Lazy Mountain Traverse

 I picked up Pam where she had left her car at the shop. We wanted to do a hike while waiting for her car. It was such a beautiful day that we both wanted to hike Lazy Mountain. It was so nice and warm and sunny. Just perfect weather. The trail is still mostly snow-covered and muddy where the snow is gone. We needed our grippers on our shoes because it was really slippery on the steep parts. The first half of the Lazy Mountain Trail is very steep and it's always a relief to get to the picnic table for a break. We met Frank Wall and his dog Maya at the picnic table. Then after a nice break we hiked up the rest of the way with him. All three of our dogs gradually got to be friends, even Baby after she got done barking and trying to start a fight as usual. There was still a lot of snow on the way up but it was manageable. Frank suggested going down the Southside Trail to join the Matanuska Peak Trail to avoid the very steep and slippery route below the picnic table. It seemed like a splendid idea. He said that trail was mostly clear, so we all went that way. We quickly found that wasn't quite true! It was very snowy still and we really required snowshoes a good bit of the way, but we didn't have them. We kept post-holing and sinking up to our knees in the soft slushy snow. Pam and I were getting a little worried because she needed to pick up her car at 6. I remembered a shortcut that leads down to the McRoberts Creek Trail and fortunately it was well traveled and mostly free of snow. We took advantage of that and cut out a portion of the more winding switchback Matanuska Peak Trail. It was steep and muddy and very straight down, but I'm sure it saved us a lot of time. We finally reached the Morgan Horse Trail at nearly 5 pm. So now we were really starting to worry. That trail is a little over one mile long and was very muddy and somewhat hilly in places. It also had patches of running water and small creeks running through it. We were all quite muddy when we finally reached the parking lot. I managed to get Pam back to her car just a couple of minutes before 6. It was a fun and somewhat exhausting adventure, one I wish I had brought snowshoes to. But that's OK, at least it wasn't a boring trip. It was certainly a good workout too.