The true and gripping story of how the first woman to ski the Iditarod survived 1,000 solo miles in the middle of the Alaskan winter.
Gone to the Dogs
The 1,000-mile Iditarod trail invitational is the longest and most brutal winter race on the planet. The course follows the route of the famed dogsled course, ending on the bering sea in Nome, Alaska, but competitors do not have the aid of canine companions and receive minimal support out alone in the wilderness.
I have crossed the Alaska Range in the winter four times before, three times on skis and once with a fat bike, and it is never easy. Today, though, it is particularly hard. The wind is howling; visibility is near zero in the blizzard. The cold gnaws at me from every direction. I’m halfway through this 30-mile stretch, on day seven of the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1,000-Mile Race, and the mountains have all the charm of a frozen, impenetrable wall. The forecast warned of -55°F windchill; it sure feels like it. Stopping to eat or drink is not an option and hasn’t been for miles; stalling even for a minute might turn into unrecoverable hypothermia.
I know I’m running low on energy, the warmth is draining from my body with every step. But I focus on one thing: Getting over this pass, the high point of the entire 1,000-mile journey I’m on. I hold onto the hope that once I’m over the crest, the trees below will offer some shelter from the wind. My plan is to get out of the wind, put on my big puffy jacket, gorge myself on calories, and push to the next aid station 12 miles down-trail. Letting myself fall behind on calories and get this cold is a strategic gamble, but it’s all about timing; right now I just need to make it a little farther, one step at a time.
Finally, I reach the shelter of the trees. I stop, drop my pack, my numb gloved hands trembling with cold and urgency. I dig through the bag, searching for the warmth I had promised myself. Nothing. I check three times, unable to believe it. The puffy jacket isn’t there.
For a moment, everything pauses. This isn’t possible. The puffy is my lifeline. I’m in the heart of the Alaska Range, in a blizzard, 50 below zero, and I have no expedition-weight down jacket.
The last time I saw the jacket was 18 miles and a mountain pass ago—so far back it might as well be a different world. Right here, right now, there’s no buffer between me and the merciless cold. Panic flares for a second, but there’s no time to indulge it. Hypothermia doesn’t wait for indecision. The cold has sunk its teeth into me, and I’m already wearing everything I have. The thought of taking off my gloves to eat is still out of the question—I’m too far gone already, and frostbite is just waiting to pounce. If I lose my hands, I’m done.
I have two options left: Fire or my sleeping bag. Fire isn’t realistic in this wind and with sparse vegetation. My other option is my sleeping bag—rated to -40°F, it’s warmer than my layers and my last line of defense.
Shelter, warmth, rest. A chance to feel less exposed. This also means time—precious time that I don’t have. I’m already chasing cutoffs, and every minute spent here inches me closer to disqualification. Can I afford to stop? Do I even have a choice? There’s a fine line between endurance and recklessness, a line I know too well. Here, in this moment, it’s no longer about chasing a finish—it’s about protecting life and limb.
The storm doesn’t care. The wind keeps howling through the darkness that set in shortly before I reached the pass—a lifetime ago. I make the call. I pull out the bivy, hurriedly kick off and stow my boots. I rush to slip into the sleeping bag and zip up to hunker down. The clock is ticking, but right now, my actions can’t be about time. I think about my stove, tucked into my sled bag within arms reach. Ah, to melt snow for a hot drink and meal… but I know that every second outside my sleeping bag is a gamble. The risk of frostbite is too high. I am so close to the edge, a fumble in handling the metal stove and white gas in this cold will cost me my fingers. The alternative is cold energy bars from my pockets. Each bite is a fight against the cold, a battle to keep my body from shutting down entirely. In this moment, I choose prudence over comfort, knowing that the race will have to wait.
Lying in the sleeping bag, I feel faint tingling in my fingertips—a telltale early sign of frostbite. GPS in hand I text my husband through the haze of exhaustion. I think I made a race-ending mistake. I tell him, feeling the weight of it sink deeper. His response is calm, grounding; He knows these situations all too well. You’ve got this, he says. I’m not so sure. Don’t make a decision until you’ve slept and eaten, he says. His words remind me that I have been through worse.
Exhaustion tugs me in and out of sleep, but the truth is unavoidable. I’m at mile 170, barely a week into my monthlong journey toward Nome, and I might not make it any farther. I am depleted, with beginning frostbite in my fingers, pinned down by a storm, missing a critical piece of survival gear, and I am very close to timing out. Unless I reach Rohn, the next aid station some 12 slow miles from here, by 2 p.m. tomorrow, my race is over.
I wake from fitful sleep at 6 a.m. My fingers are still tingling, the cold outside my sleeping bag is deafening, and I can’t stop ruminating. What if I can’t make it? What if this really is the end of the race for me? For two hours I toss and turn, cold and indecisive. The clock is ticking, but I just can’t get myself to move.
Do I risk it? Do I make a push for the aid station, or hunker down, knowing that any delay inches me closer to disqualification? I’m trapped between fear and the ticking clock. I reread Paul’s last message. You’ve got this. And deep down, I know he’s right.
It’s 8 a.m. by the time I force myself out of the sleeping bag. My body protests as the cold cuts through everything, but my fear of the cold turns out to be worse than the thing itself. I click into my skis and go, driven by the knowledge that I still have more to give. Twelve miles to Rohn. One mile at a time, and still so very cold.
When I finally see the aid station, I know I’ve made it. Twenty minutes before the cutoff. Barely, but enough. I collapse into the warming tent, overwhelmed with gratitude. This is the last time I’ll face time pressure until the finish. For now, I’m safe. I made it, and I can keep going.
Why did I want to keep going? That 20-minute margin was the difference between flying home and pushing forward. Instead of giving in, I earned the chance to continue—though now I was dead last, 800 miles from Nome, with nothing but uncertainty ahead. The weight of the miles ahead felt endless, and with every small setback, the possibility of missing the final cutoff grew more real.
What kept me going wasn’t pressure or ambition; it was curiosity. I wanted to know what lay ahead, both on the trail and within myself. I wasn’t afraid of the uncertainty. In fact, it fueled me. Not knowing made each mile a new discovery—about the world and about myself.
There were times I thought about quitting. But what would I do with the time I’d gain? Sit on the couch, scroll through life, return to the grind? No—I wanted this. I wanted to be there, on that endless trail, to feel it all: the biting cold, the exhaustion, the endless uncertainty.
I wasn’t far enough behind to know I’d fail, but never far enough ahead to feel secure. Nagging doubt juxtaposed with glimmering possibility—that tension, that dance with uncertainty, became my constant companion, mile after mile, through every setback. It wasn’t a burden; it was what propelled me forward.
When I finally crossed the finish line in Nome, it wasn’t about triumph. It was about perseverance, about the relentless curiosity that carried me across those thousand miles. I’d spent 29 days, 22 hours on that trail, always dancing with the unknown. And in the end, it was enough.
Sunny Stroeer is a free spirit and adventurer. A Harvard MBA and hard-charging strategy consultant in her 20s, she turned her back on material possessions and career at age 30 in order to live in an Astrovan so she could run and climb full-time. Learn more at sunnystroeer.com.
All photos: Courtesy Sunny Stroeer
