THE POWER OF PLACE
ALASKA
TAKING IT TO EXTREMES EMILY CHAPPELL
A remote mountain highway in Alaska during winter
“ I hadn’t anticipated how much this cold would weaken me”
I’ve never been as frightened as I was the day I rode towards Glacier View. Although barely three days from Anchorage, civilisation felt a long way behind me. My tyres rustled over a thick crust of compacted snow as I pedalled north, and the Chugach Mountains towering above shone whiter with every hour that passed. The cold felt malevolent, gnawing painfully at my fingers and toes, clawing at my throat and nostrils. The sunlight taunted me, promising a warmth it refused to deliver. I hadn’t anticipated how much this cold
would weaken me. I’d been covering distances like this for years, but I’d rarely ridden so slowly, unable to muster the spark needed to cycle at anything above walking pace. I was, I understood, at the mercy of a simple and brutal equation. The energy in my body was
finite. A litre of porridge (with butter, almonds and chocolate chips) would normally have seen me through most of a day’s riding, but out here, my body was burning through it at a much higher rate, trying to maintain its usual 37C in an environment more than 60C colder. The occasional houses I passed were
shut up for winter, driſts of snow in their driveways. My only potential heat source was a puny multi-fuel stove, which I doubted my cold-clumsy fingers would be able to wrestle from my pannier (never mind assemble and light), and the only food I could access was a stash of peanut butter cups in my bar bag. With time, I adapted. In my sleeping bag,
my body became a furnace that dried damp gloves and socks and melted the water that had frozen solid in its flask. I learned to dress
efficiently, so that my sweat didn’t line my jacket with frost, and to keep food where I could access it without removing my gloves. A month later, I stood at the junction with
the Cassiar Highway, a 500-mile road through the British Columbian backcountry. Unlike the busy Alaska Highway, with its compacted snow and friendly truckers, the Cassiar was hidden under driſts, with just a couple of tracks to suggest that vehicles had ever passed this way. I glanced between the two roads. The thrill of fear, familiar now, had lost much of its sting. I turned south and set off into the driſts.
Athlete, author and former cycle courier Emily Chappell is the author of Where There’s A Will.
thatemilychappell.com
Jul/Aug 2020 73
IMAGE: GETTY
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