Bear Point

Today was one of the most beautiful and spectacular days I've seen this year. Bella and I hiked up Bear Mountain to Bear Point with our Valley Wanderers friends, Jane, Meg, Jo and Chris. It was hard packed and icy so we didn't need snowshoes, just microspikes. It's a pretty steep hike but the views from the top of the ridge are amazing. Our packed trail stopped once we got to the first peak on the ridge. But Chris decided to see if he could find a way on to where we usually can hike in the summer. Once he started walking, Bella took off after him. At this point she was still attached to me by her leash, so I followed along too. There was hard packed icy ground beneath the top layer of the 5-10 inches that fell this past weekend. So we were able to easily walk along the ridge. We did frequently sink through into softer layers, but it was mostly easy going. Sometimes Bella fell into our footprints and discovered she could do better by simply walking on top of the soft snow. We walked about one mile along the ridge. Beyond that we could see giant snow cornices to either side of the ridge. We decided for safety it was time to turn around. But we had amazing views of the surrounding mountains, the Knik and Matanuska Rivers down below, and even Denali and the Alaska Range in the distance. Bella collected quite a few snowballs inside of her coat and on her legs when we took off on the unpacked snow. I picked all that off of her before we started down the long icy path back to the trailhead. The trail down had now softened and was quite slippery. It didn't take me long to decide to take her off the leash so she didn't pull me all the way down in a pile of bruises and embarrassing moments. She was great! She stayed right on the trail and right with our little group. She made sure she knew where I was at all times also. Once we got back to the main Peter's Creek Trail, I put her back on the leash in case we encountered other dogs or hikers, for her safety. Round trip was a total of 5 miles and we climbed to over 3100 feet.You would never guess that only a week ago, Bella got her surgery stitches out. She recovered quickly!

Jo, Meg, and Jane