Statewide relay blasts through Hatcher Pass

HATCHER PASS — Rob Welch could be excused for some pained grunting.

The Alaska State Trooper had just completed Saturday a torturous uphill section through the pass to the parking lot near the Hatcher Pass Lodge as part of the Alaska State Troopers Adventure Relay. Welch was one of the participants in the 45-leg relay, which started in Fairbanks Thursday morning and concludes tomorrow in Seward. Participants biked, walked, kayaked, rafted and even swam a continuous route between those two points, and Welch — along with wife Dawn and their three kids, and Fairbanks dispatcher Mindy Quinn and her fiancé Brian Haley — were the critical link in the chain stretching back over the pass, along Willow-Fishhook Road to the troopers’ Cantwell post, the first checkpoint over the borough line.

Welch had signed up for the uphill portion earlier in the day in part because no one else had. Haley joined him for part of the way.

The 17-mile Ermine Hill (part of the Chesugi Ridge Trail) portion of the relay was among the more challenging, Welch said.

“It was just pouring down rain,” he said. “The trail was just a mud-slide all the way down.”

Participants were originally scheduled to arrive at the next stage of the relay, a 10-mile bike from Byers Lake to the Chulitna River Bridge, about 11 p.m., but didn’t arrive until well after midnight, Dawn said.

Saturday afternoon’s going — after the uphill portion, that is — was relatively easy, even if a few mountain showers and clouds made the top of the patch cold and wet. After all, the 14.5-mile stretch between Hatcher Pass and the intersection of Trunk Road and the Palmer-Wasilla Highway was mostly downhill and flat, and they were scheduled to leave the Valley about 5 p.m. across the Knik River Bridge.

Ease of travel might not have been the point.

“It’s one of those things where you do it and the reward is just in being exhausted and knowing you did it,” Rob Welch said. “The reality is there’s a certain amount of fun that’s involved in just wearing yourself out.”

While participants chiefly saw the relay as a chance to get outdoors, the relay overall had a serious side. Proceeds — participants are sponsored by family, friends, and businesses — go to the Wish Upon The North Star Foundation, which aims to grant wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses.

“It’s very substantial,” said foundation president Ron Rice. “What they (troopers) do is usually good for several wishes.”

Wishes granted can be as complex as trips to Walt Disney World or Hawaii, but also as simple as providing a laptop for children sentenced by circumstance to long hospital stays, Rice said.

Participation is limited to law enforcement and military personnel, which limits the liability that the organizers face and keeps participation down to manageable levels, said trooper Capt. Barry Wilson, who met Quinn, Haley and the Welch family for the next leg in a gravel parking lot near the Palmer-Wasilla Highway and Trunk Road intersection. Last year’s south-north edition of the relay raised $85,000 for the foundation (plus in-kind donations from businesses along the route, who donate lodgings, parking lots and other facilities), and cash donations this year were expected to be in the neighborhood of $100,000, according to Wilson. The increase in funds comes despite the notable absence of perennially participating Fairbanks Police Department officers, some of whom participate in all legs of the relay (within reason).

“We’ve had anywhere from a small number of participants up to 80 people,” he said. “Some participants have done as many as five, six, eight legs.”

“It’s all for a good cause,” he added. “It allows us to get out and do something positive with the family.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com