It's a winner!…read more Alaska has so much spectacular scenery. It's everywhere you look, and this trail takes the prize for most stunning. Seriously. It looks, feels, and smells really nice. The only downside is that it's popular, so don't expect a quiet, solitary time. There are lots of people on this path, but at least it will keep the bears and moose away! ha

Winner, winner, chicken dinner! One of my favorite "easy hikes." The city of Girdwood is…read moreenchanting. I'm in my very own version of Beauty and the Beast whenever I'm adventuring in the area. I was grateful to have been able to experience this trail in its entirety, prior to an accidental death, and the ultimate closing of the hand tram. You can start this hike at the Alyeska Hotel (more popular) or at Crow Creek Mine (less popular). From Crow Creek Mine to the gorge it's about 1 mile. With the hand tram closed, theres no safe way to cross the gorge. From the Alyeska Hotel to the gorge, it's about 2 miles. I'd recommend starting from the hotel for a longer hike. That side also has many natural staircases, unique bridges/water sights, basically, the best photo opps. When in season, this trail offers lots of berry, mushroom, and other foraging opportunities. Highly recommend.

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.

This one is short (maybe 2 miles, one way) and steep (over 4,000 ft of gain!)...even more so than…read morenearby (and more crowded) Bird Ridge. The turnoff to this trial is easy to miss, it's not well-marked unlike many other hikes on the arm. Around Milepost 101 on the Seward Hwy, look for "Konikson Road" and turn left on it (if coming from Anchorage). In less than a mile it dead ends. Now start hiking up the road. In 10-15 minutes you'll see a sign on your right that says "Penguin Ridge Trail". This trail is pretty much an avalanche gully that keeps going straight up. It retains snow well into spring. Eventually, you exit the gully and the views of Turnagain Arm and Bird Ridge start to open up. If you see the microwave tower, you're getting close. From the tower, it's a scramble up to the summit (longer than it looks) with great views of the Penguin Ridge (which keeps on going, all the way to Girdwood!) and Penguin Lake. About 1/2 a mile away there is a sumit slightly taller, this isn't the "true" summit of Penguin, but rather "King Point". In winter, the avalanche danger here is tremendous. In spring, you'll definitely want to have some sort of foot traction (microspikes or crampons) and some sort of support (pole or ice axe). In summer, you'll just need some sturdy shoes and some grit!

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?

Paddled Spencer Glacier with Chugach adventures in early June. We travelled by train to get there…read more Then by bus to the beach. They pretty much have thought of everything! All you need to do is paddle and bring a water bottle! They bring snacks, and homemade lunches that were amazing with homemade bread!! The view when you come around the corner is jaw dropping!! The staff were amazing and very personable!! We traveled by train for the second half of our journey to view multiple glaciers and animal sightings!! Moose, eagles, bear. There's an opportunity to get off the train and complete a short hike. This trip was the most expensive that we did, but we would do it again!!

Our group did the Glacier Blue Kayak and Grandview Tour which started with a trainride from…read moreGirdwood to Spencer Glacier. Then we had a quick kayak lesson, then paddled across the water to get up close to the glacier. Once we walked up close to admire the view, we did a meaningful meditation, took some pictures, then headed down for lunch. The box lunch was plentiful and fresh. Just enough to keep us satisfied as the train went up to Grandview to see a few more glaciers and some waterfalls that you can't get to by road. All in all, Ryan and Caroline provided us with a safe and fun day that was unforgettable. Definitely the highlight of our time in Alaska.

This is a the perfect course for beginners and amature practice. Open areas and wooded areas.read more

We enjoyed a wonderful morning out on the Matanuska Glacier with Nova and would definitely…read morerecommend them! Our guide was very knowledgeable and gave us lots of information about this and other glaciers as he safely got us up close to experience all its different features, all while being humorous, fun, and a great photographer. Loved this experience!

Carsen was a great guide on our glacier tour. She was very…read morethorough, had a great personality and we enjoyed visiting with her while we experienced this incredible glacier. Took our 3 daughters and we had a great time. Very cool experience.

In the summer, this is a fun (kind of long) summit scramble…read more In the winter: use EXTREME CAUTION and bring crampons/ice axe. I took a nasty fall here, after deciding to turn around when my microspikes weren't getting much purchase on the ridge (I climbed it in early fall, I'd been up a neighboring peak "The Ramp" a week earlier and the snow as not at all icy...which is why I didn't bring "real" crampons for this. Big mistake.). 5 minutes later one of my feet started to slip, and next thing I know I was summersaulting down the slope, unable to stop. I dug my ice axe (more precisely, my whippet) into the slope and it couldn't stop me. I eventually lost it. I can to a stop some 500 ft down the south side of the mountain. I had one microspike. I tried to self-rescue, but my injuries and only one spike, and no axe meant I was moving at about 100 ft/hr. With 5% battery left, I called 9-1-1. My phone died talking to the sheriff. 2 hours later, I heard a helicopter overhead and was pulled of the mountain. I was sure I had cracked multiple ribs, but after I was examined and scanned: I did not sustain any major injuries. Physically, I\'m better now. Mentally, snowy slopes kind of freak me out...in a way they never did before. Anyway, do it in the summer, when it's dry and it's warm and the days are long. You start at the Powerline Pass trail: https://www.yelp.com/biz/powerline-pass-trail-anchorage It's about 6 miles to the base of the mountain. You can make it much more fun (and quick) if you bring a mountain or fat bike.