We went here to do a little hiking and to check out the waterfall. The trail to the waterfall was…read morepretty good, but a bit close to the edge in 1 or 2 places. The waterfall itself was impressive. I really felt the power of it, being so close to it. I did not see any wildlife on the trail other than a few ducks in the stream. I would recommend this trail.

Like some other trails in Anchorage (Ram Valley, McHugh Peak) the legality of this trail probably…read morevaries depending on who you ask. I'm pretty sure it is legal, but you have to follow the rules: - obey any and all private property signs: while the waterfall itself is probably public land, there is lots of land around it that is not. - DO NOT park directly at the end of this cul-de-sac. You will probably get towed. Pull forward until you stop seeing all the no parking signage. Got it? OK. So there are two ways to get to the falls. If one were walking up the creek (against the flow) I'm going to describe them as viewer's left and viewer's right. Both ways start by walking down a road with a locked gate. If you hear a big Great Pyrenees barking at you, you're probably in the right spot. Folks describing this as a "trail" confused me and I ended up doing some minor bushwhacking on this completely easy and mundane trail. In a very short amount of time, you'll come to a sturdy bridge. This is where the paths diverge. 1) To get to the viewpoint: continue across this bridge. In maybe 100-200ft you'll see a sign saying "Barbara Falls" with an arrow pointing right. Go right. You're still on a very wide road that you could drive a truck on. Following this uphill, veering right-ward at any junctions. This will take you to the viewpoint with guard rails. With a 50mm-ish lens (the "zoomed in lens" on most modern phones), you can get pretty decent shots of the falls. If you want to get closer, you can go around the guard rails and climb down. BE EXTREMELY careful and take it slow. This terrain is really slippery and pretty steep, a fall would not be good. This view isn't that great for more "serious" (on a tripod) photography though. Why? Because the wind is constantly blowing mist off of the falls and to this point. 2) To get to the "right" side of the falls: BEFORE the sturdy bridge, look for a FOOT PATH (NOT a big, truck-wide road) on your right. It starts almost exactly where the bridge begins (see my photos). Fall foliage may make it hard to find. It hugs the creek pretty closely the entire way. This is the best spot for photography. It takes you to a pretty big area where you can safely explore the falls at their base...without any sketchy down-climbing. Wide-angle lenses work great down here, this is a very photogenic falls. In the "Fall" (*groan*) there are lots of nice autumnal colors here. Have fun and obey the rules so that others may do the same in the future!

Man, how am I just now getting around to hiking this?!…read more Falls Creek is located at ~Mile Post 105.6 on the Seward Highway. In relation to other trails: To the West: Rainbow Trailhead (https://www.yelp.com/biz/rainbow-trailhead-anchorage) To the East: Indian Valley Trailhead (https://www.yelp.com/biz/indian-valley-trail-anchorage) Stats: Mileage: 2.7 (one-way) Gain: 2,900 ft About a 1,000 ft/mile, steep but not *too* steep. The trail starts out...next to a falls! It closely follows Falls Creek for the first half of its length. As the water is loud and the brush is thick, I'd highly recommend doing some trail karaoke with your friends to make sure you alert any bears in the area that you're coming. Eventually, you get out of the brush and the valley expands. It's gorgeous. It's wide and it's bright-freakin'-green (my favorite shade of that color), or at least it was in mid-June. This is going to sound odd but, it actually reminded me of some of the valleys I hiked in Hawaii! It made me a little butthurt that I am only just-now getting around to hiking the trail. The trail ends at a lake. I'm not sure what the name of it is, so I'll just call it "Falls Lake". The lake frequently has snow on/in/around it, up until July. But, there is an ample amount of vegetated, snow-free flat area around the lake, this would be a perfect "Baby's First Backpacking" trip. (no permits required, just load yourself down and hike up) You can continue up past the lake, onto the ridge between South Suicide Peak and Indianhouse Mountain. The path will quickly change from "hiking" to "scrambling" though. I'd only recommend going up South Suicide if you are confident on your feet, and I'd only recommend going up Indianhouse if you have a rope and a partner! If you're quick enough, this can be done as an after-work hike. If you're slow or looking for a casual stroll, you can easily make a day of this hike.

I'm still sore. Dragged my spouse and our neurodivergent son with me to do this hike on a sunny…read moreSeptember Saturday. We parked at 1pm (parking lot was packed). Got back to the parking lot after 5pm. You'll need most of your day to do this hike if you're not a professional. This hike is beautiful but it is challenging for sure. You are going uphill the entire time. On the way down it's so steep you're jamming your toes trying not to fall. We did the bulk of this hike with nothing but backpacks full of snacks hahaha. Everyone that passed us up or down had poles, guns, bear spray, bells, dogs, the whole enchilada. I don't recommend hiking this area the way we did, we just got lucky :) It was a beautiful day and we were never alone for longer than 15-20min at a time. Weather was perfect, it was sunny and warm but the breeze was breezin'. The falls are a sight to see and made this strenuous hike completely worth it for my water-loving son. I can't wait to return soon and make it further.

COVID-19 update: The…read moreEagle River Nature Center(ERNC) is closed. Its trails: are not. You can still park at the ERNC, you just can't go inside. As of 4/5/2020: Trail was hardpacked (no post-holing!) to Echo Bend. (about 4ish miles in, one way) Great views and blue skies were plentiful. There was barely anyone past 1 mile in. (still, bring a mask, it's impossible to get 6ft away from other people on the trail) Yurts/campgrounds were still open! (this was shocking to us) For more general trail details, see my previous review.

I don't know if bittersweet is the right word but, this is one of the most scenic zones in the park…read moreand access issues are fraught. It reminds me of when I lived in the PacNW and would read about access into the Picket range of the North Cascades. There would often be 3 approaches listed, all painful, all for different reasons. For Rumble, it goes something like this: 1. Hike in about 20ish miles on Peter's Creek Trail 2. Go up and over a steep, off-trail mountain pass of questionable quality and feasibility from Eagle River Nature center. 3. Luck out and get access from a private property owner bordering the park boundary. Optionally, I've heard a decent access area might be the pass behind The Watchman (I took photos of it while I was on the summit). Anyway, I lucked out and was able to do option #3. My hope is that @mountaineering can secure legal and efficient access before I finish the 120. As I crested up over into the valley, I was bloom away by the serenity of it all. It's a magical place. I anxiously scanned for bears (I've had some encounters that were a little too close for comfort in this area...maybe they are hanging out here more now that there are less people) and started hiking up the valley. I road the tundra-cuts and consolidated snow all the way to Bombardment Pass. I was debating if I should camp at the pass or carry my overnight gear down into the (next) valley. I decided to split the difference and camp at a pretty lake about halfway down. I slept for exactly 8 hours and woke up to Rumble completely obscured from my tent. I attempted to snooze another hour but sleep wouldn't come back. The series of sheep trails winding down the pass into the valley are magic. The grade is perfectly gentle. It made me feel "fast" even though I very much am not. Finding a spot to cross the creek to keep my precious princess feet dry was initially a challenge. But I just kept following the creek uphill until I found a sturdy snow bridge. This whole area (Peter's Creek Valley?) is even more scenic than Ram Valley. It's got bright green hills of sod rolling down off the craggy peaks, dotted with massive boulders that almost resemble stonehenge. I made my way up into the long gully of Rumble and it didn't look as intimidating as I was expecting. It looked boring. A long slope of scree with old snow tongues on climber's right. Towards the end, things do get tricky. The gully funnels into a tight corridor that ends in a drop. There are probably a couple ways to scramble up. I went up some wet fourth class climber's right. It wasn't too bad but eventually I had to traverse across a very short but very scary snow tongue. it was maybe only 10 ft wide but the top was bullet-hard and 5 ft below it, where my feet were, was loose sugar. I didn't realize it till I was halfway across, so booted a platform so I could have a decent stance. I awkwardly took my pack off and more awkwardly put my aluminium crampons on. The snow was so hard that I could probably only get 4 inches of my ice axe shaft into it, but the crampons really helped I was able to take a wide step onto the wet choss on the other side. Looking back at this snow feature, I felt ridiculous. It looks so easy, why was I so flummoxed? Once above that it was just fun, choose-your-own-adventure, snow and rock ramps that were no harder than 3rd class. In classic mountaineering style, as soon as I got into the ridgeline, the sweltering sun subsided and clouds covered the south-side of the mountain. I drank a pint of my luck beer "'Scend"(it's 2/2 so far) on the summit and took in the great views of Thunderbird to Bellicose and everything inbetween. I saw a pile of rocks where the's usually a summit register, but I couldn't find one. I saw that Caltopo/Gaia/Peakbagger/OSM have the true summit marked further down the ridge so I walked over there just in case. (just eyeballing it, I don't think it's taller) I took a summit selfie, summit pano, checked-in with my emergency contacts/family (had 2 bars of LTE on Verizon on top, the only place with any signal on the trip, save Bombardment Pass) The hike out was gorgeous with light coming over the pass and shading the layered golf courses of Peter's Creek Valley various bright and shiny shades of green. Coming back to a ready-made tent with no chores (other than delicious rehydration) is really something special. Hike out was largely uneventful, save for the fact that I got my first unobstructed view of the entire massiveness that is Rumble.

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!

Easy trail for most. This is a good trail for anyone visiting town there are two paths the front…read moreside and the back. I feel the back is easier but honestly not sure. I say it's easier as it's just more stairs. The front also has some but more just ups vs switch backs. *** not a hiker so terms are probably wrong. Great views and photo spots up the trail and top!!

For easy trail walk composing of multiple trails, for a scenic overlook above Anchorage, for the…read moreopportunity to try wild crowberries (be very careful...many similar looking berries are poisonous!), get yourself to Flat Top Mountain! And what a great orientation to Anchorage, Alaska. To get there you will need to drive through residential area with some of the prettiest homes. You may even want to move into one of them!

Quick easy hike to see a gorgeous waterfall! Talks about 5 minutes to see it. Public street parking.read more

Our hike to Virgin Creek Falls couldn't have gone better. It was a nice short hike through a…read morebeautiful forest. Many of the trees had moss on them and there were a number of ferns around. We probably got to the falls after about 5 minutes and they were beautiful! Great hike and our 6 year old could handle it. In some places the trail is a bit close to the ledge, but as long as you're paying attention you shouldn't have any problems. Definitely recommend this hike.

I'd done some research on short trails near Anchorage and it was a toss up between this and…read moreThunderbird Falls. Having read reviews of both, I decided on Barbara Falls based on trail reports and its relative proximity to the Eagle River Nature area, my other morning destination. Parking is on Ken Logan Circle but is limited and has some areas posted for No Parking. The property surrounding the trailhead is private so stay on trail and be respectful of the residents. We ended up being the first people on trail around 10 am and as we left around 11:15, it was filling up. There are two ways to the falls. One is to cross the bridge and head up to an upper viewing deck. Then you can double back, cross the bridge as if you're going down to the lot and to your left there are a few rock stairs that lead you along the river and fantastic views of the lower falls. It's about 1.5 miles total if you do both short trails. On the lower trails, especially (but really all through the hike) make noise and carry bear spray. The lower trail has some denser brush and is a narrow path where you could surprise wildlife if not making yourself known. All in all, a great first hike in Alaska!

This is the perfect trail for a family! People of all ages can come. It's super short with an easy,…read moreflat dirt path. We saw senior citizens, kids, dogs, etc. all comfortably share this path. I took my husband and parents who are in their 60s to this trail. My parents aren't too fond of when I take them on what they call "too crazy of an adventure," but this trail they handled just fine. It only took 55 minutes to drive from Anchorage to the trail head. And you get to drive the beautiful scenic Seward Highway. That itself already made the trip worth it. The trail is only 1.4 miles one way. There are no river crossings or switch backs. It's just out and back. It's a pretty sunny walk, so bring a hat/sunscreen. At the endpoint, you get a nice view of the Byron Glacier. Apparently you can even sometimes visit ice tunnels. Those weren't available when we went because an avalanche reportedly happened the week prior. But it was still definitely worth the trip. If you take your time to enjoy the walk and glacier, the "hike" takes about 3-4 hours.

Absolutely stunning trail! Very friendly to all ages and all levels of athleticism. I've hiked out…read morethere with people as young as 3 and as old as 70-something! It takes about 10 or 15 minutes to walk out there if you're going at a relaxed/moderate pace. PLEASE be careful around the snow and be VERY aware that the ice above the river is often very thin! You'll see other footprints over it, but you are NOT supposed to walk on it, especially on the parts above the river! The water is eroding it from the inside out and one wrong footstep could send you falling 20ft into an ice cavern :( You can have just as much fun here without risking your life!! I always wear bug spray here, but I've seen only a few bugs. Don't drink the water unless you have a filter with you. If you're driving in from Anchorage, the Alaska Wildfire Conservation Center is directly on the route and definitely worth stopping at!

This is a great place to work or Volunteer…read more Since first opening our doors in 1988, Covenant House Alaska has served as a safe refuge for thousands of youth escaping the often unforgiving streets of Alaska. Over the years, our services have grown and our programs have expanded, but we've never lost sight of our primary mission: to provide loving care and vital services to homeless, abandoned, abused and exploited young people in Alaska. At Covenant House Alaska, our commitment to youth in crisis is in effect 24/7/365. Our wide array of programs and services not only meets the basic living needs of kids at this critical time in their lives, but also provides them with support; genuine help that facilitates their journey to becoming healthy, self-sufficient, contributing members of our community. Check them out to see more at https://ak.covenanthouse.org/ The 5 basic principles at Covenant House are Immediacy :Homeless kids come to Covenant House in crisis. Immediately and without question, we meet their basic human needs - a nourishing meal, a shower, clean clothes, medical attention, and a safe place away from the dangers of the street. Sanctuary: Homeless kids arriving at our door are often frightened and mistrustful. Young men and women can grow only when they feel safe and secure - Covenant House protects them from the perils of the street and offers that important sense of security. Value Communication: Lying, cheating, and stealing are common survival tools on the street. Covenant House teaches by example that caring relationships are based on trust, respect, and honesty. Structure: Homeless kids never know how they will get their next meal or where they will sleep. Covenant House provides the stability and structure necessary to build a positive future. Choice: Young people often feel powerless to control their lives and fall into a self-defeating cycle of failure. Covenant House fosters confidence, encouraging young people to believe in themselves and make smart choices for their lives. This place is great you should go by and get a tour.

From the owner: Covenant House is a privately funded, nonprofit agency that provides shelter, food, clothing and…read moreimmediate crisis care services to homeless and runaway youths. It operates various facilities in more than 20 cities throughout the United States, Canada, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. The organization provides a variety of services, including medical care, advocacy, substance and drug abuse treatment, and educational and vocational programs. It also provides prevention and recreational programs, legal aid services, mother and child care, transitional living, life skills training and street outreach education. Covenant House offers a range of health services, including medical, psychological, psychiatric, optometric and dental care. It has one of its locations in Anchorage, Alaska.