It was still dark the morning of January 21, 2006 when I got up at 5:00am to go pick up Pete for our pre 1st annual Fat Otter Death March. After digging my car out of the 12” of snow that dumped on us over night, I was off. I picked up Pete, and after raiding the local Jewel for trail goodies, we began our drive north to the Kettle Moraine Forest Northern Unit. Stopping at the Iron Skillet of I94 exit 333 proved to be a goldmine of country cooked calories that we were more than happy to take off their hands. Nothing like a hearty meal before subjecting our bodies to torture for the next day or so.

We arrived at the southern most trail head at around 9:30 to find a Boy Scout troop camping in the parking lot. They had attempted a hike in the night before, but were unsuccessful in finding the backpacking shelter. We conversed with them a bit while loading our gear and were ultimately asked to speak to the troop briefly about what we were undertaking. Once we were finished packing and ready to hit the trail, we gave a brief talk on Adventure Racing, what we were doing, how we prepared, why we were doing it and so on. After answering a handful of questions we were sent off at 10:15am with a round of applause from the troop and hit the trail.

It didn’t take us too long to realize that the 3+” of snow was slowing down our intended pace significantly. Our hope of a 4+mph pace over 62 miles was crushed by reality and we were forced to re-evaluate our goals. We decided to shoot for the 25 mile turnaround to make it a 50 mile round trip journey. The blanket of white that lay draped over the landscape was absolutely beautiful. We followed the trail as it traced the ridge lines and skirted the lowlands. We stopped just after Crooked Lake (12 miles in) to take a forced eating brake (it didn’t take much forcing). We sat down atop the ridge and enjoyed some hot tea courtesy of Pete and his Jet Boil. We looked over the maps and estimated reaching the turnaround point at around 8:15pm. After we were finished hording calories and fluids, we were back on the trail and began pressing on.

The next major landmark we were looking for was backpacking shelter #4 as it would mark the final 4 mile push to the Greenbush Group Camp which would mark our turnaround point at 25.03 miles. As dark began to fall, we made every effort to keep going without using our headlamps hoping the natural light would be enough to get by on. Indeed it was, except for the downhills, which we had been running from the start. We opted for full light for the duration of the night in order to ensure our speed and safety. The sun hadn’t fallen below the horizon for 10 minutes before we noticed a significant drop in temperature. Our conversation had slowly dwindled and was now focused mainly on the possibility of a group camping at the group site with a hot fire and bratwurst, and on the hot cous cous we would be eating at Shelter 5 on the return trip. We passed shelter 4 at mile 20.89 and continued on to the group camp.

The final 4 miles of the first half seemed like an eternity. We were now on pace to finish the first half at around 8:30pm, which wasn’t far off from our original estimate. The group camp sign was in sight right around 8:30 and we met it with a huge sigh of relief. We had been on the trail for 10 hours and 10 minutes so far and were completely exhausted. We grabbed a couple snap shots and began our trek back to shelter 5 to cook some hot food. We got to shelter 5 to find it almost completely enclosed with benches lining the interior walls. We plopped down on the benches and evaluated our water to see who would contribute to the cous cous. We noticed both of us were down to about a liter, so it was decided to melt snow to cook with. As the water was heating up, we discussed where we would be trying to catch a couple hours of sleep. Given it was already below 20 degrees and would only be getting colder, plus we were both pretty exhausted, it was decided that we would crash there for a couple hours and make a push for the final 24 miles at 1:00 am. The water finally started boiling and we were soon stuffing our mouths full of cous cous. Mmmm the first few mouthfuls were great… then next few were okay… the final few had to be totally forced down. What can I say.. it sounded good in the store! We could hear coyotes howling in the distance as we laid out our sleeping bags and pads. Our feet looked disgusting as we pulled off our wet socks to trade them in for dry ones to sleep in.

We climbed into our bags at about 10:30 and attempted to sleep. Personally, I don’t know if I slept at all. I assume I got some sleep, but all I remember is shivering the whole time. Pete had a hard time as well, but I can confirm his sleeping at least a little bit due to the snoring I heard coming out of him. It seemed like 1:00 was taking forever to come as I kept trying to find a position warm enough to stay off the shivers, but I couldn’t. Finally the alarm went off and we were up. Pete was the first to sit up, I didn’t want to move. All I could think about was trying to stay warm and sleeping the rest of the night. It is easy to see now how people can die in conditions like this because they would choose laying down and freezing to getting on the move and almost being too warm. After a few minutes, I convinced myself to just get moving. Our shoes were frozen solid and took some work to get back on. We slowly but surely got our act together and hit the trail again around 1:30am and were soon nice and toasty.

The hike at this point was so hypnotic, Pete and I hardly said a word to one another for the next hour or so and just sort of droned on, focusing solely on putting one foot in front of the other. I hadn’t eaten since our hot food and was really starting to feel the effects. Exhaustion was taking over and my body was shutting down. When we came up to shelter 4, I told Pete I needed a few minutes. We sat down in the shelter and I tried to fuel up the best I could. I would have liked to stay a bit longer, but the temperature was 15 degrees with a 5 degree wind chill, and stopping let us know it. We got moving again at a slower pace and my body gradually started to come back. That little break did wonders for both of us and we felt stronger and a bit more alert now.

Our focus now was on the mile markers. The forest service was kind enough to place markers at every mile to mark the progress of our expedition. We were happy to have them on the first half of the trip, now we cursed every trail blaze that didn’t mark another mile. We did occasionally stop and turn off the lights to take in the clear night sky and how it made the landscape beneath it glow, but mostly we just saw our little window of light from our headlamps, and as nice as Pete’s feet are, it’s only fun to look at them for so long.

So on we pushed, one foot in front of the other for a couple more hours before reaching the long anticipated Butler Lake bench (16.5 miles to go) where we were going to take a quick break. It was about 5:00am when we got there and wouldn’t you know it, my phone rang. It was Andrew, another Fat Otter, who was on his way to the airport and thought he would check on our progress. It did wonders for our moral to hear someone’s voice, and it made us appreciate what we were doing more as we told stories of our trip so far. We wrapped up our conversation with Andrew as we were hiking and set our eyes on Mauthe Lake (which would mark about 9 miles to go) to take a hot tea break.

The sun started to pop its head over the horizon around 7:15 and brought us navigable light by 7:30. We started focusing on anything we could to break up the monotony of one foot in front of the other. We began talking about the fact that there were an incredible number of deer tracks, but we hadn’t seen any deer since we started. We started discussing next year’s Death March event and how we saw it playing out. We looked for anything to help pass the time. Finally we arrived at Mauthe Lake and found a picnic table to take our final break at. We took a nice rest, ate lots of food, and drank some hot tea before getting up for our final 9 miles.

One would think the final miles would fly by, but after hiking over 40 miles, the last 9 seemed like the first 25. We looked for any landmark we could to keep us driving hard to the finish. “Okay, this is Hwy S. 2 More miles till the next road”. “This is it, Hwy DD, we should get to the next road in about a mile”, and so on. Slowly we chipped away the miles until we were less than 2 miles left and we could feel the end. We passed shelter 1 which was less than half a mile from the end, and then the water pump which was about a quarter mile. Then finally, after 25.5 hours, the parking lot was in sight! We reached the blazer, took a quick picture, compared disgusting feet, packed up and left. There was no crowd to welcome us back, no post-race meal, no other teams to share stories with. Just Pete and I… two guys who set out to do something other’s thought was insane, and we did it.