I love rock gym kitler wall has very cool…read moreclimbs.......................................................

Our kids have been enjoying the Rock Gym for almost a year now. Great facility and up until today,…read moreexcellent service. Our kids had a private 1 hour lesson booked at noon. We showed up at 11:50 and checked in, asked to wait near the front desk for our instructor. 12:00...nothing. 12:05...ask where our instructor is...told the manager will come out and speak to us. 12:15...no instructor, no manager. Neither of the front desk staff could effect a refund for our lesson, or offered an explanation why we didn't have an instructor. I get that things out of our control can arise and complicate the schedule. My concern is that there was no communication about it before we battled Anchorage Sat AM traffic, or during the 25 minutes we waited at the rock gym.

The Begich, Boggs Visitor Center at the Portage Glacier is definitely worth a stop. It doesn't cost…read moreanything extra and has some fun activities for kids, as well as some informative displays for adults. Once you've ridden the Ptarmigan out to Portage Glacier, you will want to go inside and get warmed up anyway, so a stop at the Visitor Center is definitely a good option! I thought the Portage Glacier Cruise was a wonderful experience, especially for being pretty affordable (about $45). We rode around for about an hour and a half and got to glide right up to the face of the glacier. It was beautiful and piercing blue. There were also many small waterfalls all around the lake that were great to look at too as we strode by. It was raining and sleeting when we took the cruise, but we still managed to trod up to the outdoor deck and snap pictures of the glacier up close. The tour guides were very informative and open to questions, and they even let me take home some glacial till that they had extracted as samples! Overall, a great way to spend a half-day. I definitely recommend it if you're near Girdwood.

Stopping in this visitor center was an unexpected delight on a rainy day! It has a mini museum…read morewithin and a really well done video talking about the history of the park. Definitely worth a stop on your visit!

We took the trail in rain. Trail is muddy but walkable. The view is BEAUTIFUL! We would have…read morefinished the trail if we had more time before sunset or if it's a sunny day.

This is a beautiful, scenic 10+ mile round trip hike that ends at two lakes side by side (Eagle…read moreLake and Symphony Lake). The trail is pretty flat, only an 850 ft. gradual elevation gain. If the parking lot gets full, you can park on the road without worry, even though it says not to. Little to no cell service out here so prepare accordingly. Bring bear spray and big spray.

It has a nice overhanging splatter wall, vertical splatter wall, and a crimpy stemmy wall. Plus the…read moreclimbers there are REALLY GOOD, but the pictures were only of them just warming up on the jugs I'm sure.

You've probably seen this peak a million times if you've ever driven up to Palmer…read more It's the second most-notable peak in the area, behind Pioneer (which is sits right next to). The twin peaks vaguely resememble a pint-sized version of the Tetons if you squint your eyes just right. To get to the tops of them, you need to start at Eklutna Lake: https://www.yelp.com/biz/eklutna-lakeside-trail-eklutna Take the trail that goes *away* from the lake, you'll quickly start gaining some elevation. Eventually you'll come to one of the most scenic trail benches in Alaska. Keep going up! The trail will end and you'll see an expanse of tundra in front of the craggy Twin Peaks. You want to go for the one on your right. (if you continue up the "hill" behind you, you'll summit pepper peak, which is a walk-up) You've got two options for summitting East Twin: East Ridge: this is on your (climber's) right. It's got some pretty exposed 4th class terrain and maybe one or two 5th-class moves. The climbing is easy but the consequences of a fall could be dire. (there are a couple spots where a fall might be fatal) Just keep making your way up the ridge, scrambling through the path of least resistance, until you can't anymore. If there is still snow on the ridge, you may need crampons. Main South Gully: this is a garbage chute of loose rock located roughly in the middle of the Twin Peaks massif. It's the descent route for the East Ridge route as well. This is the most common way people take to access the summit. While the movement isn't anywhere near as exposed as the East Ridge, rock fall can be a serious issue. The scree/talus here is very loose. If there are people ahead of you, they could easily knock stuff down on you. In winter/early spring, this gully is filled with snow and is probably more pleasant, however, avalanches would be a very real concern. It took us about 9 hours roundtrip, going up the East Ridge and down the Main South Gully. The views from the summit are incredible. Eklutna Lake and Bold Peak dominate the area and there is also a backside view of Pioneer Peak. On clear days, Denali can easily be seen. You'll also probably see lots of Dall Sheep on the way up/down. Summit post is a great resource for topping out on East Twin: http://www.summitpost.org/east-twin-peak/753392

This peak is accessed from the penguin creek trail:…read morehttps://www.yelp.com/biz/penguin-creek-trail-anchorage Depending on who you ask, it may be considered the most difficult hike in Chugach State Park. It definitely requires lots of off-trail travel and navigation, that's for sure! Here's my trip report from when I summitted it: We left the penguin creek trail shortly after and began our traverse into the hanging valley. We ended up maintaining an elevation of roughly 1400 ft before steadily ascending to 2600 ft to drop down into the hanging valley. This decision was...OK. It wasn't a sufferfest, but it wasn't exactly great. There was definitely some bad snow and some alder-wrangling. The lake of any chlorophyll in any of the foilage made route-finding through it much easier...but there was still ample grunting and rubber-banding-gunning of branches. Rather than take the full ridge up Bird, we decided to go up-valley and then gain the ridge near "Point 4800"/"Point 4840" (I've heard it called both things, and on my map it isn't either of these elevations, anyone know where this name is documented?) Anyway, we started ascending form the valley floor at roughly 60.9989, -149.3137. It was mostly snow climbing on snow of marginal quality. Lower down it was very bad wallowing, so we climbed the rock bands. Eventually the rock bands ended and we were climbing a spine of snow (reminded my of the "hogsback" from my Mt Hood climbing days!). It was straightforward ascending, but extremely bad visibility was a little anxiety-inducing. We were in and out of rolling whiteouts and there was so little contrast my camera couldn't auto-focus, ha! We kept taking the obvious gully up, and eventually were dumped out onto a flattish rock band. From there steep, firm snow climbing to gained the ridge proper. (we didn't put our crampons on for this, but we probably should have) We aggressively side-hilled to avoid going up and over Point 48XX, a decision that didn't end up saving any time. Knife-hard Icy snow slopes peppered sloppy scree fields making travel annoying, unless you're really good at crampon-changing! Eventually we were at a low-point in the ridge, where I found a sneaky route down. I was a line I had heard described in some trip reports at the end of the valley that could take you directly to the summit ridge and probably save a lot of time, if it had snow on it. There was a ton of good-looking snow on it, so I noted it in caltopo (60.9981, -149.2958) for a possible, hot-pizza-at-Moose's Tooth-preserving descent short-cut. What we did next is hard to describe, but sticking to the ridge became difficult so we started side-willing east towards the true summit. Eventually we were on and off of really bad choss that was either dusted with half-melted powder or hardened by rime ice (similar to what Kevin Downie experienced last fall: https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=1524570) . I can see how this would be a fun scramble in the summer, but dodging icy gullies and scraping choss with crampons was not! Abbey found an "easy" icy ramp to the summit area (I thought it was kinda scary), and after front-pointing on some rime, we reached the snow-and-rime dome that is the Bird Peak summit...to absolutely zero views. Vis was probably at 20-30 ft? There was enough visibility for us to scout an easy snow ramp that would take us down from the summit. (Anything to avoid down-climbing the Abbey M0 variation!) Long story short, the snow ramp was also extremely hard snow. It would've protected beautifully with even vertical pickets. We just kept our heads down and slowly front-pointed down it for what seemed like forever. Eventually we got back down to the scree slopes, took the crampons off, and started side-hilling back to the ridge (west). We went right to the descent line I had marked and...it still looked pretty good. I got out and tested it a little and it was just too hard to tell what the quality of the snow would be once we got out on it. I still had some mild anxiety from the summit downclimb and wasn't interested it going down a long slope with that level of firmness (especially with my crappy ultra light crampons, but that's for another time) We talked about it and, with some hesitancy, decided to go down the way we came up. We didn't side-hill Peak 48XX this time, we stayed pretty high, and travel was much faster! We found where we were topped out on the ridge, put our crampons on, and started down-climbing. The first small section was really steep, but eventually we were quickly plunge stepping down the slopes. I decided to go left (south) down a different way than what we came up to make it a pure snow down-climb. Heavy, wet snow in this area made for perfect wet-cement, slow-and-steady glissade conditions. We then trudged through chunky-water-style snow back to our tent, and we quickly saturated our gaitered mountaineering boots. Good day in the hills? Um, kinda?

What a great hike/climb!…read more Depending on who you ask, this is either an extremely difficult hike or a non-technical climb. There is one section where, if you don't have experience rock climbing, you might be pretty sketched out. But, fear not, there are fixed ropes! I'd just caution on not relying on them 100%. I might also recommend wearing a helmet. This climb starts at Eklutna Lake: https://www.yelp.com/biz/eklutna-lakeside-trail-eklutna From there you travel 10.5 miles along the lake to the trailhead. I'd HIGHLY recommend doing this with a mountain bike. I rented one from here (they are open till 10pm!): https://www.yelp.com/biz/downtown-bicycle-rental-sales-and-repair-anchorage?osq=mountain+bike I'm not a good cyclist and it took me about 90 minutes to get to the trailhead. Once there, you go up a densely vegetated trail for about 1.6 miles. It's not quite bush whacking but...in a month or two it probably will be. Eventually you find a creek, take this up into a large, scree-riddled gully. You then ride this gully up to the summit. And it's gorgeous. As you undulate up and down the gully, the canyon narrows and widens, the vegetation changes, creeks wind through it, it's incredible. Eventually you're on the SE face which is a pretty easy scree-scramble to the summit. Views from the summit are incredible. The main thing that makes this hard is the gain: 7,000 ft of it. That's a lot for a Chugach hike. (For comparison, Flattop is about 1,300 ft)

You may not know the name of this mountain but, she knows you…read more.. if you've driven through the Arm more than a couple times, you've definitely seen it. If you're driving back into Anchorage, it's visible as you're approaching the small village of "Indian" (home to one of the best restaurants in the state: Froth & Forage, https://www.yelp.com/biz/froth-and-forage-coffeehouse-and-eatery-anchorage) It's flanked by two official trails: Falls Creek Trail: on the "Anchorage side" (west) https://www.yelp.com/biz/falls-creek-trail-anchorage Indian Valley Trail: on the "Indian, AK side" (east) https://www.yelp.com/biz/indian-valley-trail-anchorage The trail that goes up to Indianhouse is not an "official trail". Because of this, I was always leery about climbing Indianhouse Mountain. I'm not super-thrilled about bushwhacking, and I thought getting to the mountain proper would require a ton of it. Oh, how wrong I was! The trail that goes up here is actually shockingly well maintained. No 'schwacking at all! It is, however, incredibly steep. Probably steepest trail I've been on in the Chugach State Park area (maybe that's why it's not "official"). Anyway, for the first (steep) mile, it's a very steep hike. You'll eventually top out on nice, wide prairie-like area. From here, casual hikers should probably turn around. You'll know you're at the turnaround point because the trail will start to become faint and eventually disappear into a ridge that leads to the much larger ridge of Indianhouse Mountain. To summit Indianhouse, DO NOT ride this ridge up to ridge of Indianhouse and then try to take that to the summit! This is a tempting move to make but the rock that lies ahead for you is of very poor quality and the moves are very much 5th-class! (e.g. you'll need a rope) Go partially up the ridge, but, before you connect with the summit ridge traverse right. And keep traversing right. This...can be kinda bushwhacky, but you're largely on tundra (and/or garbage snow). I'd say this is probably the crux of the hike/climb. You're looking for a large couloir (narrow gully) that leads up to the summit. It usually has snow in it until later in the summer. You might want to bring an ice axe and crampons or, at the very least, a trekking pole and some microspikes. The summit is exposed and complex, with incredible views in all directions. Views of the nearby Suicide Peaks are one-of-a-kind!

To climb this mountain, you gotta start at the South Fork Eagle River Trail:…read morehttps://www.yelp.com/biz/south-fork-eagle-river-trail-anchorage Once you get to the lakes, you go climber's left and skirt the south flanks of Eagle Lake. This takes you into a peaceful valley area with multiple small streams criss-crossing over riverbed pebbles. You keep riding this valley up and trending left till you reach the south face of Eagle Peak, then the climbing begins. I chose to do this peak in non-ideal weather because I'm tired of all the rain and overcast weather in Anchorage...instead of putzing around online being butthurt that it wasn't "climbing weather", I decided to just go. Eagle Peak is about 22ish miles R/T. Most of it is pretty flat until the very end. Trailhead is at 2,000 ft. Summit is at ~6,900 ft. The mileage is what really makes doing it in a single day a doozy. It's a class 2/3 hike (a "scramble") in the summer, allegedly. That's not how I would've characterized it on Sunday (5/20). The south face was a mess of wet crusty, ball-busting snow and frosted, verglass-glazed rocks. I roughly followed the beta from summitpost and peakbagger, making my own adjustments for the wintery conditions. Despite it being cloudy and windy, snow/rain was only occasionally falling down. And temps were pretty warm for the most part. I never even had to get out my belay jacket. My feet though, were soaked. Even with gaiters, the wet snow was building up in and around them, and in my boots. I did something I never do anymore: I took a second pair of socks because I heard the approach can get wet (thanks to low flow on the streams and snow bridges, it wasn't!) I ended up using them anyway because my mountaineering boots were filled with water. I took a small iceaxe (the old, short hammer-design of the Petzl Sum'tec) and a whipper. I used the whippet for 99% of the ascent. I got the axe out for a short, very steep constriction that was filled with some water ice. However, the water ice was too rotten to trust (at least for someone of my risk tolerance), so I ended up down-climbing and finding another way around, and up. I took aluminum crampons because of all the mileage, they worked fine. Even with tons of clouds, gusts of wind, and scattered rain/snow showers...the summit was a sight to behold! Well worth the effort. I'm glad I got to scale it while it still has a snowy coat!

We decided on a last minute helicopter tour to land on a glacier. Our experience with Alpine Air…read morewas extremely smooth. After a quick safety overview, my 11 year old son and I were on our way in a private helicopter! The sites were amazing. Our pilot was experienced and had great control. We were able to spot some wildlife too! The glacier experience was amazing once in a lifetime thing. Highly recommended!

This was a great way to kickstart my adventure in Alaska! Lots of first just in the tour for sure…read more I got the dog sledding tour, which was so awesome! After gearing up, you get ready to ride on a helicopter to punch bowl glacier. The ride was so cool (one of my firsts)! If you've never been in a helicopter, it's an amazing way to sightsee since the viewing angle is way less restrictive than any other aircraft. The maneuverability can make it similar to a thrill ride! Once up there, while waiting to get set up or waiting for others before me to go on their tour, the staff introduces you to their vast arrays of dogs that were born and bred to be sled dogs. Love it or hate it, the dogs seem happy and seem well taken care of. It was amazing to see the 7 puppies that were 8 weeks old and teething. It's hard to not smile when they start chewing on the boots provided by the company. Lastly the piece de resistance is the actual ride. It was very fun and enjoyable being able ride in the sleds with dogs pulling you. They can go pretty fast and the mushers go into the history of dog sledding. Overall, it was a fun experience and a great way for people to enjoy a unique adventure!