Jason Katz-Brown said the most reassuring sight when he’s rollerblading down a mountainside at 30 miles per hour is a tractor-trailer passing him going twice as fast. Truckers know the roads and a truck moving at a fast clip is an indication of clear, straight stretches ahead, Katz-Brown said in an interview last week after skating into town on July 4 from Anchorage.
He made the 750-mile trip in 17 days, carrying a 40-pound pack and skating 8-10 hours per day.
“Alaska roads are built for trucks. They tend to be straight and steep and built for not stopping,” he said. Katz-Brown, who wears a helmet but no other protective gear, says he doesn’t think about falling on steep downhills because “crashing is not an option.” Also, his oversized skate wheels – nearly five inches in diameter – can skip over rocks and other roadside debris that can trip him when he’s skating uphill. “Usually you fall more often if you hit a pebble going uphill (at a slower speed),” he said.
A 36-year-old software engineer who also works as a substitute teacher and political campaign worker, Katz-Brown started on skates in northern California at age four.
“My dad has been rollerblading since it was invented and he played roller-hockey and he went on the San Francisco Friday Night Skate (when skaters took over city streets) back in the 90s, when skating was really popular,” he said.
A board member of the Alaska Speed Skating Club, Katz-Brown has trained as a speed-skater on ice and has rollerbladed across most of California, Japan, Montana and Wyoming. Last year, he skated the 850 miles between Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay, switching to inflatable-tire skate rollerskis for the gravel “Haul Road” 400 miles north of Livengood. He said he’s learned some road-skating tricks, including how to fall to minimize injury and how to skate “skinny” when on a narrow shoulder alongside traffic. After moving to Alaska in January 2022, he also discovered mosquito-proof bug shirts and to take advantage of long summer daylight, skating at night when traffic is sparse.
Rollerblading rebounded in popularity during COVID-19, but not so much in Alaska, where he sometimes gets grief from motorists, especially so from the truckers on the Haul Road. “None of the truckers up there had ever seen a rollerblader there,” Katz-Brown said. He walked down the 5,000-foot Atigun Pass, to the curiosity of truckers who were following his progress. “One of them stopped and said, ‘Around the radio, we’re all wondering what you’re going to do,'” he said.
On the recent skate to Haines, a construction crew gifted him a high-visibility vest and he met and eventually got to know a Whitehorse, Y.T., couple whose car passed him several times. Roller blading isn’t a particularly fast form of travel, he noted. On his trip to Haines, he met up with a long-distance runner near Tok and they traveled together through Northway the next day.
Mosquitos, headwinds, rain and road construction pose the biggest challenges on his journeys, as well as downhill sections where he can’t see the bottom. He carries two-way satellite transmitter – for dire emergencies but also to let his mom know he’s okay.
“(She) used to worry so much, but after many years of this, to her credit, she’s gotten used to it,” including finding his location on maps and sending him tips on where to stop for the night. Where WiFi is available, he downloads newscasts. When there’s no traffic around, Katz-Brown tunes into audiobooks. “I listen to so many audiobooks. I think I finished four-and-a-half books on this trip.”
Away from towns and restaurants, Katz-Brown subsists on ziplock bags full of protein powder, Skratch horchata powder, electrolyte powder, chocolate bars, peanut butter, macadamia nuts, dehydrated cheese products, and oats, dates and salt.
“On a road as sparse as the Alcan, it makes sense to carry enough food, as it’s hard to know what will be open when you pass it.” He carries four liters of water at a time, plus iodine tablets for drawing water from nearby streams. The poutine at a restaurant in Destruction Bay was a highlight of his trip to Haines, as were smooth surfaces on the Alaska and Haines sections of highway. Canadian roads are rougher, he said.
Katz-Brown also was once the #1 rated Scrabble player in the United States, but that’s another story.