Silver Salmon

I caught these at a local river on my fly that I designed and tied...they loved it

So I went for a run...

Kari had to go to Idaho for the week to be with family for her Grandmas funeral so I was a alone with nobody to play with. Kari said the visit home was great and that she had a wonderful time. On Saturday I decided that I'd go for a run up at Glen Alps to get out of the house, it was a little rainy but that wasn't going to sway me. I needed to go for a 6 miler, but I didn't want to start from the parking lot, so I biked in 2.5 miles and then ran up a valley to pass. When I the GPS dinged 3 miles for the turn around I saw that I was near the pass so I continued on then moved up the ridge which continued until I got to the top which was one of the tallest in the front range of the Chugach at 5200ft. I perched myself on the top and enjoyed watching the clouds roll in and out with completely vertical cliffs on almost all sides of me.

The run turned into a bike ride, a run, a hike, and a climb

I love Alaska, but sure did miss Kari while she was away

Black Lake

This past weekend I really wanted to go for a backpacking trip so I convinced Kari to go on a "short" hike up behind our house...destination Black lake. So I got off work friday afternoon around 4:30pm, we loaded up our packs for a quick overnighter and took off. We decided to get a quick bite before the hike and finaly hit the trailhead around 8:30pm. The hike was supposed to be about 5.5 miles up the valley or 4 miles over a pass. We got to the junction and Kari made the decision to make the ascent up the pass. We pushed along and made it to the pass. Once at the pass the wind and rain began to push a little, but it wasn't bad...yet. As we walked up the "football" field the wind began to increase to the point that we had to lean into it and really focus to not get blown over. Once we reached the second pass the wind was so strong it was hard to breath. We moved through the pracarious scree field and made it down to Black lake, which is a beautiful lake seated below some massive cliffs. We started setting up camp, which was difficult because of the intense wind and rain, I had to use every guyout point. Our little North Face tent kicked butt! It's poles are rated for wind gusts up to 40mph and is water tight, but we really tested the limits of its construction. In the morning the wind relaxed a little so we broke camp and discovered the poles got bent a little (so we got some strong gusts that were >40MPH. Anyhow the hike out was nice...but a little long. Kari is such a good sport to go along with me on these little adventures.

A little hike

I decided to hike Crow Pass with a friend its a 23 or so mile traverse from Girdwood to Eagle River through some of the most impressive mountains of the Chugach Mountains. We started in the morning and finished about 10 hours later. We hiked next to a glacier, crossed a river, and saw a couple of bears. All in all it was a great day.