Editor's note: I wrote this story for AK magazine. It got lost in broken email ether, so didn't appear there. So, here it is, for free.

We really waste them, you know, those endless hours of daylight that come with high summer. It’s a time of great conflict, when the overstimulated body craves rest, but the warm, bright landscape says, “Hey, you can sleep when you’re dead.”

So, when Mark Ross of Fairbanks resurrected the “Hot Springs 100K” last summer, he offered an opportunity to taste the season of light in its full glory, nap at your own risk.

My friend Andy Sterns was psyched for the point-to-point 70-mile overland trek from Chena Hot Springs to Circle Hot Springs, and our friend Ed Plumb made us a team of three for the race, which attracted an annual group of loose screws a few decades ago, but fizzled thereafter.

About 15 other people gathered in the parking lot of the hot springs resort on a stunning blue-sky day in early June. They were all carrying light backpacks, some of them containing packrafts to help cover the considerable wilderness distance. None had sleeping bags.

Upon hearing that I was interested in the race, my early-20s idol and wilderness-exploring veteran Roman Dial sent me an Alpacka raft from his home in Anchorage. The rugged inflatable weighed about five pounds and rolled up into the size of a loaf of bread, fitting nicely in the bottom of my backpack, which weighed about 25 pounds; my teammates had similar loads, assembled to move fast.

We made it to Chena Hot Springs resort just as our comrades were scattering, each taking a unique path from hot springs to hot springs. Some chose the high country, scrambling over domes of rock and tundra that offer good footing but few puddles of water with which to quench their thirsts. Our route began with a low, mucky path over the Yukon Quest trail, which is quite solid in winter, not so much in summer.

After hiking the pavement of Chena Hot Springs Road for a mile to reach the Quest trail, we hung a right turn into the wilderness and stepped through the North Fork of the Chena River, which runs clear and lovely. Our feet would stay wet for the next 48 hours.

After about 15 miles of hiking the lowlands, past fallen sticks of lathe used to mark the Yukon Quest trail a few months before, we gained solid footing as the trail climbed from the North Fork valley toward Rosebud summit. After several hours on the trail, we saw no sign of the other competitors; there were all off on their own adventures, most of them scampering across the Interior ahead of us.

Much of the landscape was hillsides of burnt matchsticks that were spruce trees before the summer of 2004, when an area the size of Vermont burned in Alaska. Burned areas and the jumble of black logs they leave behind can make even the hardiest hikers weep, but saplings hadn’t yet emerged between the burned trees, most of which still stood. We weaved between the black stems, feeling lucky. Until we neared the tussock fields on the north slopes above Birch Creek. Walking through them was like walking on porcupines.

Birch Creek is the major waterway that almost makes a straight line between Chena and Circle hot springs, and all racers were making a beeline for it. Reaching Birch Creek meant that we could inflate our tiny boats and get off our feet after 25 miles and 20 hours of hiking.

Dragging our own personal clouds of mosquitoes, Andy, Ed, and I dropped out of the tussocks and on to a gravel bar of upper Birch Creek just as the midnight sun dropped behind the hills to the north.

Here, we inflated our rafts, then set them in the knee-deep water and allowed the cold of the water to shrink them, after which we blew in a few more lungfuls. We assembled our kayak paddles that had extended from our packs like antenna and shoved off into upper Birch Creek.

Here was true bliss: To move without walking, to glide past tussocks on the hillside, to see my pack on the front of the boat and not on my shoulders. Most of my Alaska travels have been on foot, and the bombproof little packraft, comfortable as a bathtub, was a revelation. We weren’t traveling much faster than the three or four miles per hour Birch Creek was flowing, but we were now headed toward Circle Hot Springs while sitting down.

Our first sunrise occurred about midway on our winding float of Birch Creek. We had each pulled our boats onto a gravel bar to take care of personal business when the sun threw its first weak rays upon us. As we basked, siren-like canine calls emerged from the woods. First one, then two, then three wolves joined in a chorus, close enough to us that the hair stood on my neck. Even in my 3 a.m. stupor, I realized this is why we were out there.

And then nature really kicked in. All the migrant songbirds, fresh from somewhere else, started belting out songs to mark their new northern territories. White-crowned sparrows, ruby-crowned kinglets, robins, all the birds that say summer in Interior Alaska. A hawk owl watched us float by from a fire snag created in 2004.

A few sections of rapids required us to portage, not a hardship when your boat weighs five pounds. We learned later that others used their Alpackas to shoot the rapids, coming out wet but invigorated at the other end.

I was getting flat boat-butt when, in midday, we pulled over onto a gravel bar for a break. The seductive heat of the sun soon had us curled up on the gravel with our backpacks for pillows. Then followed two hours of blissful sleep. I’d never believed adventurer Rocky Reifenstuhl when he said a couple hours were refreshing, but now I’m in his club.

As we woke on the gravel bar, another raft appeared from upstream. Grizzled race veteran Rourke Williams pulled up to chat and told us that the wood smoke we had smelled on the river a few miles back was his. He had vomited and had the chills on his overland trek to Birch Creek, but was feeling better after he camped for a bit. He shoved off again into the creek, and we followed.

There began a slow-motion chase in which Rourke somehow lost us. A few hours later, we saw his boat beached near a tributary stream and we went up to see why he had started another campfire.

“This isn’t mine,” he said of a smoking hole in the duff. “I’m just trying to put it out . . . Did you guys see that bear standing by the river?”

I looked back just in time to see a jet-black body swimming across the river behind us. Cool. Then it was time to put out a fire.

We filled dry bags with water and carried them up the bank, dumping them on the fire, which was started by someone in canoes who had camped at the site. Except for the hot spot, we had seen no signs of people on our float down the creek.

Fire quenched, the four of us sat in our boats. We had been in them about 15 hours by that time, and I was looking forward to the transition to hiking.

We stopped boating when we reached Harrison Creek, which we knew led to a mining path that was the back door into Circle Hot Springs. As the sun dipped below the hills and the air cooled, the mosquitoes applauded our decision to return to land. We rolled up our boats on a gravel bar, tucked them into our packs, and had a snack before heading up the creek.

We found an occasional path on either bank, but it had been a few decades since the paths were made, and walking up the ankle-deep water was more efficient. We weaved through the current for a few hours, gaining a few miles while glancing sideways at every bear track we saw pressed into the mud.

Finally, we intersected a mining path, and we again smelled wood smoke. We soon came to a cabin with white smoke billowing from its stovepipe, indicative of a recent fire.

“I’ll bet Rourke’s in there,” Andy said.

I was hoping my traveling partners would suggest that we join Rourke for a warm snooze to escape the 40-degree morning chill penetrating our wet legs, but we all kept marching by the cabin. Sigh.

In the rosy light of dawn, we hiked the backside of a dome that was between Circle Hot Springs and us. After being wet for so long, my feet were beginning to bark, assuring that I would find blisters when I someday peeled off my neoprene socks.

Our morale was drooping after 45 hours on the trail when we got the gift of our second sunrise, the sun an orange ball on the northeast horizon. We picked up our painful paces at different clips. Ed took off ahead, I was in the middle, and Andy was third. We daydreamed about other racers catching us, not knowing that most of them had already finished.

With each step on the gravel causing a burning sensation that cost me molar enamel, I limped on, encouraged by the sightings of more cabins and gravel-moving equipment. Finally, after nearly 48 hours of moving, I saw a lovely sight—my beater red Subaru wagon parked at the Circle Hot Springs airstrip, where a few friends had dropped it the day before. I hotfooted it down the road, walked past the Subaru, and headed for the old lodge at Circle Hot Springs.

There was Ed, lying flat as roadkill in the driveway of the gabled resort.

“Hot Springs is closed,” he said. “And there’s all these signs that say ‘no trespassing.’”

I was a bit disappointed to arrive at an abandoned establishment. Not that I wanted to soak in a hot springs on the 80-degree day, but I was hoping to talk with other racers about their adventures.

I schlepped over and got the Subaru from the airstrip. Ed and I were airing out our trench feet as Andy turned into the driveway with a smile on his face. Rourke followed shortly thereafter, and we exchanged weary high-fives.

We would learn later that we were among the last few finishers, and the co-winners, Jim Lokken and Andy Seitz, covered the 70 miles in about half the time we did. We chugged toward home in the red Subaru on a sweltering day, making it only 15 miles before we pulled over for a dusty sleep, our first extended rest since we had embarked on the 48-hour day. Much later, passed out in our beds at home, we missed what would have been our third consecutive 3 a.m. sunrise. I give, Summer. You win.