We kept cranking until dark and eventually breezed by the cabin without seeing it. Once we climbed off Mandana Lake we knew we'd missed the cabin but were hoping we'd been confused about the directions we were given. Truthfully, I hadn't been listening well because I wasn't interested in staying in a cabin at the time.

We rode another 15 km of really fun trail in the dark before finally admitting we'd missed the cabin. Josh had to follow right behind Tony or I so that he could stay on the trail.

At 8:30 the call was made to bivy after 120km. We found some wood and threw our sleeping bags down in the middle of the trail-not deluxe.

We all felt good when we got to camp but within 20 minutes we were all hurting units. We'd been toasty while riding in the -20 Celsius weather (except on the lakes). Once stopped, we quickly got cold due to a day's worth of accumulated moisture.

We huddled around the fire and tried to get dry and warm up. No one was terribly interested in eating or drinking or talking or gathering wood or anything other than sucking up the heat. Eventually, the heat penetrated us and we had a late dinner and drank buckets of tea. Tony was super tired and piled into bed lest he fall face first into the fire. I'm not sure I know anyone else who could pound out 120km of loaded fat biking after being up sick the night before.

Josh and I stayed up a bit longer making hot water bottles and getting things in order for the last push to Carmacks. By the time we bedded down all was right in the world again.

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