National Geographic Traveller - UK (2020-07 & 2020-08)

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, drifts 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 drifts, 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 drifts.

Athlete, author and former cycle courier

Emily Chappell is the author of Where

There’s A Will. thatemilychappell.com

TAKING IT TO EXTREMES

EMILY CHAPPELL

“ I hadn’t anticipated

how much this cold

would weaken me”

A remote mountain highway

in Alaska during winter

IMAGE: GETTY

ALASKA

Jul/Aug 2020 73

THE POWER OF PLACE