I had planned to hike today with the Valley Wanderers to Mt Eklutna and maybe do the loop trail to Bear Mountain. But there has been a lot of rain and snow for the last few days. Looking at most of the mountains, and particularly at Mt Eklutna and Bear Mountain, we knew there would be a lot of snow. So instead, Julia, who was leading today's hike, decided to do the Ptarmigan Valley Trail instead. We all figured there would be very little snow there because it is much lower than those 2 mountains. However, the snow level is only about 500 feet, so we hit snow almost immediately. But it was only a few inches and at most about 6 inches as we climbed higher. It was only about 32 degrees when we started so I kept my warm coat on for quite a while. We all ended up shedding a layer after a couple of miles though. It was very cloudy, but we could get a clear view of Denali and the Alaska Range in the distance. The sun was shining on those mountains far to the northwest of our trail. There is a fork in this trail with options of the winter trail and the summer trail. The winter trail is extremely wet and boggy at this time of year, so we chose the summer trail. It was fairly dry except for the few inches of snow. The summer trail had obviously been recently walked. We heard that the other hiking group from Anchorage were also planning to hike this trail today. They had left a little earlier and broke trail for us nicely. We finally caught up with them at about 3 miles as they had decided to turn back. They told us the trail was too wet past that point. We went on a little farther and found that water had nearly formed a creek that was running straight down the trail. My friend Pam, wanted to turn back, but Julia wanted to try to go a little farther. We all followed her for a short distance until Pam said she was heading back. My dog, Bella was soaking wet and shivering at that point and I had also lost interest. So, I decided to go back down with Pam. The others did go about a mile farther then eventually they also turned around because it was too wet to go on. On our return, we caught up with the Anchorage group and hiked out with them. Bella was always leading and at one point she went straight following the obvious trail. But the trail we wanted actually turned to the left at that spot. We had noted a fallen tree there and planned to remember to turn there. I was leading right behind Bella and was obviously looking at my feet and not my surroundings. I missed that tree. Our wrong trail didn't seem nearly as well packed as the one we had hiking in on, I looked at our route on my AllTrails app and saw that we had left the correct trail, we all backtracked to the right trail and made it out with no other mishaps. Our whole trip was about 6 miles. I'm glad I didn't let Pam hike back alone. It was easy to miss that subtle turn in the snow. It's always safer to hike with another person. It was a fun hike and even with the wet and cloudy conditions, it was still a lovely autumn hike with lots of golden trees. Bella got a much-needed bath as soon as we got home. She looked like she had just done the mud bucket challenge if there was such an event.
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| Bella impatiently looking at us because we had stopped to talk |
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| Denali in the distance through the trees |
