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FAIRBANKS -- There were points in the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic that both Forrest Karr and Steve Taylor wondered if they would be able to go on.

For Karr, it was on day four of the 160-mile bushwhack across the Alaska Range.

“We were hiking on a ridge line between Trident and Hayes glaciers,” said Karr, the athletic director at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “I just couldn’t walk because of my Achilles tendon. Every few hundred yards Steve would have to stop and wait for me.

“I took codeine to help with the pain, but that didn’t do anything,” he said. “I just couldn’t keep going. I had to sit down with Steve and explain where I was at.”

After a quick examination of his Achilles tendon, which revealed pooling blood on the back of the tendon, followed by a brief brainstorming session, the two hikers decided to cut off a piece of the back of Karr’s shoe.

“It really solved the problem,” Karr said. “It just took the pressure off that tendon.”

For Taylor, the low point of the backcountry race came on day five as they were hiking along gravel bars on the West Fork of the Little Delta River.

“My knee and ankle had exploded in pain at that point,” Taylor said.

Both his knee and ankle were swollen to the point where he could barely walk. He tried soaking his ankle in the ice-cold glacial-fed river, but it didn’t seem to help.

They were on a gravel bar that was big enough to land a Super Cub on, a thought that crossed Taylor’s mind and one he relayed to Karr and Rob Kehrer, who was traveling with the two Fairbanks racers at that point.

“It would have been a place where we could have dropped out,” Taylor acknowledged.

But Kehrer, a Classic veteran, convinced Taylor to tough it out for a few more miles and not make a decision until after they got some sleep.

“The next morning it was still pretty painful but not as bad,” Taylor said. “That and the fact we were a day closer to the finish was enough to keep me going.”

In the end, it took Karr and Taylor 7 days, 6 hours and 1 minute to complete the Classic course. Their time was almost four days behind the winning team of Bobby Schnell, Chris Robertson and Andrew Skurka, who finished in 3 days, 17 hours and 54 minutes, but at least the two Fairbanks racers could say they finished. Fourteen of the 26 racers who started the race ended up pulling out.

Tough event

Both Karr and Taylor said the Classic, a backcountry race in which competitors carry all their gear, find their own routes and survive on minimal food and sleep while hiking up and down mountains, crossing swollen rivers and bushwhacking their way through the wilderness, was the hardest thing they have ever done, both mentally and physically.

“Your arms are covered in scratches, your clothes are shredded, you have blisters on your feet, your joints are swollen up and you’re asking yourself, ‘Can I keep going?’” Karr said. “It’s really mentally challenging.”

Competing in the Classic was “humbling, for sure,” Taylor said.

“You can’t stop and make camp and snuggle up in a sleeping bag,” he said. “Mentally it was very challenging to stay on top of your game the whole time and to move forward.

“I had a hard time before hand visualizing what was going to be difficult about it, and it ended up being harder than I thought,” Taylor said.

The race was a drastic change of pace for both the 33-year-old Karr, and the 32-year-old Taylor, a project coordinator for the borough parks and recreation department.

“It was one week of just focusing on nothing but surviving and moving across the country as efficiently as possible with some unpredictable challenges,” Karr said.

Some of those challenges included:

• Crossing the waist-deep Delta River in 60 mph winds. Karr was knocked off his feet and ended up swimming and scrambling across the river. Fortunately, he said, he was wearing a flotation device that helped keep him afloat.

• Fording several swollen, glacier-fed rivers such as Jarvis Creek, the Delta River, East Fork of the Delta River and Gillam Creek.

• Hiking over the Granite Mountains. “Probably not the optimal route,” is how Taylor put it.

• Hiking across the Hayes, Gillam and Trident glaciers. “Those glaciers are amazing,” Karr said. “They all have their own personalities and unique features.”

• Nearly getting run over by a caribou. Karr whistled at the caribou as it was running down the trail toward him, only about 15 feet away, to get the animal’s attention and it turned off the trail.

• Trying to stay awake while packrafting the final 20 miles down the Yanert River after hiking 18 to 20 hours per day for six days straight. “You blink once and you’re asleep,” Taylor said. “I woke up one time and I was beached in the left channel.”

• Swollen feet and blisters. Karr, who suffered a half-dollar-sized blister on one of his heels, couldn’t wear shoes for a week after the race. His first few days back at work he wore slippers because even Birkenstock sandals hurt too much. Both racers suffered swollen feet that Taylor called “pretty gross looking.”

“You should see my feet,” Karr said two days after finishing the race. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

Breathtaking

Right from the get go, Karr and Taylor wondered if they were getting in over their heads.

“At the starting line everyone was telling us their packs weighed 19 pounds with everything and ours were 33 pounds,” Karr said.

Karr didn’t know how he could make his pack any lighter.

“I felt like we needed everything we had,” he said.

Karr and Taylor were planning to finish the race in six days. They each started with 11 1/2 pounds of food but by day five they were running low on grub.

“When it became apparent on day five that we weren’t going to get done in six days we started rationing our food,” Karr said.

On their last day, they ate only a “handful of seeds and half a packet of dry, instant oatmeal, he said. Karr, a workout fanatic, lost eight pounds during the race and Taylor, who doesn’t have much meat on his bones to begin with, lost five.

They credited each other, along with Kehrer, for helping them get through the race, which at times wore them down.

“There were times when it was hard to stay positive and there was always one person that was kind of blazing the trail,” Taylor said. “That really helped.”

Despite — or maybe because of — the physical and mental challenges, both Karr and Taylor said they are interested in doing the race again.

“The whole route is gorgeous,” said Taylor, who made mental notes during the race how he would do things different in future races. “You’re right up in the mountains the whole time. Sometimes it makes you feel kind of small.

“To overcome some of the obstacles we did overcome in retrospect is pretty gratifying,” he said.

Conquering the Classic, or just finishing it, gives a person a sense of his or her place in Alaska, Karr said.

“I love Alaska, but when you go out and do things like this, you love it even more,” he said. “It’s truly breathtaking.”