7/5/09: Chugach Mountains, Alaska in the raw…

Jaw dropping, eye popping, mind blowing beauty! Chugach State Park was my first opportunity to get up close and personal with the backcountry of Alaska. (Check out “Chugach State Park” album under the photos tab)

Standing in the driveway of the house I am staying at, someone could blindfold me, spin me around, and tell me to start hiking in any given direction and I could very quickly hit some amazing mountains (or end up with wet feet in the Kink arm of the Gompertz Channel). On the hike today, Brian and I headed up Hiland Road about 7 miles to the South Fork Eagle River Trailhead. Brian was the second person to reply to my Craigslist posting; his family was away for a week and so was looking for an adventure to get him out of the house.

It was a relatively mellow hike with a gradual gain in elevation up to a pair of lakes, Eagle Lake and Symphony Lake. We were following the South Fork of Eagle River, a wide open valley seemed like perfect grazing territory for bears, though luckily we did not encounter any hungry bears on the hike.

We converted this mellow hike into a significantly more strenuous hike with the desire to stand on top of one of the peaks surrounding the lakes. We picked one out, kept walking past the end of the trail and found ourselves hiking straight up a 45˚ angle slope.

We had blue skies and a clear view of glacially carved beauty that surrounded us. Eagle Peak (6,909’) stood proudly due east from us, though we could not see the aptly named (and smaller) The Fledgling, or Raptor Point. We hiked about 15 miles and well over 3,000’ of elevation gain. One amazing day and a great introduction into the wilderness of Alaska, just 663,253 square miles of Alaska left to explore…