Pictures of Picture Takers

During the summer of 2010 I had three sets of summer visitors back to back. Unfortunately the weather was far from ideal during much of that time. Below are pictures of some of the things we did.

My friend Jeff came up first and was here in Alaska for Summer Solstice, the best day of the year. The weather was pretty bad most of the time Jeff was here (I think it was the first time ever that it rained here on the solstice), but that was ok, because he used to live here, so he wasn't seeing things for the first time, and we were inebriated most of the time anyway.

 I took Jeff up to Black Lake. A pretty nice hike for a 12 minute drive from home.

From there we headed down to Williwaw Lakes, and took the looonnggg way around the front of O'Malley back to Glen Alps. That trail, by the way, is a stunning example of poor trail design.

 After a lucky break of fantastic weather in Seward, i took Jeff to Exit Glacier, on the edge of Kenai Fjords National Park. In this picture all the forest in the foreground is brand new, advancing towards us as the glacier retreats behind us.

The short excursion to Exit Glacier offered me a very fun new thing to try out. I've been to Exit several times, it's one of the only things most people get to see in the park, and it's a very easy, paved walk up to the glacier. Along the way is a spur trail, that takes you along a very strenuous hike up to the ice fields. You can read my post on the Harding Ice Fields for more information.

At Exit glacier are a million signs warning you not to go any farther. These signs are around for good reason. On the other hand, it always irritates me because Exit Glacier has divided, at the bottom, into two toes. Each toe currently occupies a rough rocky ravine. This has only developed in the last 10 years, as far as i know, you  used to be able to walk up to the toe at ground level, on the gravel benches by the river.

I noticed that at this time most of the river is coming from the far toe, invisible from the official trail. So i decided we should go and see what was over there. I wondered if there would be an ice cave. Through a bit of work we found a way to clamber over the bottom of the glacier and it's cliffs, and do a bit of tricky hopping around to avoid stepping in any water. What we found was worth the effort.

Here you can see the deep narrow gorge and the glacier high above in the distance. This gorge was present even when it and everything else in the picture was under ice, as recently as a decade ago.

The river we walked along emerged violently and suddenly from a roaring gorge. There was no way to enter the gorge, so we had to backtrack and climb up the backside of the cliffs. That in itself was a little sketchy, and as Jeff pointed out quite accurately, it was similar to caving, but without a roof over our heads.  From our perch on the cliff we could see up the gorge to the glacier, still a ways off. We tried to push on but the terrain was too dangerous and seemed to get worse as we went on. I was satisfied.

Lying on my belly, i was able to edge over the side of the sloping cliff for this wide angle straight down view of a violent waterfall in the gorge. It was very loud here.

Jimmy at Portage Glacier.

The day after Jeff left Jimmy arrived. Jimmy was only here for 4 days, so we were pretty busy trying to make the best of it. Except for the first day, Jimmy ended up being pretty lucky with the weather. I was able to get us out away from the clouds into nice areas.

 I have a book showing everthing from here to those cliffs on the right, all under about 200 feet of ice in the 1980's.

 A beautiful day above Whittier. One of those times when it was cloudy in Anchorage all day.
 

 Jimmy at the Matanuska Glacier. His first time on a glacier, first time in crampons, first time with an ice axe.

Some really cool seracs. At least this post has pictures with people for scale.

Every time i go toe the Matanuska Glacier it looks totally different. The last time i visited i was sure the lake at the glacier was almost gone. This time it was bigger than i've ever seen it.

 

 This was as far as we got before we had to turn around due to time limits. Jimmy did not want to turn back.

After Jimmy left my sister, who has never visited me, and her boyfriend Danielle (whom i had never met) came up at the beginning of August. Danielle is an Italian working and going to school in the United States. Neither of them had been anywhere close to Alaska. I can't even remember how long they were here, and i think they got the worst of the weather. Still, we were able to do things and had some good sun now and then.

Mary Beth and Danielle at Gold Cord Lake.

 Fisher came along, got wet, and started shedding in the heat, the room temperature heat.

Fisher got so hot he had to seek solace in the inadequate shade of fireweed.

 Fisher on the way back to the mine. Looks like Fisher is hijacking this blog, so i'm calling it quits for now.

Symphony Lake

Symphony Lake, Flute and Organ Glacier, Cantata Peak, Calliope Mountain -- they sound like names of streets in a new subdivision. From space, Flute Glacier looks like it would be easy to walk up, so i thought i'd head over there.

This was way back in 2006, and my dad had given me a camera he was no longer using, a Canon 10d. Before that, i had been a devoted slide film user. You won't likely see any posts from those days because i'm not going to sit here and scan slides just for a blog.

The 10d was useful enough to prove to me the benefits of going digital.  It was the first digital camera i ever used (except for a very primitive and very expensive 2 megapixel camera from Kodak back in 1998, for work ). I had forgotten that, and when i was moving these images off my hard drive recently i was getting angry that i couldn't find a copy of the one pictured above that was bigger than 3072 x 2048 pixels (about the same or less than a typical point and shoot pocket camera). Then i realized that was just the maximum resolution of the camera! Things have changed a lot since 2006...

The part of the trail that goes by the neighborhood. This is how high up the side of the valley you have to hike while passing the private property. After this mile the trail drops back down to the bottom of the valley and stays there the rest of the time.

The Eagle Lake trail is in the back of a neighborhood in the town of Eagle River. Unfortunately some jerk bought the swath of land at the end of the neighborhood, blocking access to Chugach State Park. I assume this made him feel like he owned the whole rest of the valley because from what i understand the owner wouldn't work with the state to allow access to the park, so the trailhead had to be built a mile down the road after a conservation organization managed to purchase some of the real estate in the area in 1988. That means roundtrip you have to spend two uneccesary miles walking by a neighborhood before you pass that guys property and get into the park proper. There is another valley in the Talkeetna Mountains were that same kind of situation is going on right now.

 The rockfield starts abruptly, after the bridge.

The hike to Symphony Lake is 5.3 miles one way, and is unfortunately a bit boring and monotonous for a large part of the time, even though you are above treeline. Eventually you arrive at a large rockfield and at that point the scenery ahead is much more appreciable. At the top of the rockfield you realize you are standing on an old lateral moraine. The moraine separates Eagle and Symphony Lakes, one of which is higher than the other.

The scenery is really nice once you get through the rocks.

Also of interest at the top of the boulder field is a bizzare octagonal platform about 10 feet high. This thing was built by a homesteader in the 1970's. Back then you could claim land as your own, and i guess this guy thought building a "platform" would be enough of an improvement to make it his. Apparently it's a very contested valley.

A badly taken panorama that shows how Eagle Lake, on the right, is higher than Symphony Lake, on the right. I'll blame it on the old Eos 10D i was using. It was the first digital camera i used, and had a poor dynamic range.

The day i was there the platform turned out to be very useful. Just as i got to the rock field the sky opened up and poured down a storm of hail, sleet and very cold rain. I had a rain coat, but not rain pants, and soon my legs were soaked. Just a few hundred feet above me it was dumping snow. The pseudo shack provided some refuge to hide in until the storm passed. Inside were even a couple of filthy sleeping bags hanging on a wall for those who were desperate. Desperate was a key word, because although the place had a roof (very leaky) it had no floor. It was just built right on top of the boulders, so there really was no place to comfortably sit, and certainly no where to lie down.

 The long way back. At least the storm passed.

Following along the shoreline of Symphony Lake will lead to the Flute Glacier after a few more miles. Typically it is done as a two day trip. I had originally hoped to hike to within site of the Glacier, but by the time the storm let up i was cold and still very wet, as was the dog. I no longer had any interest in navigating through a couple of more miles of freshly wet tundra and rocks. The area of the lakes was very pretty though, and warranted a return trip, with camping in mind.

 

 Wet Doggie.

Lone Wolf

One of the first hikes i did with Fisher was to this place called something like Gold Cord Lake. It's a pretty lake near Independence Mine that is not hard to get to. The second time i went there, i brought my dad. We were caught in a violent mountain thunderstorm while we were at the lake. We found one large boulder with one side leaning out just far enough to protect you from the rain if the wind was in your favor. It wasn't comfortable though, because in order for it to just barely protect you, you had to cram your back up against it and hunch over so our heads were nearly on our knees. 

No shelter up here in a storm.

There was heavy hail and lightning all over the peaks around us for about 25 minutes. Fisher had never seen lightning (or hail probably). He was only two years old at the time, and lightning  used to be a very rare occurrence in Alaska. It scared him to death, and he kept trying to burrow under my butt, backwards, to hide from it. He was permanently traumatized, and on the way back, lightning was still striking down the valley where the storm had moved. Every time it struck he would freeze in his tracks, drop his head and look back at us terrified. A side effect of that trip was that he absolutely hates fireworks, and will fight them to the death.

Here he has found a groundsquirrel burrow. Nowadays he has to lay down and try to dig it out with just one paw at a time.

Fisher had his leg removed in March, and by July he was doing much better. I was really depressed about not doing any hiking with him but by July i thought i'd give him a test and take him back to that lake as a sort of a "new" first hike together. It gains a couple of hundred feet of elevation but is only about 1/2 a mile, so i figured he could handle it, and handle it he did. He was pretty stressed, and although a new trail had been built since our last visit he still kind of sketched out on a couple of the uneven stacked rock areas. He made it to the top though, and after laying down to rest for about 10 minutes he got up and started hunting down groundsquirrels. It had been hard but he had a good time.

Over the next two months Fisher's strength, endurance and agility increased remarkably. By the second half of September i decided to take him to the mountains once more. This time we went up Archangel Valley to one of my favorite spots called Lane Hut. It's about two miles of hiking gradually up hill, requires a small stream crossing, and is a rough trail at times. We were surprised to get there just as the skies cleared after a snow storm. The whole second half of the hike was through fresh muddy snow, but this time Fisher did great. Even though he ran well off the trail to sniff out prey, he still had plenty of energy at the end of the hike. At only one point did i have to help him, up rocks that were high enough to require even a human to use all four appendages.

September snow in the mountains.

That was a very uplifting experience because Fisher proved he could return to the mountains and have fun in his favorite environment from time to time. I still wouldn't trust bringing him across a river where he'd have to swim in a current, as he has enough trouble crossing shallower boulder filled streams. Plus, Maree says he can't swim in a straight line anymore

Just a few miles downvalley it was still a beautiful fall day. He still has potentially dangerous problems when trying to cross rocky streams full of wet boulders, deep water and strong currents.

Another month and Fisher had learned to run fast again. I decided to take him for another first. I took him up to the snowy valley where he spent his last day with four legs. We had the eighth coldest October on record (yay!) and that morning it was 10 degrees. As we walked down a secondary trail towards the bottom of the valley we spotted a large furry dog coming up the trail a ways off. Upon a second look though, i noticed some weird things about the dog. It seemed to be hobbling down the trail with it's tail tucked way between it's legs and it's rump hunched over. It had extreme body posturing and i didn't understand why it was doing it. The dog veered off the trail as Fisher approached from 40 yards away. Something was just really weird about the way that dog was acting. Then i had a massive revelation about what was going on in the world that cold sunny day, and i started screaming at Fisher to come back. The other dog wasn't acting like a normal dog because it wasn't a dog, it was a wolf, and it was luring Fisher into a potentially deadly trap.

We had a particularly long cold winter with very little snowfall (at least very little snowfall until the end of spring, when we had insane amounts of snow) I had no idea, but wolves bodies are shaped for cutting through deep snow. Normally down this far south they prey on moose during the winter months.  They go find a moose and chase it around in the deep snow. A big barrel chested animal like a moose uses a ton of energy plowing through snow, and the wolves take advantage of that fact, chasing the moose until it's exhausted enough that they can take it down. With no snow the moose can run away for longer and is more likely to be able to fight them off. Lack of snow last winter put a lot of stress on the wolves. But wolves are smart, and they developed new methods for finding meals. 

Taken on October 28th, Fisher is looking quite healthy again and his fur's grown back.

Last winter i read of several instances in the paper of wolves setting traps. They would find some thick cover near a human trail, then have one member of the pack go out as bait. When someone came by walking their dog, the bait wolf would get it's attention and lure the unsuspecting pet into the bushes, where it would be quickly finished off by the hidden pack.

I feared that the wolf was luring Fisher into just such a trap. It was "overacting" to appear nondangerous and submissive, hobbling along in a way that just looked fake to me, and also always managing to maintain it's lead over Fisher. It had many options but was choosing to lead him right into a particularly thick grove of dwarf mountain evergreens. The trees were off the edge of a switchback, so lurking wolves would have a good view both up and down the trail. 

When Fisher got about 6 feet away he must have realized he wasn't dealing with dog, and assuming a defensive stance started barking viciously at the wolf. The wolf turned on him but when i caught up it darted into those trees. Fisher was alright, i never saw them make contact. I had an eerie feeling about that trail, so we turned around. Plenty of other places to go.

What Makes a Good Trail?

There are a lot of factors that go into a good hike. How long is it before there's a payoff? What's the elevation gain? What's the total length? How often does the scenery change? How much driving does it take to get there? Even some of my favorite places, like Glacier Park in Montana, have numerous official hikes that i find to be substandard due to monotony, or the ratio of effort compared to rewards. By the time i hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up in three different places i was completely disinterested in the idea of doing it again. The North Cascades suffer from the fact that too many trails involve hiking for hours and hours through the woods before you are high enough to see anything other than trees. Some of the not so good Alaskan hikes i've been on involve seeing the same view for hours on end while you walk down an long uniform-looking valley (only to turn right back around at the end), or the trails are created badly, in that they too often have a tendency to go straight up the side of the mountain. Although i'm not fond of switchbacks, going straight up wastes more energy, and creates a trail that degrades much faster.



It kept raining last summer until i would just go out regardless. However, i didn't want to waist a bunch of time driving somewhere that really needed a sunny day to appreciate, so i would go closer to home and some days just explore areas i'd been around before but never took the time to investigate. One day i went up to Hatcher Pass (the actual pass) and hiked up the hill from the top of the pass.



I had only planned on going to the top but that didn't take very long and i saw from the top that it was easy walking to keep going. I followed the ridge a while and eventually just decided to walk down into the adjacent valley and traverse around the bottom of the mountain back to the pass. It turned out to be a very good route to take. A loop hike that was just the right distance through constantly changing and interesting landscapes, and it never rained until i got back to the car. Now i've got a unique new moderately adventurous hike i can take visitors on who are up to task.

Needless Trailblazing

This scenario has happened way too many times to me. I find an inspiring mountain or mesa or whatever. I can find no trail on maps to get up it (or maybe i don't have a map available and am just guessing from driving on available roads in the area). I exhaust a lot of energy while i "bushwhack"/ scramble/ climb up the side of it. Once on top i find a nice trail i could have taken, along with some benches or sunbathers, and i feel like an idiot. People are certainly looking at me like i'm an idiot, or some kind of super extremist that purposefully makes things as hard as possible.

The most extreme case of this was on one of San Juan Islands North of Seattle. There was one high peak on this island and i tried driving around it but couldn't find any sign of a road before i called it a lost cause and decided to just go for it. I spent two hours climbing up rocky cliffs that were only a little less steep than the ones right next to where i started. Those had actual rock climbers on ropes. There were a few hairy spots but i eventually made it up. Just as i got to the top , very sweaty and exhausted, i encountered a wooden fence in front of a paved parking lot full of old people, some of whom were taking pictures of me climbing over the lip of these ledges. Great. It turned out the road to the top was just another 50 yards past the point where i turned around. At least i was correct in thinking it was the best place around to get a nice view of the island and Mt. Baker.

This past Summer i did it again when i decided to climb the Lionshead here in Alaska. I'd driven by it a dozen times and finally decided i had to see the view on top. There is no official trail, and the approach to the base forces you to kind of walk through a grey area of trespassing past some telecommunications buildings. Since there were no trails listed on any maps i decided to take a direct approach. I walked along a gravel road to it's terminus and then went straight up the side of the mountain. The vegetation was as thick as it had looked from a distance, and the mountainside itself was steeper than i had imagined. It was a hot day and it's hard to immediately engage in strenuous activity after an hours long drive. Fortunately it's not a long hike, only about 800 feet high on the climbable side.


Almost halfway up the side, in a rare clearing

I got to the top. The views were just as i had expected, and of course, there was a nice trail up there. I didn't follow it back because it went down towards some very vertical cliffs, but in the Fall i returned, and after a little investigation found the trail on the bottom, near the opposite end from where i started. The trail is a much, much nicer way to go. It's ridiculous how much better.


On one side the mountain drops straight down from overhanging cliffs. This side is far higher above the ground than the road side

Also on top was a strange partially mummified skeleton of a baby goat or sheep. It was completely intact, but obviously scavenged. I wondered how it died. It seems like a strange place for a goat/sheep to give birth because of a lack of shelter up there and only berries to eat (which wouldn't be around in spring). Plus, the mountain is well separated from other peaks, so i wonder if the baby was taken by an eagle. The corpse was small enough for an eagle to have lifted and dropped up there in the open near the edge of a massive cliff, a perfect dining area for a bird to be undisturbed. I would imagine any larger predator would have eaten the bones.



On the way down that day it was getting late. The trees are so thick you can't get a bearing, and i walked off down the wrong side of the mountain. The whole thing is connected to the gravel road i walked on by a kind of a saddle of land which drops off on both sides, and i went down too far on one side, so i had to walk back uphill some more to get back on track. I found a path that made it easier to walk through the woods. Unfortunately it was a bear trail. You could tell it was a bear trail because of the endless procession of bear scat that i kept having to step over. It starting to bother me because the scat appeared to be getting fresher as i walked further along the trail. Fisher was acting nervous too, so i started calling out to the bears and breaking lots of dead trees as we walked along. Line of site was very limited. That's another reason the actual trail is so much better to take.





The Lionshead isn't actually a mountain, because it was glacially created. Glaciers don't make mountains, although they make mountains look more impressive after they're done with them. I'm relaying this info based on a roadside sign i read last summer, so the details are not sharp in my mind. The rock formation exists because of old subsurface volcanic activity. An upwelling of magma changed the rock into a somewhat rare and very hard form of quartz related rock. As the valley was carved out the ice couldn't grind away the rock because it was harder than any of the other rocks around. When the ice receded it left this massive tower of rock in the middle of the valley. These days it's in pretty bad shape because the ice is taking a different approach. The ground on the top is divided into parallel fissures which are being driven apart by freeze thaw cycles. The whole thing is crumbling apart, it fared better when it was permanently encased in ice.

Fourth of July Weekend

I haven't made a post for a while, but i've been busy learning some new photo techniques. Now i need to learn how to post the stuff online. One of my brothers came up to visit over July 4th weekend. Fourth of July isn't that great for fireworks in Alaska because it never gets dark. But, because it never gets dark it makes for a great day to spend outside.




The ground around here was like walking on a giant brain


Jeff sports his new "broadband" programmers mohawk.


Fisher is seen here asking if we really think it's a good idea for him to get in the freezing water


Later Fisher launched into his eternal Holy War against ground squirrels

It was cloudy in town so we went to the Talkeetna Mountains, which turned out to be mostly sunny all day. We went up to a kind of a hidden lake i'd been to before. My friend Jeff had decided to try out a wet suit he had and go swimming in the lake. I'd been swimming in it before, for about 30 seconds. Jeff lasted about 2 minutes before his hands and feet were completely numb. It was decided a full dry suit would be required. Fisher must have thought Jeff was trying to kill himself, because he swam out into the lake to rescue him. All in all it was a very nice hike, and afterward we were rewarded with a great steak and fish barbecue at Maree's relatives property on the Matanuska River. Nice times.




Just about to exit the afternoon shadow of the mountain


If you look at the second pic in this post, you can see that those clouds behind the mountains stayed right where they were all day long. Crazy.