Mt Baldy

I did a nice leisurely hike with the Valley Wanderers up Mt Baldy then down the Homestead Trail today. The trail up is fairly steep but we took the more gradual route, on the switchback trails. It's a little longer but not quite as strenuous. The trail was totally dry with no snow, but the ground was quite frozen, so we didn't have to deal with slippery mud. It was a beautiful nearly clear day and not terribly cold either. There were 8 of us in our group. We spent a little time on the top admiring the view. Even Denali was visible in the distance. Although my phone doesn't really do justice to it when I have to zoom all the way in. But I'm including the photo in this post just to show how clearly it was visible. If we had more time, it almost looked possible to continue on up Blacktail Rocks. But there is a lot of snow and we might have encountered a lot of ice if we had tried. Instead, we walked down the gentle Homestead Trail. On the lower portion, we did encounter some very long stretches of ice. During warmer temperatures, water had actually flowed down the trail. There was no reasonable way to circumvent the ice so we finally had to resort to wearing our ice grippers. Pretty soon this entire trail will be covered with snow, and we'll need our snowshoes. But today it was a nice pleasant hike. We had a nice Mexican lunch at a local restaurant in Eagle River after our hike.

Blacktail Rocks

Denali