I met with Frank Wall a fellow member of the Adventure Alaska Facebook Group, at his house for a hike on trails he has packed through the Hay Flats and Dike Road. He had created beautiful ski trails but for several days we have had extremely unseasonably warm weather, which had ruined his trails. Nothing out there was skiable, but could be traveled using snowshoes. Even with them it was pretty tough going. It was all quite rutted from his attempts to hike it the last two days, sinking in making big holes. Now it has cooled off again turning all the mess to icey crunchy post holes. But we were able to crunch our way through it all the way to the Matanuska River. There is an old Dike Road that in the past folks were able to drive. But it has been closed off for some time. Now the only official way to access that area is directly from his back yard or maybe from a couple of his other neighbors. It's quite wild out there. We passed and even crossed a few streams that had been frozen but were now open water. The Dike Road itself was nice going though. We hiked exactly 5 miles out and back. The temperature was just over freezing but the north wind came up as we started back. My dog stayed on her leash and did surprisingly well considering she had surgery just over two weeks ago. I was happy I never needed to carry her. This snow didn't tend to create giant snowballs on her legs like we encountered yesterday. It all went quite well. I enjoyed Frank's stories of how things had changed in the area in the 30 years he had lived there. We had some beautiful views of the local mountains and the frozen river.
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| Pioneer Peak and the Matanuska River |
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| Part of the dike |
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| Twin Peaks and the Matanuska River |
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| Bella, Me & Frank |
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| Our route |
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