Leather and skiless, the hiking thread.

[anrothar]

Went up a new-to-me peak today with gf and dog. It was a fun one, short in distance, but more than making up for it in steepness, with 3000+ feet in under 2 miles.


A little buggy in the trees and the meadow on the way up.

Much nicer above treeline.

Summit of Mount POW/MIA

Super ultra mega light Alpine Touring. Light trail running shoes, no skis.

[MikeK]

Nice!

Do you guys get black flies? Or just horrible swarms of mosquitoes?



I admit I was confused by this thread at first as I thought it was in another with a similar name...

[anrothar]

We get both, but mosquitoes were the factor this time. I imagine mosquitoes will be really bad across the state this year with the early thaw of the tundra. The few times I've been on tundra in western Alaska in the summer, the mosquitoes have been unreal. Just huge swarms of them everywhere you walk. Also working in construction, you'll be in an area with no mosquitoes, and an excavator will dig down into a long ago buried bit of tundra, and all of a sudden there are thousands of mosquitoes swarming. It's like the eggs can lay dormant for 20 years and then hatch instantly when exposed to open air.

Most hikes it's not really an issue, and above treeline it's not really an issue.

[lowangle al]

I've been getting in some good hikes lately since being off work due to a broken finger. No problem with bugs, I don't think skeeters are any more of a problem in South central Ak. than they are in the forrests back East. Tundra over permafrost is a different story though.

I never thought we had black flies up here but I guess those little black flies that want to bite me on occation are "black flies"

Lots of good corn snow out there.

[anrothar]

Rainy weekend, and we wanted to camp. We kept it local and planned on an easy peak is the clouds were high enough to make the view worth it. Hiked in to Hanging Valley on Saturday, to the upper lake where the last remnants of the hanging glacier that gave it that name are probably buried under the lumpy tongue of rocks at the end of the lake. Luckily we got in a short ridge circuit after dinner, because the entire valley was fogged in Sunday morning and the peak refused to come out. We had the valley to ourselves the whole weekend.


Saturday night on our after dinner hike, looking across the lake we camped at to the peak we wanted(Eagle River Overlook) on the far ridge.

Looking down from about the high point on the ridge. Our tent is visible on the far side of the lake, a little yellow-white dot.

The ridge circuit above the lake is a blast.

A good morning to fall back asleep in the tent.

[MikeK]

Good you guys are getting out. What's the elevation there? Still a bit of snow...

[lowangle al]

The peaks immidiately surrounding Anchorage are about 3500 to 5500'. Go back a little further and they go up to 10,000 and more. As far as skiable snow I saw some gulleys that were still holding snow down to about 1200 or 1500 feet.

You should think about moving up here Mike, now you will be saving five of ya.

[anrothar]

The lake we camped at is around 3400'. The snow at that elevation is pretty nice corn snow right now, the deepest we sank in it was ankle deep. You just need to be willing to hike a ways to get to it, and bring rock skis.

[anrothar]

Got an after-work summit last night. Rainbow Peak is a fun one near town. Woods approach to warm up, then mostly steep with varying levels of scrambling. There's a brief level section before the final scree ascent to the summit ridge. Climbs from just above sea level to just over 3500' in 2.5 miles, only 900' of that in the first mile.

[satsuma]

Hiking in Blue Mountains today to check out a ski route I couldn't follow last winter. Weather--sunny, 60's, some breeze.
Encountered herd of about 30(?) elk (not deer ) on return trip

View to west

View to southwest, Elkhorn Mountains in background with snow.

view to south, Mt. Emily in background

top of Spout Springs chairlift