He wasn't dead, he said.

Probably true. Dead men don't use telephones, typically.

"I'm not dead,"said Kurt Steiner, 46, in a recent telephone call from Alaska, in a voice about as loud as a sigh, and sinking. He indicated he was experiencing exhaustion. And he wasn't nearly done.

At that point, being not dead was the only good thing that Steiner, a Bismarck businessman, could think of when asked what fun, positive things had happened to him in the last couple of days. Days for him of about minus-30 to minus-50 degree weather during which he was racing on a snowmobile with a frozen steering mechanism. "You had to use all your might to turn," he said, in a wilderness of monster moguls and trees that didn't move out of his way fast enough. And he had frostbite on a wrist, had been in a wreck at 60 mph, was bucked off and so on and so forth.

Steiner, owner of Midwest Doors Inc., was, at that point, about mid-way through the one-week Alaska Irondog 2,000-mile snowmobile race reputed to be longest and toughest in the world.

That was more than a week ago.

He and his partner, Darrick Johnson of Idaho, didn't quit. And they didn't win.

But they came across the finish line on Feb. 16, in 10th place - one of 16 teams out of 40 teams that finished the race.

Crashes wiped out some teams, other issues, such as injuries - severe frostbite, a broken arm, bruised kidneys - and mechanical problems, wiped out others.

They did get some acclaim, however: They were the first-ever team from the lower 48 states to finish the race.

He and Johnson, Team 9, tried to go at a pace the landscape warranted, while other teams, with "unbelievable riders,"would sometimes speed past them, but then end up crashing, he said. And Team 9 would slug on.

He won't do the race again.

"I think I'll leave well enough alone," said Steiner who's back in Bismarck and trying to catch up on some sleep. And eating. He lost 7 pounds during the race. Food during the race days was an occasional energy bar. They didn't carry water because it would just freeze. Sometimes they ended up eating snow.

Steiner said snowmobiles should go for about 5,000 miles. His racing snowmobile, an Arctic Cat, is a mess at 2,400.

"It's a wreck," Steiner said.

He plans to hang the 550-pound snowmobile on the wall of his shop like a trophy deer.

"It was a brutal race,"said Steiner, a self-described snowmobiling fanatic who has survived years of competitive extreme snowmobiling in South Dakota and Montana mountains. But nothing like this.

"It's definitely the most difficult thing I've ever tried to do," he said.

Especially the first two days.

The race route was Anchorage to Nome and then to Fairbanks.

The first day, Feb. 10, "was the most brutal," he said.

They started at about 11 a.m. and ended at 4 a.m. Sunday. Along the way, Steiner, blinded by passing snowmobilers, crashed into a mogul, damaging his hood and windshield. Temporary repairs were made until they could do a more permanent job. Also, steering was virtually impossible because the grease was freezing to the spindles.

"You had to use all your might,"he said.

Their speeds ranged from 5 mph to 80 mph.

There should have been no way for the frigid air to reach him, in his layers and long gloves, and his duct-tape. Much of his face was duct-taped to help seal any possible places between his goggles and face mask for air to leak in.

But it did get through to a wrist. He got frostbite on his right wrist and would cut off the top of a sock to protect it and help hide it from race officials who could pull him from the race it they saw it.

That same day there was a snowmobiler who, right before Steiner got on the scene, had nosedived off a 4-foot drop and landed on the frozen river below, the snowmobile on top of him. There were still 170 miles to go that day and the injured snowmobiler, Unch Schuerch of Alaska, managed to get on the snowmobile and drive the distance even though there was concern that he might have internal injuries because he was urinating blood. Later, he'd find out he had bruised kidneys and would receive treatment.

Steiner and Johnson followed the injured snowmobiler, Schuerch, and his partner, Jade Greene, to make sure they made it.

Steiner said at minus 50, ice crystals were hanging in the air. "That stuff was sticking on everything," he said.

And so their goggles constantly icing. Steiner was able to periodically scratch off enough ice to be able to see well enough to continue.

Greene, meanwhile, decided to take his goggles off to see, and about 50 miles before the night's stopping point, his frostbite was getting so bad an eye was swelling shut. It was dark, there was no place to get help where they were, so they pushed on to McGrath, arriving at 4 a.m. A 362-mile day.

Schuerch would end up in the hospital. Steiner kept his frostbite situation from race officials by reaching a local doctor in Bismarck who gave him a perscription that Steiner then got from a local Nome pharmacy.

He said he had many moments wondering why he was doing this - like when he was traveling for 59 miles on frozen ocean in Norton Sound, and for 10 of those miles, land was out of sight.

And there was the night of a 120-mile stretch of minus 22 degrees and total isolation, no cabin or light in sight. He knew they had to be careful. Breaking down there would mean big trouble.

And there was the day when a broken rear spring in the suspension forced Steiner to stand up while riding for about 70 miles to take weight off the rear until they could get it repaired. And that meant he couldn't be behind the windshield and had to face unprotected the cold, which was minus 37 degrees.

"I remember thinking if I can get through this, I can get through anything,"he said.

He estimated that during the weeklong race, he probably spent about two-thirds of the race standing, and about half the race riding in the dark.

After the first two days, the terrain and temperatures were better, instead of minus 30 to minus 50 degrees, the temperatures were minus 15 to minus 25.

He said Alaska really is the last great frontier.

"In 2,000 miles, I didn't see one fence," he said.

He said he shed some tears at the finish line. He wasn't alone. As he stood up, his crying wife, Judy Steiner, ran into his arms.

"I was so proud he had finished," she said.

He'll be back. Not to race. Schuerch has invited him up next year to hunt caribou.

Steiner said being around Alaskans, who don't seem to get "shook up about things … They just deal with it, that's life," solidified for him what he thinks is the right approach to life.

"It made everything seem that much more clear," he said.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com.)