A nice hidden valley that completely surprised me
Matanuska Peak is one of those mountains you see all the time but never think about going to take a look at it, partly because you know it's going to be hard. By this point in the summer I'd realized I was just going to have to accept that it was probably going to be cloudy nearly every day, with constant threat of rain, so I decided to just start doing things anyway. This day started out, as they often did, very sunny and hot. The trail up Matanuska Peak is a typically non-thought-out Alaskan trail that goes almost straight up the side of the mountain, apparently as steeply as the tracked vehicle that made it could handle without falling over backwards. After a few miles the steepness tapers off after you pass a small mining area that the tracked trail leads too. Another mile or two along the valley stream bed and you finally come out of the trees into a remarkably well hidden hanging valley, not at all visible from the ground. It's also at this point that you realize the mountain is as big as the map says it was. It's a 6,000 foot climb, and i never expected to summit it, except in a vague silly fantasy in the back of my mind that i might still be 20 years old. The hidden valley let me see that it wouldn't be a bad two day hike, as there were many good areas to camp in the secluded valley. On the negative side of things, it takes a large amount of uphill effort to get to the BOTTOM of the valley, so you feel like you're starting all over again.
In the barren and rugged no-mans-land of the valley ridge top, but still a very deceptive 2,000 verticle feet below the summit, pictured on the right
I did want to at least get a better view, and hiked up to the valley ridge top, which offered views of the Matanuska Valley and Talkeetna Mt. Range that have been otherwise hard for me to come by. This was the first mountain hike I've done in the Chugach Mountains on the East side of the Knik River (the main body of the range). The rock was entirely different than what I'd seen on my end of the range, and a new environment for me, so in that regard it was successful excursion. An extremely barren landscape awaits visitors who make it up there, and it reminded me of what I imagine some of the high terrain of the Tibetan Plateau must be like. Fisher seemed to be making an extra effort to kill me with falling rocks. As usual, i found a trail on the back side that made returning much, much easier. I had to abandon it eventually because i believe it's the end of another trail that begins in a different valley.
Although not much, it's better to have a poor intermittent trail than no trail at all
I got used to seeing this kind of sky all summer long
