Doing the Summer Trails Challenge in One Day is Challenging!

Story that ran in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

Bagging our tenth sign.

By Eric Troyer

Sometimes you just gotta pack a season’s worth of fun into one day.

That’s what my wife, Corrine Leistikow, and I decided to do with the Fairbanks Summer Trails Challenge. And—uff da!—what a challenge!

Put on by the Fairbanks North Star Borough Parks and Recreation Department, the challenge tries to get people out on area trails and maybe learn some new ones. Signs are posted on a variety of trails in the borough and a booklet shows about where they are. To participate, people take a selfie with each one they find. Anyone who finds a majority of the signs by the deadline gets a Trailblazer Award.

The challenge has been around only since December 2016 (there’s a winter version, too), but it’s become popular quickly. Last summer about 340 people participated and 115 earned the Trailblazer Award by snagging at least 10 of the 12 signs.

Neither Corrine nor I had ever participated in the challenge, but earlier this summer I was considering it. For some demented reason I started thinking about the idea of doing it as an FKT. An FKT—Fastest Known Time—is a speed record along any particular route, usually very long. Popular among trail runners, an FKT is essentially a do-it-yourself time trial race.

Of course, doing the Trails Challenge as an FKT is ridiculous, so that naturally increased the appeal! I mentioned it in passing to Corrine and she loved the idea. So, our Trails Challenge in a Day project was born.

First, the planning. We downloaded the trails challenge guide from the borough’s website and read up on the 12 trails. We saw that almost all were accessible by bike, which made the project easier. Then we mapped out how we would tackle them, doing the farthest away ones first and then moving into town.

The biggest logistical challenge was “Island Trail” in the Tanana Lakes Recreation Area. Neither of us had been to area in a long time and we didn’t know if anyone was renting boats there. We didn’t want to haul our canoe all day just for that little bit, so we decided to wade or swim, if necessary. We brought waterproof pouches to keep our electronics dry.

We tentatively picked July 4 and decided to go for it when the weather and smoke forecast looked good. Here’s how our day went:

Getting up at 5:30 a.m., we hit the road at 6:30 a.m. and drive out the Steese Highway toward Twelvemile Summit. 

Windy and foggy for our first sign.

 

One down, 11 to go. 

We snag the Circle-Fairbanks Trail sign at 8:20 a.m. after hiking the one mile to it. The summit is in clouds and the conditions are windy and misty with a temperature of just 49 degrees F. Brrr! We hiked because, well, because that’s what Corrine had in her head that we would do. We definitely could have biked it.  Despite being cold, it was beautiful up there.

In the Chena River State Recreation Area, we bike two miles, mostly uphill, to get the Stiles Creek Trail sign at 11:10 a.m. and then snag the Mike Kelly Trail sign at 1 p.m. after a tough, five-mile bike with lots of steep ups and downs. It’s warmer than Twelvemile Summit, but not too warm. The mosquitoes descend whenever we stop or slow.

The Stiles Creek sign wasn't too hard to get to. 

The Mike Kelly Trail sign had some steep hills!

At the Chena Lake Recreation Area, we get lost for a bit, accidently bike the River Loop Trail – twice! But these trails are flat, so we don’t lose too much time. We finally get straightened out and bag the Chena River Nature Trail sign at 3:20 p.m. and then the Slough Loop sign at 3:40 p.m. Bugs, bugs, bugs!

The Slough Loop trail sign was short enough to walk but buggy!

At Birch Hill Recreation Area we run into friends Dave James and Karen Jensen at the North Forty Trail sign. They are doing the challenge, too, only more reasonably, spreading the signs out over the summer. At 4:30 p.m. we snap a selfie at the sign, say goodbye to Dave and Karen, who are hiking, and bike off to Blackhawk Trail. Along the way we run into friends Mike Mathers, Amanda Byrd, and Jeff and Sarah Conn. After a brief chat, we head off and finally nab the Blackhawk Trail sign at 4:45 p.m.

Running into Karen and Dave James was fun! 

At Skyline Ridge Park we navigate the rooty, bumpy Secret Trail and grab it’s sign at 5:40 p.m. and then the Skyline Ridge Trail at 5:55 p.m., on the way seeing friend Owen Hanley, Sr., who is out of for a run. We are getting tired! Fortunately, the last three trails are flat.

Said a quick hi to Owen as we went our separate ways. We still had work to do!

We get the Fairbanks Dog Park trail sign at 6:30 p.m. These trails are new to us, but we find the sign fairly quickly. We take different routes back. I load my bike on the car rack and then wait and wait and wait. What happened to Corrine?! Finally, she approaches riding on the road. She took a wrong turn, ended up on Davis Road and biked back on the roads.

At Tanana Lakes Recreation Area, we see that Alaska Dream Adventures rents boats. Yay! We don’t have to swim. In the beginning that sounded fun, but now we’re tired and ready to be done! (We later learned it’s possible to walk to the “island” when the water is low.) At 6:30 p.m. we take a selfie at the Eagle Trail sign and then rent a canoe. We paddle over to the island and get the Island Trail sign—our last one!—at 7:25 p.m. We celebrate with a kiss.

We were very happy to be able to rent a canoe. 

Ah! Ain't we so cute!

At 8:30 p.m. we arrive home, 14 hours after we left, tired and ready for showers. (For FKT purposes it took us 11 hours, 5 minutes from the first to last sign!)

We drove just over 300 miles and spent about 30 miles on the trails, most of it biking, but also some hiking and a little canoeing. We saw a lynx, three fox, and an osprey (possibly a young eagle). We spend a lot of time on trails already, but five of the trails we did were new to Corrine and three were new to me. (Add one to both our lists if you include the River Loop Trail.) We had a blast and are already planning how we will do the next trails challenge!

Prindle Personal Trainers Provide Motivation to Hustle while Hiking

This story ran in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. 

By Eric Troyer

When my wife, Corrine Leistikow, and I decided to hike Mount Prindle recently, we had no idea that we would be accompanied by personal trainers.

Some people hire human personal trainers for external motivation. But we found that “trainers” can come in a variety of forms. Our own Prindle Personal Trainers.

Hiking Mount Prindle in a day is challenging. It’s long – about 17 miles round-trip – with nearly 4,000 feet of elevation gain. The long ridge portion of the hike has several tricky boulder sections with random loose rocks. Some valley parts require dancing around wet spots. It’s a tough hike to keep up your pace.

Knowing it was going to be a long day, we left home really early and were on the trail before 8 a.m. At first we didn’t need much motivation. We were fresh. Conditions were great: the often-boggy trail was mostly dry and the temperature was cool. I had heard reports that the bugs were horrible, but once you got beyond the trailhead they weren’t too bad.  

As long as you kept moving. The first quarter-mile of this trek requires a couple of stream crossings. We crossed them in sandals and then stopped to put on our hiking shoes. The bugs welcomed us gleefully, so we got moving quickly. They were our first Prindle Personal Trainers, but they didn’t work us too hard.

About two miles in we crossed a boggy drainage and the bugs went from bad to headnet worthy.  In your eyes, nose, ears, and mouth bad. Biting any skin unprotected by bug dope bad. Our second set of Prindle Personal Trainers! They were whiny and annoying, and they kept us moving. Any stops were severely punished. Hiking with Bugs is not nearly as relaxing as Yoga with Reindeer.

Corrine gets "encouraged" by some of her "personal trainers." 

After about 5 miles we reached the head of the valley. Here the trail ends and the route turns to ridge walking. The ridge, I knew, would have a stiff breeze. Only it didn’t. The bugs were a bit better on the ridge but still annoying. We kept moving.

We climbed higher on the ridge and finally a strong breeze swept away the bugs. Man, they had been annoying trainers! Occasionally the wind would die and the bugs would be back, but mostly we were bug free. We talked to a couple of guys who had spent the night on the ridge. They said the wind had died often the day before and the bugs had been horrible. We felt lucky. Those were personal trainers we could do without.

The approach to Mount Prindle is a mixed bag – nice alpine ridge hiking mixed with challenging sections of rock. Some sections have smaller rocks – think basketball-sized or smaller. Other sections have rocks more the size of appliances, large and small. Every section has loose rocks patiently waiting for your footfall so they can deviously trip you up. Kind of like personal de-motivators. It’s not a place for speed, but the closer you get to the summit, the easier it is to self-motivate.

Climbing the ridge past the ridge of huge tors.

Some sections of trail are easy. Some not so much.

Our legs tiring, we climbed the last hill and finally made the summit of Mount Prindle after just under 5 hours of hiking. I had been on the summit a few times before, but this was Corrine’s first time and she was happy she had made it. We rested, ate lunch, enjoyed the view, and contemplated the hike back on tired legs. We figured we’d have to rely on a lot of inner motivation.

Enjoying lunch on Mount Prindle.

Then the thunder caught our attention. The weather forecast had called for possible thunderstorms, but so far the weather had been great. Still, we weren’t too concerned. The thunder sounded a long way off. But as we hiked back along the ridge, slowly picking our way over the rocky sections, the thunder got louder. Dark clouds grew over the mountains off to our left. As we hiked the thunder got louder and the clouds got closer. I saw some lightning. If that thunderstorm was going to overtake us, we really, really wanted to be off that ridge. We had another Prindle Personal Trainer! This one had a deep voice and seemed really angry. We tried to hustle as best we could!

Hustling away from a thunderstorm, another of our "personal trainers."

As it happened, the thunderstorm paralleled us but didn’t enter our drainage. Still, it did its job to motivate us. We kept moving despite wanting to take a rest stop or two.

Dreading the trek back down the bug-filled valley, we donned more bug dope just before dropping off the ridge, but we were pleasantly surprised by a nice breeze. The bugs were just down to bad again. We had five miles to go, but no “trainers” to really motivate us. Tired, we hiked along considerably slower than our hike in.

Then another thunderstorm started developing over the ridge to our right. And we got spit on by some overhead clouds that might be part of the thunderstorm we thought was staying safely in the other drainage. Neither of us wanted to put on rain gear or get wet. We sped up a little for these Prindle Personal Trainers, but they didn’t push too hard.

Lots of nice alpine wildflowers on this hike.  

Then just two miles from the finish Corrine took a rest stop while I continued down to a creek crossing to get more water. While I filled my water container, Corrine hiked passed me and said something I couldn’t hear. Her rest stop had seemed awfully short, but she’s not the lingering kind, so I didn’t think too much of it. I finished with my water and then hustled down the trail to catch her. And I really had to hustle. She was moving fast. I tried to figure out the reason. Had that short rest been all she needed? Had she really been holding back, thinking I was tired? Had she found a new Prindle Personal Trainer?

Bingo! This one was purely technological. Shortly after sitting down to rest, Corrine’s Garmin watch had buzzed. It was down to five percent battery power. Worried that she wouldn’t get full Strava credit for the hike, Corrine sprang up and hustled down the trail, determined to finish before her watch died.

The battery survived to the trailhead, where the bugs were again headnet worthy. They motivated us once more, but this time to get in the car as fast as we could! We finished the hike in just under 10.5 hours. And I’m sure we finished much quicker than we would have if we hadn’t had our Prindle Personal Trainers.

Ferry Road and beyond

This was a Trip Report done for the News-Miner in 2016.

Corrine bikes on the mining road after passing the wind turbines.

Party: Eric Troyer, Corrine Leistikow
Trip Location: Mining roads that cover the hills to the east of Ferry, just north of Healy.

Access: To get to the trailhead, turn on Ferry Road at Mile 259.4 Parks Highway. Take the road about a mile to where it ends at the Nenana River. Park out of the way with the other cars. Bike or walk your bike across the river on the boardwalk that’s part of the railroad bridge. On the other side, travel a short distance, about a quarter mile, and turn right, crossing the railroad tracks. Turn right again, following the wide gravel road.

Trip Date:  Saturday, July 9.

Trail or route conditions, wildlife sightings and any highlights from the trip: The first part of this trip is a wide, fairly smooth gravel road, made even wider and smoother with the construction of the Eva Creek Wind Project, finished in 2012. The first 6 miles is a steady grind. Another 4 miles of mostly ups but some downs takes you to the wind turbines, which are impressive to see close up.

Corrine crosses the pedestrian pathway on the railroad bridge.

The first part of the road is wide and flat. It accesses the wind turbines.

The road stays wide all the way to the turbines, but it gets steeper!

Along the way you start seeing the turbines.

Along the way, at about Mile 9, is Boot Hill, a collection of memorials to past locals, with a strong boot theme. Boot Hill also has a sculpture, about 20 feet high, made of large perforated circles and the tail of an old small airplane, partly buried as though it had crashed there.

Boot Hill is a great place to take a break. 

The plane crash turned art. 

We were generally following a trip description from the out-of-print book “Mountain Bike Alaska: 49 Trails in the 49th State,” which was published in 1991. We had read the description but didn’t bring the book with us, so we missed the road to the Liberty Bell Mine described in the book. But that was fine. The wind turbines, another mile past Boot Hill, are a huge draw when you get up there.

You get to bike right next to the turbines. They are massive!

We knew we had to go east, so we followed the road that direction until it left the wind farm and turned into a narrower and rougher mining road, though it was mostly easy for biking. The road followed a ridge for a ways and we could see some buildings in the valley to the south, which we later learned is the old Liberty Bell Mine. Then the road dropped, steeply at times, for several miles into the California Creek drainage.

The mining road dropping into the Calfornia Creek drainage. The road past the turbines is more typical of a mining road, narrower and rough in places.

At the bottom we came across a small mining operation and briefly talked to one of the friendly miners, who told us where we should have turned to get to Liberty Bell Mine. We rode another mile or so to California Creek, where we stopped for lunch. The mining road continued on past the creek and would have been easy to cross if we had had the time and didn’t mind getting wet feet. We were just out for the day and had already gone about 18 miles, so we turned around.

The mining operation.

We turned around here, but clearly you could explore further. 

I’d like to go back again sometime. “Mountain Bike Alaska” describes a ride 25 miles one-way to the Totatlanika River and there are several ATV trails that take off from the road after it reaches alpine country. However, I first have to forget how much I hate long, boring uphill gravel grinds.

For more information buy a copy of “Mountain Bike Alaska.” Used copies are still available online. Or just follow the USGS maps. The Liberty Bell Mine road is marked, as is the road we took (marked in red after a 1972 revision).