The Mitre - part 1

This summer I've been trying to do more bike riding. I've finished most of the foot trails that i can get to and finish in one day but year after year i've ignored biking trails. A few weeks ago i did the Eklutna Lake trail. It's a 13 mile dead end and i was interested in it because it's supposed to terminate at the toe of the Eklutna Glacier, one of Anchorage's main water sources. The trail is really an old dirt road for service vehicles with numerous offshoots for biking/hiking closer to the shore. It's closed to public driving. You are allowed a couple of times a week to use an ATV on it, and the other days it's reserved for non-motorized use, which seems fair. I would really like an ATV but since i don't have one i had to ride a bike.


Baleful Peak comes into view after passing Bold and Bashful Peaks.

I had problems almost immediately. After previous long rides i determined that my bike seat did not live up to the task of cushioning my ass. I had been meaning to buy a new one but instead i decided to take Maree's more padded seat (and post) off of her bike and just stick in on my bike. I didn't actually put it together until i was at the lake an hour later. I was dismayed, to say the least, that her seat post was smaller than mine, and as a result, even tightening my post hole as far as it would go it couldn't grip the post enough to keep it in place. So i improvised and filled the shaft with gravel until the seat sat at the right height. It was a very imprecise method that required very frequent readjustment to get the height right and to then keep it in place as rocks shifted or were ground down into smaller pebbles. Pretty maddening, actually, especially since i could find no way to keep the seat straight, so even if it was the right height, it continuously twisted back and forth and would even turn to face backwards if i was in a standing position.


A glacier on the lower reaches of Baleful Peak.

Additionally, I had decided to use this bottle of water someone left in our refrigerator two years ago. I put it in the bottle holder above the gears and because the the trail was so rocky, the bottle holder poked a hole in the bottle. That, in turn, sprayed water all over my face and the sudden drop in pressure bounced the bottle out and onto the dusty ground where the newly wet bottle immediately covered itself in mud as it rolled to a stop. Again, very frustrating.


Even from half a dozen miles away, the Mitre is imposing.

The trail proved to be a much more scenic ride than i had imagined. After 8 or 9 miles along the lake shore the trail continues beyond the lake and your view is taken up by the largest mountains in Chugach State Park: Mt. Bold and Bashful. What i was most impressed with though, was a huge mass of rock called The Mitre. I'd never paid attention to it on maps and had never seen it when visiting because of a bend in the lake, but it turned out the be the final destination of the bike trail.


In this closeup a tiny red and orange dot signifies a kayak with barely seen paddlers nearby. The beach and forest are still 4 miles closer than the massive scree slopes in the background.

The Mitre - part 2

The last two miles of the trail two things started to happen. The trail got continuously worse, until it was made of gravel the size of river stones, and the landscape started to take on a scale and ruggedness that seemed more like Northern India or Pakistan.

Finally the bike trail ended and I began to hike up the barren valley. There was a warning sign pointing out that the valley was very geologically active and to stay off the glacier. The sign was correct about that. Several times i saw large dust clouds drifting up the cliffs. Most likely they were the result of rockfall that i couldn't hear due to the roaring river.

I was absolutely stunned at the scale of the Mitre. From the valley bottom it burst out of the ground like a wild monolith of unbroken, overlapping cliff faces rising for a mile above my head. Details of it's upper reaches were obscured in atmospheric haze. It just filled up everything you could see on one side of the valley. By the time i left my neck was aching from looking up.


Extra-rugged cliffs rise nearly a mile overhead, so quickly perspective is skewed.

Crazily, there was no glacier in the valley. The sign said there was a glacier. The map said there was a glacier, i'd seen pictures taken withing the last 10 years that indicated there should be a glacier, but there was no glacier. It had obviously melted back behind a rock wall about 300 feet high, with a narrow twisting chasm of raging water bisecting it into two sides.

That was very upsetting to find out about. I did not come all that way not to see a glacier. I could see that a spectacular site awaited beyond the wall and i looked for a way to get up there. Based on the torrential amount of water pouring out of the gorge, there was still a massive amount of ice up there, but i didn't want to risk crossing the water by myself, in the tired condition i was in from riding. So i tried climbing up the cliffs on my side of the valley instead.

In case you don't know, freshly exposed rock walls that have been buried under hundreds of feet of ice for thousands of years are very bad for climbing. The rock is often smooth, curvy, and loosely scattered with gravel. There are few handholds, and if you find one, it's likely to come off in your hands. After climbing up 200 feet i got stuck. Climbing higher was possible but very risky. Looking back down i couldn't figure how i got up. I had to sit down, relax and collect my thoughts. Eventually i did get down, by going down exactly the same way i went up, facing the wall and finding one handhold at a time. By the time i was done one of my legs was aching from sour adrenaline. Good thing i didn't try the more dangerous stream...


This valley looked like somewhere in Kashmir. This is a very wide angle shot and the scale of things is hard to comprehend. For example...there are some sheep grazing at the bottom of the cliffs in the yellow rectangle. Don't see them? Look below...


This image is outlined as the yellow rectangle in the image above. Here there are four sheep grazing the slopes at the base of the cliffs. Still can't see them? Try the next shot:



So i didn't get my glacier, but i saw a lot of stuff, and the ride back was more enjoyable than i'd thought. My ass was killing me though, and i was taking breaks just to rest it. That ride motivated me to go ahead and get that new seat. I'll be going back there again, with a friend, and better outfitted for crossing rivers.