Snowshoe Direct Trail to Stonehenge

 Some of the Valley Wanderers flagged a straight up route from the Matanuska Peak Trailhead to the area nicknamed Stonehenge. I've hiked it a couple of times to add orange flagging to branches on the trees to help people find the trail in the winter. It's very steep. We have had very little snow this winter so many of the regular trails are extremely icy due to unusual periods of heavy rain, followed by freezing temperatures, The Valley Wanderers like to snowshoe the flagged trail periodically through the winter to make it easier to hike. We set out to break trail there today. The McRoberts Creek Trail to the cutoff that leads up to the Matanuska Peak Trail, was very icy and steep and the cutoff trail was really treacherous, covered only with a couple of inches of soft snow over solid ice. I loaned my old snowshoes to my friend Pam, who came along with us. They aren't quite as nice on steep trails, so she had a lot of trouble using them. We just used our micro spikes until partway up the flagged trail, when the snow started to get too deep. Then we switched to the snowshoes. Pam was a little slower than the others, but we kept stopping anyway to remove large branches from fallen trees obstructing the trail. Virginia had a really nice little saw in her pack, and did an amazing job on some of those trees. As the snow got deeper, my dog Bella started slowing down. She had a substantial number of giant snowballs hanging from her legs. I stopped a few times to remove them, but finally decided it was asking too much to have her struggling through the deep snow. So I put her in my backpack and carried her to the top of Stonehenge. That slowed me down so I ended up walking with Pam the rest of the way. At Stonehenge, the snowshoe trail seemed to disappear and the wind was horrendous. We figured the others in the group were hiding out among the rocks somewhere but we couldn't find them. I tried calling them on my cell phone but no answer. Then I saw a trace of snowshoe tracks through the rocks and figured that must be their trail, so we followed them. Jane saw I had called and called me back and told me they had gone on down tot the junction of the Matanuska Peak Trail and were waiting there for us. Soon after we joined them, Pam and I decided to remove the snowshoes and go back to wearing micro spikes. She had fallen a couple of times and had enough of the snowshoes.  Now out of the deep snow, Bella was happy to run along ahead of us as before. We avoided that steep cutoff trail and took the Matanuska Peak Trail all the way back to our cars. It was still very icy and steep, so even with spikes we were struggling. We did catch up with the other 3 in our group, who had stayed on their snowshoes. We were able to move a little faster with the spikes, but it was still slow going. It was a very tough 4 mile hike, but still lots of fun and a bit of an adventure. As always, the views back there were amazing in spite of the overcast gray conditions, and THAT WIND!