Matanuska Lake Trails, Long Lake Loop

My original plan was to meet my friend, Pam up at Archangel Road to cross country ski. But as I drove up the road it started to snow. The storm became so heavy that it was soon difficult to even see the road. Even my dog became concerned when she saw the heavy snow and started barking and whining. I texted Pam but she didn't respond. I didn't know if she was ahead or behind me. Cell service is very poor in this area so I decided to just continue in case she was ahead of me. I passed a snowplow heading down as the snow got deeper on the road. I finally reached Archangel Road and found a 3 foot high berm across the parking area. I knew it would be impossible to park there. Luckily I was able to make a quick U-turn and get headed back down the road. I had good cell service there so called Pam and we decided to meet down at Turner's Corner, a gas station often used as a meeting point. By the time I got to Turner's I found the storm had moved down the mountain with me and it was snowing furiously. Pam and I decided to go to Matanuska Lake and just hike the Long Lake Loop Trail. It's just under 5 miles and we found that it was neither snowing or raining there. There was enough ice and snow that we both wore our microspikes, even though in many places we still had exposed dirt. We had the trail to ourselves, so I let Bella off her leash. She had a wonderful time running up and down the trail with her friend, Dahla, Pam's dog. Bella is very good about immediately coming when I call her. We had a very pleasant walk but not the best view due to low cloud ceilings. But at least we stayed dry and didn't need to trudge through very deep snow. I later learned Hatcher Pass Lodge was closed due to a 2 foot snowfall. Once I got back home, it started to snow there too. Winter is certainly hanging on around here.

McRoberts Creek Trail

 I had some reservations about this hike today after hearing the forecast for 50 mph winds. The Valley Wanderers intention was to snowshoe from the Smith Road Trailhead, up the McRoberts Creek Trail to the tripod where it joins the Matanuska Peak Trail, then on to the picnic table, returning the same way. About 8 miles round trip and 2700 foot elevation gain. We just used micro spikes for about 3/4 mile then switched to snowshoes because we were starting to sink in badly. Snowshoes made life much easier. At about mile 1 we encountered a dead moose sprawled right across the middle of the trail. This was quite disconcerting because word has it that bears have been seen out in various places. Conditions were pretty rough and there were no previous tracks to follow. I stayed behind the leaders of our little group of 5 because they seemed to know where the actual trail was. It's not one that is frequently traveled, but it is sort of a shortcut up Matanuska Peak. We crossed some questionable snow bridges across creeks but no one managed to get wet. We took the steep shortcut up the steep gully they all call 'The Chute'. My dog, Bella did really well until about 3/4 of the way up the chute. She started walking behind me and making frequent stops. I fell slightly behind the others but caught up with them shortly before the tripod. It's up on a ridge and the wind was furiously blowing so they sat down for some food and a break. I gobbled down my candy bar and Bella gobbled down my little baggie of dog food. We were all freezing and made the command decision to turn around and go back down. I took off my backpack ad stuffed Bella into her three layer thick fleece bag that I made for her, and zipped her into my pack. She was shivering and obviously too tired to continue this silly expedition. I carried her all the way back to the car. She was comfortably curled up and warm and I'm sure, quite happy to be riding instead of stumbling through the deep snow in the high winds that had caught up with us. Our total mileage was only 4.6 miles, but it was quite the workout. I didn't take very many pictures, just a few to document that I actually went there. When I got home, I quickly printed out a Caution sign warning future hikers about the moose carcass on the trail, and taped it on the bulletin board at the trailhead. Bear spray will be important until that is gone.

Independence Mine Ski

Today the Happy Hikers from Anchorage had planned to ski up at Independence Mine. Several of our Valley Wanderers group decided to join them since this is a local hike for us. It was another beautiful day in spite of the inch of fresh snow on my walk when I woke up. There was a layer of fog down in the valley but up at the mine it was a clear blue beautiful day. The trails had been groomed for last weekend but now there had been roughed up by so many walkers. Our group was very large, somewhere in the 15 to 20 number. Most of our group was also walking but a few of us were skiing. I skied on my classic cross country skis with Bella pulling me hard enough to give me a little boost on the long uphill. We had a huge golden retriever and a little poodle mix type dog in our group. Bella did her usual tirade of barking at both of them, making me look like a terrible dog owner. But with such a large group we were all separated enough that for the most part, Bella was able to ignore the other dogs. Our total distance was only about 3 miles but there was an elevation gain of around 1000 feet. I kept Bella on the leash all the way to the highest point, and down the first steep incline. I'm not the greatest on steep downhills on hose skis so questioned my decision to leave her attached to me on that first downhill. Fortunately, even though she decided to run behind me, she quickly changed her mind and continued running at my same pace. I kept mumbling to myself "Please, Bella, don't stop!" She did great and got to the bottom of that hill the same time I did. After that, I took her off the leash. By then all three dogs were together. Bella didn't do her usual growling and barking, but instead just got overly friendly to both of them. The big dog wasn't too concerned, but the smaller dog clearly didn't want to be friends, although they didn't fight. I left her off the leash on the whole way down. She stayed right with me and I ended up being the first one to the parking lot. The snow was quite fast and it was nice not having the dog pulling and making me go faster than would have been reasonable. She was great, mostly right behind me or by my side. I can tell she really does enjoy being able to run full speed without being encumbered by the leash. We didn't see any other dogs until back at the cars, and by then I had her back on her leash. 

This was my first time to do something with the Happy hikers. They usually do something on Wednesdays so I will plan to join then occasionally. It was a great day with lots of nice people.

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

The KRRBRRR

 Ever year the local running folks put on this really odd running event called Krrbrrr - The Knik River Breakup Ramble Run. For some really amazing runners, it is actually a run. For people like me it was barely a walk. It is a combination of deep post-holing snow, wet slush, tree branches, steep hills and horse poop. I didn't even bother with running shoes. I went straight to my heavy snow boots with microspikes. It was very wet snow and in many places there was deep water where we had to take cross country shortcuts through dense trees. The race is well described by this link. KRRBRRR
It is a meandering 5.5 mile loop that starts and finishes in the Jim Creek parking lot. Participants are given 8 hours to complete as many loops as they want. I was happy to complete one loop and call it a day. Some diehard people were out there for the whole 8 hours though. I had to leave my dog home alone so didn't want to leave her for very long. Plus I fell while shoveling my walk yesterday and smacked my left ribs so hard that I quite possibly have a cracked or at least bruised rib or two. It hurts to breathe or even move. So plunging into deep snow up over my knees was not as comfortable as I would have liked it. But it was still fun and of course challenging. I was happy to stop after loop one.

Here are a few scenes along the trail

The 5.5 Mile Route

Archangel Road

 I always hike with my friend Pam on Fridays. We got about 6 inches of snow the last two days. So we figured skiing would be amazing up on the Archangel Road ski trail. The road up to the trail was quite icy and had at least 6 inches of snow on it. The parking lot had closer to a foot of heavy wet snow on it. I actually got stuck and took several tries to pull myself back out. Once we got up onto the trail and managed to get our skis on in the deep snow, we quickly found that maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. Pam's skis kept getting stuck because the wet snow was icing up on the bottom of her skis. My skis seemed to perform well, but my dog was practically buried up to her ears in the snow. She kept bouncing like a rabbit then plunging into the snow. Her whole lower body was covered with snowballs too! After only a few minutes and not more than 100 feet, we gave up and turned back. I went home and cleared my driveway with my snowblower and shoveled what I couldn't reach with the blower.

Bella, The Snowball Dog

My Backyard This Morning

Bodenburg Butte Climb

 Bella got her stitches out yesterday so we celebrated with a climb of the Butte. The trail was totally iced up. about half of this trail is a series of wooden stairs. The were treacherous but with my micro spikes on my boots, and clinging to the ropes and rails, we made the top easily. Bella acted like nothing had ever happened to her and bounced all the way up that ice as if she was a 6 month old puppy. It was so calm on the top that for a change, we could actually spend a little time up there admiring the view instead of turning abruptly back to escape from horrendous winds. We both really needed a good climb after spending the last weeks going slowly while she recovered from surgery. I was a little horrified at times as we descended because Bella wanted to run at top speed the whole way. I would have been embarrassed killing myself or breaking a few bones on something simple like the 800 foot high Butte. So I controlled her until we at least got past the icy stairs. After we were back on just the icy trail, we both ran all the way back to the car. It felt so wonderful to finally get a good steep climbing workout. I love the view around the valley from the top.