July 12 and 13: From Palmer to Eklutna Lake

This weekend two of my colleagues (Ali and Karen) and I went to Palmer for a local art/rhubarb fest.  What a gorgeous day it was: perfect warm weather (low 70’s!!), blue skies and fun times with good people.  Palmer is a very cute little town, which apparently is one of the oldest settlements in this area. I was surprised to find interesting antique shops, a nice art gallery, a store selling probably over 100 kinds of teas from all over the world, all kinds of original foods and fun miscellaneous items, a restaurant with only about four items on the menu but all finely prepared, an excellent coffee shop....etc.  Oh! And I almost forgot the most important! A FINE CHOCOLATE FACTORY where I might have bought a thing or two.  So overall, that day in Palmer was a very good time.

On the way back, we drove by a sign indicating “Eklutna Lake”.  According to Karen the lake offered some nice scenery and paddlers who were willing to go the whole length of it could be gratified with a nice view on a glacier.  I stored this comment in a corner of my little brain for a day when I would look for something to do.

The next day, I woke up to gray skies and drizzly weather.  How was I going to make the best out of this rainy day? After thinking about it for at least a whole minute... Eureka!! I remembered Eklutna Lake! I quickly packed my boat, my wing paddle, my gear and my GPS and an hour later, I was pulling into the parking lot of the lake.

Putting in at Eklutna Lake

Shortly after I put on, the sun started piercing through the clouds.  I paddled hard, only stopping occasionally to take a few pictures.  The scenery was gorgeous but today, my focus was the workout.  I had not done that in a while and it felt good to get back into the nitty-gritty of the wing paddle forward stroke.  The conditions were perfect as the lake was completely flat: no wind and not a single wave.  A flatty's paradise. And no, I am not becoming a flatty!

Flatness...

I was expecting a 4 mile paddle to the end of the lake.  After 3 miles, I reached a bend from which I could see the mouth of the Eklutna River.  I certainly looked like it was no more than a mile away.   Two miles later, I realized I had lots of room from improvement in terms of gauging distances.  I ended up paddling another 4 miles from that bend!  A mile… yeah right!  

The mouth of the Eklutna river

After reaching the mouth of the river I hung out for a few minutes, checked out some moose tracks in the sand, let the scenery sink in for a while, and observed a little birdie, who seemed not to mind my presence.  I could see a glacier indeed but it was rather high up, hanging from one of the mountains surrounding me.  

 My birdie friend

I finally made my way back, and made a point of paddling the whole length of the lake without stopping... Except for this last shot below.  OK, just one stop then.  I ended up paddling almost 14 miles in about 3.5 hours, including a few picture stops on the way up.  This felt like a great workout with a wonderful scenery as a bonus and what had started as a dreary morning turned into a magnificent blue bird sky day.

 

 

July 6: Rainy Hike to Reed Lake

This had been a rainy week and the weekend forecast promised more of the same. Well, the weather has proven to change very quickly around here so all hope was not lost for a good hike on Sunday and by Friday, the forecast seemed to be more optimistic.  My colleague Ali, was interested in joining the fun and so was his friend Barb.  The more the merrier! Let's go hiking! We planned on going to Reed Lake, located in the Hatcher Pass area, about an hour north of Anchorage.

On Saturday night, Ali called me to work out the logistics of the hike. He also inquired about the weather (at the time it was pouring rain outside).   Deciding to remain vague, I told him that I had checked the predictions the day before and that “It should not be too bad!”  After all, the forecast had improved since Wednesday. After hanging up the phone, I consulted the Yahoo weather app/guru and… Gasp!  It was going to rain the next day... And it was going to rain a lot!  Oh well… we were not going to melt right?

The next day, sure enough, I woke up to a downpour!  The forecast was very very right this time!  When Ali rang at my door to pick me up, the first thing he said was: “Hum… didn’t you say it was not supposed to rain?”  I denied saying anything of the sort and we went to pick up Barb who knew the general area of the hike and was prepared for a mud bath.  At that time, I was wondering in what kind of soggy hell I was dragging my companions but decided to stay positive: ”Hey! At least we won’t get sun burnt!”

On the drive up, the rain was coming down in sheets.  Talks of a “nice coffee shop and nice brewery, where it would be fun to hang out on a rainy day” started developing and gaining more substance.  I was in the back seat, pretending not to hear any of it.   

 After a few wrong turns, we found our way to the trail-head.  The jokes in the car were heavily centered around one question: “Why are we doing this to ourselves and why is this fun?”  Nonetheless, we got ready and started walking.  After a little while, our resolve was rewarded: not only the rain lightened up to a drizzle but we also realized that the apparently less than ideal conditions did not take anything away from the beauty of our surroundings.  The mountains shrouded with clouds, the flowers covered with water beads and the marble sky charmed us beyond what we could have expected.

  

Nutka Lupine Leaves

  About half way up, we lost the trail and had to scramble over large blocks of granite: fun but somewhat “sketchy” going. We finally realized that the trail was nowhere to be found for it was submerged by the adjacent creek swollen by the heavy rain. So we kept scrambling on those jagged house-size rocks, jumping from one to the other, climbing with hands and feet, lowering ourselves down and climbing back up, probing one way and another and another until we found a passage that would allow us to move forward.  I was having way too much fun!!

  

When we finally passed the toughest part of the hike, we met a couple who told us that Reed Lake was about 45 minutes to an hour away.  At that point, it dawned on me that I might have dragged my companions on a hike that was a bit more than what they had begged for.  So I turned to them and asked them if they were OK to keep going.  “Huh… we were expecting you to ask that question an hour ago when we started that sketchy scramble! We are not going to turn back now, are we?”  Oop's, I had not realized I was the only one really having fun in those rocks and got a bit carried away.  But hey! They had done it!! So no! We were not turning back!
We made it to the lake in about 40 minutes.

Reed lake

 

Monkshood

After a quick bite, we started heading down and the scrambling seemed much easier this time as we sort of new where to go. The rain had stopped and it even seemed like Ali and Barb enjoyed rock hopping much more this time.  We flew down and on the last stretch before we reached the car, everybody was raving about the whole experience and it seemed like the rain, the mud and the rock scrambling contributed to a large part of the fun.

Who wants to hike in perfect conditions under a blue bird sky, really?  This was so much better than spending the day hanging out in the comfort of a coffee shop or a brewery.  And throughout the day, I kept thinking about an article by late Jamie McEwan I had read a few days prior to this hike (80 Percent) where he wrote: 

“There should be a word to denote that special euphoria, that divine nonalcoholic drunkenness that comes at the end of a long, active day on and in cold water and snow, when you are driving home through the blizzard with the car heater blasting, eating a sandwich or energy bar and drinking a hot drink from the gas station, trading stories from the day’s racing while your fingertips throb with the flush of renewed blood and your face glows and your toes can wriggle once more. Warmth! Life! Food! And that boundless superiority you feel over the inhabitants of every house you pass, those poor pale spineless creatures who spent the day in overheated rooms, watching the shadows of real life in the flickering glass of their televisions. First or last, we’d been there. We’d shown up.”

I think this also goes for cold wet slippery muddy difficult hikes and I bet my two companions would concur.

Western Colombine

Nutka Lupine

A sizable beaver dam