Arkose Ridge

 I've been wondering for a few years how people access Arkose Ridge. It's a long ridge that separates the Little Susitna River drainage from the Matanuska River drainage. I've seen a skier trigger an avalanche from the top one winter, and seriously wondered how on earth they ever got up there in the first place. Virginia and Dan from the Valley Wanderers had decided to do an exploratory trip to see how far they could get towards the top of the ridge today. There are likely numerous approaches but we followed the most likely and easiest route, up the ATV trails off Murphy Road, off the Buffalo Mine Road. This is the opposite access to the Matanuska Moose Range trails from the place I usually go, on the opposite end of that area on Wendt Road. We followed the extremely muddy ATV trails until we were high enough and above most of the brush then turned up through the tundra, cross country towards the top of the ridge. Some of our group had been up there before so they knew the general route. That was basically simply keep going uphill. We had to cross numerous small revines and did a bit of bushwhacking as we made our way higher. Since this was only supposed to be an exploratory hike, no one had planned to actually reach the top of the ridge, so we didn't have enough time for that. However, we did get much higher than most of us expected. There is still considerable snow up higher and we did start encountering significant snow patches. We didn't get to a spot where we could actually see over to the other side, but we still had a lovely view of the valley to the north and east. We took a different route going back down, and it was not nearly as nice. I had tracked our route with the AllTrails app on my phone. I made a note to not take that route back down to the ATV trails. It was through lots of heavy brush with significant stream crossings. We were all happy to be back on the muddy trail again. The plan is to make a trip up the ridge later this summer when things have dried out and the snow is gone. I look forward to joining that trip.

Today is my 78th birthday. I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend it.