Cloudy Kayaking

Jess and I were invited by a friend of mine to go sea kayaking with his family and some of their friends out of Whittier.  Jess has a good bit of experience kayaking; me, less so.  The plan was to paddle out to Decision Point Marine Park, camp for the night, and return the next day.

 Jess on the paddle out.  The park is about 9 miles from Whittier.  As usual, Whittier was cloudy, but we didn't get rained on most of the first day and the water was glassy.

 Dan and I decided to take a swim.  It was brisk.  Dan's 8-year old was convinced shortly thereafter to take a swim herself (in a wetsuit).  After getting out, she promptly declared that it was a terrible decision.

 The boats beached at Decision Point.  Kayaking out to this spot put us solidly in Chugach National Forest's rain forest.

   Boardwalk up to our camping spot.  Everything was green.

 We had a sweet tent spot looking out into Blackstone Bay (though it's washed out by the contrast of the shade of the trees).

Another view of the rain forest.  We returned the next day in the rain.  It had been a while since I'd done an overnight sea kayaking trip.  It was overwhelmingly beautiful on the water and the forest adjacent to it, and something I'm looking forward to doing again.

Hatcher Pass Escape

After about 4 months post-surgery and 3 weeks of consistent rain, Jess was ready to take advantage of a sunny weekend to get out and do a little bit of hiking.  We went up to Hatcher Pass for a short trip around Archangel Road.

Our first leg of the hike was up toward Reed Lake.  Jess' knee still isn't 100%, so we went until we hit a rock scramble.  Here's Jess wondering what's taking me so long.

 From the Reed Lakes trail looking back toward Archangel Road.  The leaves were just starting to turn, and blueberries were plentiful in spots.

  I left Jess down at camp and did a short climb up to an unnamed peak.  This is on the way up.

 Some poor route-finding left me on this knife-edge ridge, just wide enough for me to straddle and scoot from one foothold to the next.  The drop on either side was about 40 feet, but going back down where I'd come from wasn't a great option.  Things got better once I got off it, though.

 Mix of stone and verdant green formed in this post-glacial wonderland.

 After we turned back on the Reed Lakes trail, we headed to the end of Archangel Road.  About 6.5 miles in total - a pretty good post-surgery jaunt.

 Panorama from our campsite.  We'd previously headed up this way in winter on our way to the Lane Glacier hut.

Jess in her happy place, post hike and blueberry picking.

 Panorama from the top of the peak of the Talkeetnas.  That night we saw amazing stars and returned the next day under a similarly bluebird sky.  Pretty awesome.

Suicide Day Hike

The Suicides were 2 of the 3 mountains we weren't able to hit on our Integration attempt.  Situated next to each other, North and South Suicide look like identical twins from a distance.  I hiked both of them on a sunny summer day.

Looking out at the Chugach from North Suicide.  The amount of terrain Alaska has to offer is constantly staggering.

 Saw these guys as I was hiking back.  They were part of a group of about 10 goats hanging out by some lakes below the Suicides.

 A view of South Suicide from the saddle between the two peaks.  The approach from the saddle was relatively steep, with some fun hand-over-hand scrambling on the climb up.

 Looking back towards Cook Inlet.  The mountains really start to pop when the valley fills in with green.  On my walk back to the car, I probably saw 50 or 75 people headed out to Rabbit Lake (at the base of the Suicides) for the day.  Anchorage had an unusual run of warm sunny weather this summer, and everyone was taking advantage.

Little Swiss

In an effort to round out our snow, ice, and rock skills, the team decided to take a trip out to the Pika Glacier, an area of the Alaska Range known as Little Switzerland.  I'd flown by but never spent time in the area.  As I discovered, it's a worthwhile nickname.

 General glacier travel was one of the objectives of the trip.  In addition to traveling on wide-open glaciers, we spent some time traversing through heavily-cracked areas - great training for the environments we could find ourselves in.

We flew in on these planes from Anchorage to set up a base camp, then took day trips from base camp out to different training areas.

 The Pika descending to the Kahiltna.  The Alaska Range is awesome.

Skinning out for some skiing.  In addition to skiing and glacier travel, we did a good bit of trad rock climbing on the rock in the area.  All around, it was a great spot to do a variety of training all at once.

 Booting up for a steeper section of skiing.  We were a bit late in the season for great pow, but there was plenty of fun corn to harvest.

 Sweet steeper spot.

 The harvest.

 Denali watching us from our base camp.  We had great weather, and the trip was amazing.  As usual, photos do staggering little justice when attempting to convey just how big and beautiful the mountains are.

Winter Trips

Though the snow wasn't great this winter, there were still some good moments, and Jess and I had a chance to get out a couple of times.  We took a quick visit to the front range, skiing out towards Hidden Lake.

 Camped out near the base of Hidden Peak.  The snow was pretty wind scoured, but it was good to be out in the mountains.

 Sun rising over the mountains.

 Jess skinning up towards a run with the Cook Inlet in the background.  There's awesome camping just a 3-hour skin from the city.

Some tracks on the way down.

We took another trip out toward Hatcher Pass on a beautiful almost-spring skiing day.

 Panorama at the top of Thousand Dollar Run.  There were a couple of inches of fresh snow on a pretty good base.  The bluebird day was pretty awesome, too.

 We skied up and around to April Bowl and laid some tracks down a section of April Bowl.  Old avy debris can be seen to skier's left.

Jess skinning up for another run.

Everything was going awesome until this photo.  I happened to snap this at the exact moment that Jess tore the ACL and meniscus in her right knee.  If you look closely in the shadow you can see a white puff of snow - Jess falling.

A month later, Jess had surgery.  Everything went well and 4 months post-surgery, she's been progressing on the road to recovery, jogging lightly, biking, and do some very gentle hiking.  It was a bummer of a way for her ski season to end, but ending on such a nice day has left her motivated to get back out there next spring.

Chilean Relaxin

After a couple of hectic weeks of Iron(wo)man and wedding, Jess and I were fortunate enough to be able to head south for a little while to relax before getting back into full swing in Alaska.  We went primarily to the northern Patagonia region of Chile...it was awesome.

We spent our first day wandering around Santiago checking things out and recovering from the flight before heading on to Coyhaique, the regional hub for northern Patagonia.  It was a pretty cool city.

Just outside of Coyhaique we did some easy hiking, dipping our toes in the mountains to come.

We did most of our traveling on the Carretera Austral, a gravel road running along the spine of Chile's mountains.  Think old-school Alcan highway with more cows and you've got the right idea.

Our first stop on the road trip was this hot springs resort, reached by boat across a sound.  It had three outdoor pools and an indoor pool, and was a nice bit of luxury on the trip.

We took a kayak out into the sound from the hot springs and were treated to an awesome rainbow, one of many on the trip.

After the hot springs we did some hiking in Quelat National Reserve, a rain forest that rises up to glacier, like this one in the distance.

A hike in Quelat was entitled "El Bosque Encantando," or the enchanted forest.  To quote Jess, "I am so enchanted by this forest."

Though this photo doesn't do it justice, this hike ended in a bowl of mountains with waterfalls cascading on all sides.

We spent two days backpacking in Cerro Castillo National Reserve.  Chile was in late spring, so there was still snow in many places, with these amazing spires rising out of the forest.

Adventuring.

A panoramic of our campsite in Cerro Castillo.  The mountain on the right is the eponymous "hill."  They were all impressive.

A view of the ice fields from the road.  Though the picture doesn't accurately represent any of it, the river was an incredibly deep blue, especially contrasted against the glacier.

Our last hike was in the Parque Patagonia.  As usual, the views were spectacular.

Awesome view from the road overlooking the Rio Baker and Patagonian steppe.  Because the road runs parallel to the mountains rather than intersecting them, the views anywhere you drive are awesome, and you're never far from getting out of the truck and doing some great hiking.  It's too much to see in just a week, but we squeezed a good amount in, and had a great time.  Awesome country.

AK Fishing Blowout 2015

I'd put some leave on the calendar to do a halibut charter.  When the Copper River fish numbers started looking good, we decided to make a week of it, heading down to Chitina for salmon dipnetting before the charter.


The Chitina crew.  Fishing started to slow down while we were out there, but we still managed to get 90 salmon between 6 of us.  The weather was hot, too, 80 degrees all day.


After getting back and processing fish until 2 in the morning, we headed down to the Kenai Peninsula.  We stopped for dinner at a friend's parents' house, then were at the beach for a 7am launch from Ninilchik.  The weather was great there, too.

 
We headed across the inlet to the Alaska Peninsula for some clamming, with stellar views of Iliamna and Redoubt in the background.


The clams were plentiful and huge.


We had success on the halibut charter as well.  All told, in a week Jess and I came home with 30 salmon, 70 clams, and about 35 pounds of halibut.  More than enough to be eating fish for the rest of the year.  Alaska's a generous place.