 6 miles for second breakfast at the MacLaren River Lodge. This was hot breakfast with hot coffee, not to mention real bathrooms and free wifi.

We lingered for about an hour and set out for the biggest climb of the Denali Highway to MacLaren Summit, the second highest highway pass in Alaska. We already did the highest of course, at Atigun Pass back on the Dalton Highway. It was about 5 miles of climbing this time, but the cool weather was nice.

The whole day was lakes, alpine scrub, a view of MacLaren Glacier, and more real food. Around 1 we arrived at Tangle Lakes Lodge, and went inside for pizza and soda. It started raining while we were inside, and we hesitated to go out, but eventually we put on the rain gear and went. There were more long climbs. The climbs were hot, the descents were cold. The rain made it colder.

During the Beringean Period, the interior of Alaska was free of ice, so there are archaeological sites in the area dating 10,000 years old or more. Nothing we can see on our ride of course, but cool to ponder nonetheless.

When we came to the last campsite we knew about with certainly for awhile, we decided to call it early and get dry. We did get the chance to test out our new rain gloves (awesome) and socks (Paul’s seem better but mine aren’t bad). Paul’s rain pants completely ripped at the seam, so we’re going to need to replace them as soon as we can. And we should probably both get a fleece in anticipation of cooler days ahead in Canada.

We set up camp in the rain and took shelter in the tent, hoping for the rain to clear up. It didn’t, so eventually we came back out into the drizzle to eat some dinner and get things off the bikes that we didn’t want left out in the rain all night. There are a couple vehicles camped here as well, and we chatted with a birder who has been coming up here to bird since the 90s. Sounds like it used to be a lot more birds up here. Speaking of which, I saw a couple more trumpeter swans and a common loon on the water today. Plenty of ptarmigans and sparrows, but I didn’t really stop to look at any sparrows today so I’ll assume they were white crowned sparrows.

We used one of our Garmin texts for a weather report on our GPS communicator, and it says it will rain all night long and early morning but by 9am tomorrow should be a 0% chance of rain. I know better than to rely on a weather report but I’m hopeful.

I did a bit of math and we’ve got less than 300 miles left in Alaska!