hiking

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gold ridge

January 12, 2012 in alaska, brian, hiking, summer | 6 comments

Poor Micah is home today with a very awful stomach thing. We had a pretty eventful evening when he suddenly threw up (all over me) and then (seriously) about 30 more times throughout the night.  Poor guy.  Today will be a restful day inside with some chicken soup simmering. Just as well as the wind is tearing through the treetops and the rain continues to beat out the snow.

I think the winter is finally messing with my body and I am just really ready for spring… and I know it’s too early to be feeling this way.  We could still have another five months of this. So… thinking about happy things!  Like this date hike Brian and I took on Gold Ridge last July, just the two of us. We had a few hours’ window in the evening so we took the Mount Robert’s Tram up to shave a few miles off the trek.  We had the best time and it was an incredibly beautiful night (night!). Oh to feel that warm sun again.

I have serious vertigo being up this high. The cliff on the right side of the photo goes straight down to the basin… Not my favorite part of the hike, but exhilarating once it’s over. 

One of the many marmots we saw (and heard). They’re talkative little fellows.

Snow in July… funny now that it seemed like such a novelty then!

Looking back toward the Juneau Ice Fields.

 I have to give Brian major props… he just had a huge career accomplishment after working incredibly hard for years. He makes a girl proud.
I knew 2012 was going to be a good year.

lena point sunset

June 4, 2011 in hiking, summer, sunsets, wildlife | 6 comments

We took a walk out to Lena Point with friends on Wednesday evening. It’s one of our favorite shorter jaunts through the woods (perfect for the kids at the end of the day). The trail ends at one of the most beautiful spots in town: a small grassy haven perched high on an oceanside cliff with a fabulous panoramic view.  An ideal spot to enjoy the last golden bits of sun twisting, exploding, then disappearing off the ocean below.

The wildflowers were popping all over. Chocolate lilies, wild geraniums, dwarf dogwoods and many others.

I always get a little nervous having the kids up there, but luckily they are more drawn to climbing trees in the woods for the most part.

I don’t think white wine was ever so delicious.

On the drive out to the trailhead, we came upon this happy fella, who was undoubtedly in a state of bliss, enjoying his colorful evening snack. He would come up with mouthfuls of dandelions hanging from his chompers. He seemed charming and harmlessly huggable… good thing we knew better.  On our walk back through the woods, we had a more alarming bear encounter when a new cub ran right in between Micah, who had run ahead, and Brian. The mama was nowhere to be seen… and who knows from where she was watching us. I don’t like when that happens!

(Notably, the bears here seem to be highly active this year–there have been more bear sightings among our friends than I can ever remember before. I hope the forest is feeding them well.)

observation of the week

April 29, 2011 in harbors, hiking, spring | 6 comments


It’s amazing how one warm spring week can erase the memory of many months of a cold, dark winter.

april

April 2, 2011 in hiking, spring | 8 comments

I don’t know what happened, but I somehow took a few weeks off of this space.  It wasn’t intentional, but just kind of happened, as things do. And somewhere along the way, spring arrived! We still have patches of snow, and it is not all warm and sunny all the time… but it’s good. The world is slowly waking up. Bear sightings are happening, the pussy willows are popping out, we’ve been taking our gloves off to tidepool, and we are getting out on longer walks in the woods with the kids.

There’s no rhyme or reason to the photos here, other than a few brief captures of moments caught on film this last month.

Took the kids skiing and snowshoeing out at the Spring Equinox Jamboree.

Spent a very warm and sunny day at Sandy Beach, listening to the giant Taku Wind Chime installation.

Mighty loves to find me these “booba stasher shells”. He thinks he’s hilarious.
So do I.

Bird’s hair was the same exact color as spring at Sandy Beach.

Mighty listening to the ocean in a tiny shell. He said it was really quiet.

Our first nice, short spring hike out to Lena Point. My dad called this trail Vietnam when I took him out there–but there are new stairs that make the ups and downs really easy now. The kids were all the way out there in no time flat. I think this will be an easy summer walk for them now.

one spring day in january

January 7, 2011 in exploring nature, hiking, little bird | 18 comments

Today kind of blew my socks off. Sunny. Warm (relatively speaking). And my best girl to walk with me. Now it is 3:30 and the sun is setting outside my living room window, bouncing shades of purple off the snowy mountains onto my white walls and shooting hot pink cloud ribbons through the sky. Now that the darkness is settling in, I can come inside and change my tune to dinner prep… fajitas. Gotta make some corn tortillas.

Somebody didn’t want to walk anymore, sunny or not.

historic trail

November 23, 2010 in alaska, hiking, juneau | 6 comments

I’m suffering from an incredibly annoying and terrible head cold, so bear with me as I go off on yet more geeky history stuff. I’ve been stuck in the house for days, which seem like weeks at this point. Today at least the snow is falling peacefully outside. I forgot how beautiful snow is. It would be a great time to revisit learning how to knit, but instead I am trying to snap out of my haze and focus on a final project for school. You see, I’m taking a class on Museums and Archives and it’s got me digging into the vault over local history. Much fun for my nerdy side, but not so great while sick and tending to the normal day-to-day, plus all of the holiday craziness.

We recently took a walk over on Douglas Island on the historic Treadwell Mine Trail. At one time, this was the largest gold mine in the world. There’s over 100 years of history living in these woods. We used to live near the old mine and I always found this area to be overwhelmingly haunting. Thoughts of miners who sat on familiar beach rocks, dreaming of families they might have left behind to follow the Gold Rush. I get a chill when I’m there. Regardless, there are fascinating relics to explore: some obvious structure skeletons, other small treasures buried in the sand or overgrown by the forest. It’s really quite amazing at how much stuff has managed to survive out there in the brutal Alaskan weather for so long.

The old Treadwell Mine office building (here’s what it used to look like)

The trail runs for miles, but this particular area is in the woods right behind “Sandy” Beach. The sand is made from mine tailings and it’s full of beautiful blue clay that makes the old potter in me want to get out my shovel.

The beach is littered with pottery shards, bricks and rusty meal objects. This trip, I even found an old leather shoe heal. I never take anything home; it just doesn’t seem right after it’s been there for so long.

Ok, I’m done with my historical ramblings. Thanks for the patience!

I have lots of ideas for Christmas goodies that I want to get started on. We typically get our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving–which is THIS weekend! Totally crept up on me. Time to deck the halls! But first, I must get well and get cooking for our Thanksgiving feast. When I was in kindergarten, I was quoted in the local paper saying, “I love Thanksgiving because I love turkey!” and not much has changed.

Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving.

windfall lake adventure

October 11, 2010 in alaska, camping, friends, hiking, weekends | 9 comments

Over the weekend, we hiked out to a Forest Service cabin in the woods with two other families. It was a pretty ambitious adventure for six adults and six kids, most of them under five; but the efforts were abundantly rewarded.

When I woke up Friday morning, the skies were black. It was pouring and the winds were powerful. I laid in bed, wishing we had a good reason to cancel (inclement weather is not reason enough in Alaska). Instead, we hustled to pack up our gear and food, plowed on out-the-road to the Windfall Lake trailhead…. and amazingly, there was a gorgeous break in the weather. Off came the rain gear for the hike in!

A lot of the trail is planked to avoid the boggy mud pits. It was a super nice walk, despite the burdensome packs. Sadie was on the hunt for porcupines but managed to avoid getting quilled when she found one… how she managed that, I’ll never know.

Seeing the .2 mile sign was a very welcome sight for us all! Three and a half miles doesn’t seem like that long, until you hike it with gear and six kids in tow!  Let me tell you, that bag of DumDums was the best motivator we could have brought. Tired kids? Here, you can have a lollipop when you make it to the next mile marker!

The boys did a little fishing, the girls did a little chatting, the kids just had fun running and being free. The cabin came with its own canoe, though we didn’t get to use it (Well, some of us… ahem. What happens in the canoe, stays in the canoe, especially if you sink it to the bottom of the lake. Don’t worry Juneau people, it’s back).

We had a wonderful evening around the campfire, telling stories and drinking wine-in-a-box from our enameled mugs. It’s up in the air if those were the northern lights we saw, the clouds moving over the alpenglow, or maybe light from town. If we had a compass, maybe we could have figured that last one out.

Is there anything better than camp coffee? Not for me. And my friend Jessy makes a mean campstove breakfast with fajita-hot dog flavored eggs (and she carries a cast iron frying pan with her on hikes). All this while being newly pregnant and feeling pretty awful. She pretty much is awesome.

And thank God for that morning lift because once again, the weather was terrible. We stayed inside loafing around, trying to teach tic-tac-toe to the kids and telling more tales. We probably would have stayed like that all day if the next batch of hikers hadn’t come to claim the cabin for the night. Guess what though? The weather cleared again for our hike out. Kind of amazing. We packed up, did some more fishing (in which J caught his first cutthroat trout), and went back on our merry way to town.

A lazy evening at home was had by all that night.

herbert glacier trail

September 21, 2010 in alaska, family, hiking, weekends, wildlife | 9 comments

It’s been sunny and warm here for so many days now that I can’t remember the last time it rained. It’s very, very unusual for September to be this nice here in our rainy town. Very unusual. Brian and I were talking about how wonderful it is–but at the same time, I’m reading all these articles about the climate in Fairbanks changing drastically over the next decades and the arctic sea ice melting, forcing all the walrus to come ashore by the tens of thousands… makes me wonder. I am trying to put my ponderings aside though and enjoy it for what it is: a blissful, colorful, normal fall (anywhere but here).

On Saturday, we took a bike ride on an incredible trail out-the-road. The Herbert Glacier Trail runs four miles along the Herbert River until you come to a wide, sandy valley surrounded by bright cottonwoods, their frisky yellow leaves glittering in the wind. Then there was the glacier. Sigh… I love living in a place where you can walk into the wilderness along a river and come face-to-face with an ancient glacier in a beautiful valley. It was so perfectly autumn-y that I could almost smell cinnamon wafting in the air.

The only other time I had done this trail was in the winter, through deep snow. We turned around before we got to the glacier because it was too cold and treacherous. The trail was easily conquered this time, with Brian pulling Mighty in the bike trailer, Bird riding in the child seat on my bike, and J riding solo.

We had much fun lounging on the giant glacier-worn rocks along the river. The afternoon shadows became our entertainment and we added to the collection of rock cairns that line the riverbanks.

The evidence of big bears was all around us. We found a lot of scat, most of it laden with highbush cranberries (hey, I was happy to see that they’d prefer berries over me). I can’t believe I’m posting a picture, but it’s kind of interesting… right?

Since I can’t leave you with a photo of bear poop, here’s a trippy shot that Brian took of me and the littles when we were downtown Friday evening. Tomorrow is my birthday! I’m mostly just looking forward to the cake.

cropley lake

July 26, 2010 in family, friends, hiking | 10 comments

It was my brilliant idea to take my family and some friends up the Cropley Lake Trail yesterday. It’s a trail I’ve been wanting to do for awhile… my trail guide book says that it is 1.5 miles with only a 550 foot elevation gain. No biggie. I guess I should have paid attention to the part that said “the trail has not been maintained”.

Think Vietnam, as in the trail hasn’t been hiked by anyone since the war; and that it was very suggestive of what I imagine hiking through the wet, muddy jungle, climbing over falling trees and forging streams, would have been like. We were all soaked and muddy from the knees down from trudging through the mud, and soaked everywhere else from falling a whole lot.

Despite the nearly nonexistent trail, we came upon some beautiful meadows (Carrie, I thought of you and Bella and Edward). We saw some great alpine plant life, including some incredible spots full of Alaska cotton and the gorgeous, deadly monkshood. The lake was pretty neat, too. It was nice to look at while we wrung out our socks.

Was it worth it? I think it was one of the best hikes I have taken in awhile. Thanks to my beautiful family and friends for putting up with me and my ideas. I hope you still love me. And I just have to say, my kids are troopers. Seriously.

friday at the glacier

June 29, 2010 in alaska, exploring nature, hiking | 1 comment

Moraine Ecology Trail at the Mendenhall Glacier

We were on the lookout for beavers, bears and porcupines… and only came home with visions of swooping barn swallows nesting in the pavilion eaves (and lots of tourists–wow, it’s crowded out there during the summer!).

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