Time to hit the trail westward

Time to hit the trail westward

Yup, it's 30 below this morning. Just like it was last week. Back then, I wrote a story that prompted Copper Center Country Journal Editor Linda Weld to publish an observation: "Ned Rozell ... has finally hit the wall."

That is true. But I'm hoping to get around it soon.

On March 21, 2026, with a favorable forecast and the rumor of a packed snow trail, my friend Forest Wagner and I will roll away from my house in Fairbanks on our fat bikes. We hope to ratchet our way west to the Seward Peninsula's nose, eventually to the town of Nome.

Nome is a long way from Fairbanks - about 700 miles on big frozen rivers including the Tanana and Yukon and wooded portages like the one from Kaltag to Unalakleet. Due to what is now a late start - delayed a month by extreme weather - there may be an element of racing the spring melt westward.

However, as we've been preparing, there has been no hint of spring other than 12 hours of brightness. While outside, we have breathed no Alaska air capable of melting snow or ice since last Halloween.

Fat bikes are a semi-recent innovation in which tires as thick as a loaf of bread allow riders to float on snowmachine trails even when they are somewhat soft. Fat bikes are slow - 10 miles per hour is considered flying; an average of 6 is great. Packed trails are a must. We heart snowmachines and dogsleds.

Fat biking contrasts with a method Andy Sterns and I used to cover the same country miles 25 years ago. Andy - who introduced me to his climbing partner Forest a few years ago - wanted to ski the historic Serum Run route, from the town of Nenana to Nome. Using very short skate skis, Andy and I squeaked away from a gas station in Nenana in February. We arrived at a gas station in Nome 27 days later.

Back then, I sent weekly stories to the Geophysical Institute for distribution. I will do the same on this trip.

Compared to that journey with Andy, it may feel nice not to be carrying everything on my back. But I am - ahem - 25 years older than I was then.

There is some delusion at work here, but I have latched onto the words of the late Alaska adventurer Dick Griffith, who executed his last Alaska Wilderness Classic race at 81. When his friend Roman Dial was 64, Griffith told Dial he was in the prime of his life.

Another Mastodon in the Room is my current lack of saddle time, due in part to 40 below and our trails being obliterated by feet of snow in February. Perhaps the trail whips me into shape; maybe I just get wupped.

But I'm going to start pedaling. Because it's springtime and Fair-a-dise conditions are forecast for our departure date. And that day is my 63rd birthday, still short of my prime.

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.