Niama Limits: Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra 2018
An interview with Juan-Pablo Niama Savonitti
In February of 2018 our friend – and quite frankly – one of the craziest people we are so proud to know – Juan-Pablo Niama Savonitti – took part in the “Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra”.
As the race-crew put it, this is quite simply the world’s coldest and toughest ultra. 700km of snow, ice, temperatures as low as -40°C and relentless wilderness. It is an exceptional undertaking, requiring great stamina, impressive mental strength and very good survival skills for extremely cold environments.
Juan-Pablo is also planning a very inspiring and absolutely unbelievable personal project to run the entire Pan-American route from Alaska to Ushuaia. You can check it out on his website Niama-limits.com and also in the Facebook Event about the project.
We simply couldn’t get enough of Juan-Pablo’s honest tales from the faraway cold and his positive and energetic approach to every single challenge along the way.
Through this interview, we offer you his unique insight to this amazing race and the opportunity to re-live the experience of Yukon’s rough beauty and see it through his eyes.
Juan-Pablo’s participation in the race did not rely on any sponsors and was entirely self-financed. As he put it, in his typical humorous tone: “I have an enormous loan in the bank, waiting for me to pay out!”
This is a two-part interview. We will post it in Bulgarian very soon, so stay tuned!
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MT: Tell us about the race itself?
JP: The race took place on the 1st – 9th of Februrary 2018 in Yukon, on the course of the “Yukon Quest” – a famous 1000-mile dog-sledding race from Fairbanks, AK to Whitehorse, YT.
The “Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra” (MYAU) uses the same track but is 300 miles (500km) long, and once every two years you have the possibility to do the 430-mile course which is almost 700km. The race starts from Whitehorse and finishes in Dawson. It is semi-autonomous and there are 3 disciplines – backcountry ski, running and fat-bike. You have to pull a sled with your equipment the entire time. There are 7 checkpoints about 50-70km apart that serve as aid stations but you mainly go unsupported throughout the race. Only one aid station offers the possibility of a shower and sleeping arrangements. The others only provide one meal per participant and maybe a heater to dry your equipment.
Participants can also sign up for a marathon distance and a 100-mile course.
This was the 15th edition of the race and according to the organizing crew, it was the coldest one in the entire race’s history.
The first night we were 21 participants for the 300-mile distance and I remember that we slept at -52C. The next morning I woke up with frostbite on the fingers of both my hands…
Race participants are encouraged to help each other, especially in extreme and dangerous conditions. For example, if you find another participant in a dire situation you might have to build a shelter for them, make sure they survive through the night and press their rescue button for them. It’s an atmosphere of camaraderie and everyone is really helping and friendly.
In cases when you have to help someone like this, they will „credit“ the time you spent helping back to you, so if or when you continue the race you would have essentially not „lost“ any time. It doesn’t feel like a neck-to-neck competition at all.
There are regular participants who come back to the race for an 8th consecutive year. There are also people who have raced the 100-mile course, for example, and would later on return as volunteers and so on…it’s a bit like a big family and it’s really an amazing experience.
MT: What food did you fuel your body with during the race?
JP: I calculated my food intake before the race. For my height and weight, I had to consume 5000 calories daily in such conditions. At checkpoints it is allowed to have one meal per person, which is around 1000 calories – a huge burger, a very good lasagne, pasta or similar food. You aren’t allowed a second meal, but you can buy one if it is at all possible at that specific location.
While on the move, I depended on food I had prepared myself – mainly pieces of chocolate, cheese, salami and balls of butter with walnuts, stored in plastic bags.
I couldn’t use bars, for example, because they’d freeze. I tested various local bars before the race, and the CLIFF bar seemed to perform best, but even this would freeze below certain temperatures. And in such conditions, you can’t afford to eat hard food, because you might break a tooth and then you’d be in real trouble.
MT: What about clothing and equipment?
JP: Аs I was a beginner in extremely cold environments, I depended on a lot of advice by Roumen from Skisharki. Together we worked out what would work best in my case and assembled a very good clothing system for the race based on Fjallraven, Aclima and Hestra products. In terms of running shoes and equipment I relied on Altra and Raidlight. I started testing all the equipment about a month before the race and it was simply amazing. Even at the most extreme conditions I could run in an ACLIMA wool base layer, a midlayer and breathable shells over that. And I felt very light, well covered and protected. And the same system could be put to use in most seasons, especially autumn and spring. It’s amazing how the same clothing adapts to such a wide range of conditions. Also, the wool dries very fast and it doesn’t stick to your skin, so it is very appropriate and comfortable for my specific activities in the extreme cold.
I used a pair of shoes with Polartec’s Neo-shell membrane. But as they were low-cut shoes, and the track went mainly on or along the Yukon river, I also employed a pair of knee-height overboots to account for melted ice and deep snow.
If conditions aren’t cold enough for a week or two prior to the race, you might have some overflowing sections and the top layer of ice could melt and you’d either be wading through knee-deep wet slush or could end up with water above the knees in sections where the ice is thin enough and you break through it as you walk.
If ski-dooers had passed on the ice before you, you could easily tell you won’t break through, but sometimes you notice areas where the ice changes texture and color – it becomes thinner and you might break through it. In these cases you either wade through in your overboots or just circumnavigate the area via a drier and safer route.
I was really surprised by how you can easily judge the temperature, based on the different sound of your footsteps. Your steps just sound differently at -25, -35 and so on.
I used a balaclava during the race which had a velcro-sealed cover for the nose and mouth. At some point, the moisture from breathing caused it to freeze to my beard. It was really painful and I couldn’t take the thing off my face. At that point I was running alonгside a Spanish guy, so he took a pair of scissors to my beard and helped me take the mask off.
Prior to the race, I received advice from a fellow participant to trim my beard to a shorter length so it would provide warmth but wouldn’t freeze too much. A longer beard would accumulate a lot of frozen moisture. And since you can’t remove all of it, you would typically end up with a load of melted cold water right atop your chest area when you go inside your sleeping bag.
Before the race we did a little test on a small lake with Jeanne and Stewart Sterling. It was mostly frozen but there was a small area on it where the ice had melted a bit. We put a spare of dry clothes, a towel and some hot drinks on one side of the lake. We would then cross the lake, soaked up to our knees in melt-water and return to our spare clothes.
The temperature was 1C and in the beginning it was fairly OK. But it quickly became a bone-chilling experience. But we had to do it. We needed to know how it felt and how to react if we were overflown during the race.
Once back to our clothes we’d wipe our feet with snow – it wicks the moisture out and you dry quicker that way. We’d then get into our dry clothes and drink something warm. Even though it was just a training exercise in a very controlled environment -just 200m away from a hut – it was definitely a sobering experience.
In an extreme situation far out there during the race, something as little as getting your feet wet will force you to stop, setup camp, get into a sleeping bag and do everything necessary to warm yourself up and recover. And you cannot cut corners in a situation like this.
MT: How was bivvying organized?
JP: The sleeping schedule is entirely up to you, but you have to be at certain checkpoints within the cut-off times.
I was using a -60C sleeping bag made by Carinthia. The only thing I didn’t like on it was the way the zip closes. It tends to get stuck a little which was sometimes funny.
I bought an inflatable EXPED sleeping pad in Yukon. As far as I’ve read in the reviews beforehand, it was rated as the best pad on the market for this type of activity and it had a temperature rating of -18. I spent around 200USD on it, but it is a critical piece of equipment. As you know – even with the best sleeping bag – you will be in big trouble if your insulating mat isn’t doing an effective job at protecting you from the ground’s cold.
A also bought my tent locally. I opted for a quick-pitching single layer 2-person tent. It was really quick and easy to pitch – it took about 60 seconds to do it…but it took what felt like hours to pack it back into transport mode. A tent provides you the necessary comfort to cook, take care of your equipment and tend to any injuries you might have – blisters for example. Being a 2 person tent, mine provided me with enough space to take inside all the equipment from the sled as well.
As my sleeping bag and mat were quite high-grade quality pieces of equipment, I chose not to buy an expedition class tent. I got a really cheap one and it completely protected my sleeping system from the elements, but since it was a single-layer construction, I always had some hoarfrost on the inside of it. For this reason, I carried a brush with me and cleaned it every every time before I packed it.
The first checkpoint in the race is at 42km and from then on, you follow the river and walk on its frozen surface for another 20km before you enter the forest through a small field. It is slightly warmer there. It might just be 2 or 3 degrees above -50, but you can feel it, believe me!
At this point I made the mistake of speeding up to reach the forest. Thus, I began sweating and overheating, and by the time I was 2 or 3km away from the forest, I was already freezing in my own sweat. I pitched my tent up at that point and since I was running alongside a Spanish guy, named Kike, I invited him in my tent so he wouldn’t have to waste time pitching his own. Plus, we’d warm up faster that way.
We stayed in the tent for about an hour drinking tea and getting warm. At this point we were around 20-25km away from the next checkpoint where we could have food and dry our clothes. We had a thermometer with us and it showed -51C. It was unbelievable. We were two of us inside and we had to fight the zipper to close it as it was freezing up. We closed it in the end, but broke it in the process.
For the next one hour I was unable to warm up at all. I was moving and waving my arms around to send some warm blood to the extremities but it wasn’t working. That’s when I realized I was going to suffer frostbite. I told Kike to go on without me and that I’d wait the night out here. Once he left, I focused on warming myself up. When I took my mitts off to inspect my fingers I found out it was already too late and I decided to quit. It had become too risky for me. You know – Yukon will always be here but I have other big projects. I didn’t want to risk it all there and then and I made the decision to push the button and call for rescue.
I didn’t press the SOS button right away as it was pointless.
Every sled was equipped with a GPS device with 2 buttons. One of the buttons sends the message that you’re OK -for example, if you have to bivvy, you must press that one, so people кnow you’re OK. The other one is the SOS button. If you press that one, a rescuer will come after certain time. The rescuers however won’t operate at night, because at -50 the engines won’t start. At temps like these plastic and metal are simply broken and the ski-doos won’t operate. It’s just too dangerous for them. Ihad to wait until morning to be rescued.
At that point I even had difficulties even with just opening and closing zippers on my clothes. It was about 4 a.m when I got into my sleeping bag and decided to get myself warmed up and maybe sleep a little. The final decision whether to go on would be left for the morning. When I woke up, my fingers were in a very bad state – they were turning purple and black – so I decided to withdraw from the race. I was lucky because when I pushed the SOS button, I saw a guy on a ski-doo just approaching my location and I didn’t have to wait.
When picking me up, the rescuers asked how I was, and trying to be funny I told them „Ah, I’m ok, just going down with hypothermia and a little frostbite.““
„You can’t go on man. But don’t worry. You’re number 16.“, they replied.
„Number 16 of what?“ ,I asked and they said „There are 15 people who already quit. You’re the 16th. You’re not the first one.“ This was after just 25 to 30 hours into the race. After just one night…imagine that!
Тhey drove me to Whitehorse where I went to a hospital and had my fingers checked out. The doctors told me we’d have to wait for about three weeks before we would know if I’ll make a full recovery, but they reassured me that my condition seemed OK and I would probably not lose any fingers.
It’s been a month now and I still haven’t regained most of the sensitivity on my fingertips.I also have two nails about to fall off, but I seem to be recovering OK for the most part.
There are people saying that once you go below -20, the cold is all the same, no matter how much the temperature drops. But believe me, it is not the same at all. Let’s say there’s a marginal difference between -25 and -35, but below that, trust me, the difference is exponential! Especially once you go below -45C. Metal and plastic starts to break from the cold at temperatures such as these and the locals seize to go outside or work. In such conditions, hospitals in the area are often crowded with frostbite victims and amputations are a sort of a regularity. Even the local special forces units were ordered not to conduct training in conditions below -25 as it was pointless and only detrimental to their bodies.
A Danish guy with lots of experience in Greenland told me that it would take about 5 years to completely recover from my frostbite so that my fingers are no longer predisposed to heightened cold vulnerability.
I wish I’d taken better care of my hands but I won’t let that stop me from trying again and from doing what I love. I will have to adjust to my condition from now on – carry more warmers, take better care of my fingers and so on, but I’ll find a way.
It’s been a month now, since I was frostbitten and my skin has already recovered from the purple and black state it was in, but I haven’t yet regained the sensitivity of my fingers. They still hurt, even when I use a keyboard.
I found it funny in the beginning however. Once I was at the hotel reception, asking a person from the hotel staff „Would you mind to put your hands in my pocket and take out my wallet because I can’t do it myself“. It was a hell of a laugh. I wasn’t able to grab anything.
It was funny then, but if it were to happen in a tough situation, it could’ve been life-threatening. It took me just half an hour to go down to stage-2 frostbite on my fingertips. And that had its underlying reason – I simply wasn’t taking good care of myself – I was neither drinking nor eating properly. And when I stopped in the tent, I didn’t use any hand warmers. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it. Maybe I was very stressed and tired.
Actually, the doctor at the hospital was taking the piss out of me the entire time: „Oh, you’re really smart to come over here and do this kind of race in the coldest of conditions in one of the coldest places in the world. Even special forces don’t work below -25 and you turn up for a race at -50!“
But it was a really amazing experience and I’d love to do it again!
For the next 2 or three years, I will be occupied with my Panamerican project, but after that, I will for sure want to return and try the race again. Not just because of the race, but because I really love the place now. I’ve fallen in love with it. I have that feeling of life-before-Yukon and after-Yukon.
I can’t find the exact words to describe it but it’s really like another dimension…I mean…simply otherworldly…you feel completely alone there. I didn’t see the Aurora Borealis unfortunately, but at times I could move through the night with no headlamp, relying on just the moon and stars. It takes some adjusting to, but after 10 minutes or so, your eyes begin to notice even the smallest details in your surroundings…even better than with a headlamp. You have the mountains surrounding you, the sound of your footsteps in the snow echo through the night and…that’s it. Absolute silence and tranquility…
MT: What was the largest distance covered during the race?
JP: A participant living in Singapore (he is originally from South-Africa), who had tried the race a few years back made it to mile 272 (Pelly Farm). At that point, because of the serious condition of another runner, the organizers decided to stop the race altogether. They had a talk with the participant from South Africa who was in lead (and the only participant still in the race) and agreed to end the race there, because of the conditions. He was the only finisher, so to speak.
During the course of the race, there were two separate occasions when participants were forced to stop for six to seven hours due to extremely cold conditions.
If you sweat, your sweat would become ice on your skin in the matter of seconds and despite your being well covered in good clothing you would still feel the bone-chilling cold from within. This is…simply amazing.
It’s really a more mental experience. You don’t need as much extensive physical training, rather than you need to be well versed in all things related to surviving in the cold. Take the batteries for example. You frequently have to change batteries on your headlamp, your GPS…at some point I had about 50 batteries near my body in various pockets to warm them up. And when I was taking spare clothes from my drybags – where you’d expect it to be dry – it was frozen. But a cold piece of clothing is better to put on than a wet one, so…you do what you have to.
Yukon can almost make you really lose your mind. You have to be absolutely focused on everything that you do, all the time. You must have a lot of discipline – eat every 45 minutes, drink every hour…and this is the hardest because fatigue makes easily you lazy and complacent.
MT: How do you feel about the race now?
JP: I think I was very stubborn. I didn’t want to quit, even in my bad condition. Moments like this are always very hard because your entire being desires to continue.
But now that I have this cold experience ingrained in my mind, I think it was stupid to allow it to happen.
I spent some time there with one Danish guy who had spent ten years in Greenland on expeditions. He shared a lot of tricks with me but that was – unfortunately – after the race (laughs). For example he told me that it’s better not to shower for a week before the race, so that the thin layer of body fat, formed over the skin would work as an insulation layer against the cold. And he wasn’t kidding! The guy’s father confirmed it – they had spent the entire week in a hotel room together. And even this guy didn’t finish the race. He wasn’t able to make one of the cut-off time-limits. In the situation he was in, he had to choose between going fast – making it to the checkpoint and taking some risks – or to bivvy, eat something warm, make a fire, take a sleep, reassess the situation and then move on. He opted for the second choice and arrived at the checkpoint one or two hours later than he was supposed to. But he was in perfect condition so he’d made the right choice for survival. He had covered almost 150 miles over the race-course at that point.
I don’t regret the race at all. To me it’s much more about the experience. It’s not say…like one of those races in the Alps where you say to yourself „It’s just another running race“. It’s much more than that – it is an all-encompassing survival experience. And hopefully it will be more than once in a lifetime!
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Mountain Talk:
For hours after this conversation, we couldn’t stop thinking about Yukon and its unique landscapes, people and challenges. Juan-Pablo definitely sparked a large and „unhealthy“ spark for Canadian adventure in us. We can’t wait to hear about his other adventures again soon.
Stay tuned for part two of our interview, which will focus on the specifics of equipment in extremely cold environments.
Instead of „good bye“ we offer you to take a look at MYAU 2018’s unique gallery HERE and a documentary on the Yukon Arctic Ultra:
Text: Branislav Brankov
Photo Credits: Juan-Pablo, Giuseppe Ungaro, MONTANE Yukon Arctic Ultra
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