A Busy Weekend in Anchorage

The weekend of Sept. 19-21 was busy with a Wisdom Weekend, but this past weekend was filled with lots of activity -- Friday night we had tickets to Radical Reels, Banff Film Festival adventure shorts showing at the University, Saturday was a bike ride and then dinner and the opening night of the symphony with Lance and Mary.  Then Sunday was our usual commitment to hiking, this time out of Eagle River again but exploring the trail to Blacktail Rocks.  We knew that we wouldn't have time to actually climb it, but this was a re-con mission, designed to get us up there to look at it.  Next time.

The guidebook talks about the trail from going over Baldy and continuing on, but we prefer the longer and more gradual route around and up - still plenty of climbing!  We did pass through blueberry-filled meadows that are described in the book -- even now, Sept. 28 - they evidently haven't frozen yet.  We passed some blueberry pickers, and they had the right idea - when you have to stop to catch your breath from the steep climb, whip out a container and say that you want to pick berries!

After about an hour, we were up on top of the ridge, which is pretty wide and runs between Baldy and Blacktail Rocks.  Once again a beautiful day, and views on either side dropping down into valleys.  We had to get back or we might have challenged ourselves to the extra 2 hours of going up and down Blacktail Rocks.

The guidebook says that it's easy walking across the ridge until you're 1/2 mile and 1100 ft. from the top - then it swings pretty much straight up.  It also says the mountain was named for the lichen on its southern cliffs - it's not a pretty mountain, but they say it's an impressive view of "black-and-gray capped cliffs rising from the green valley below" (50 Hikes in Alaska's Chugach Park).

We saw more hikers on our way down and several families picking blueberries, resting a various points along the way. It's great to see so many children hiking with their parents, even 3 and 4 year-olds, trucking right along!  Behind Brian, you could see Denali clearly yesterday, which is about 250 miles away.

And Cook Inlet below, Anchorage not that far away!  Home for a halibut dinner and work on our fireplace - Brian just finished installing a gas fireplace insert for our fireplace.  It was nice to come home to, and I'm looking forward to getting up in the morning with it!

Before pictures here and after pictures next week - we're using it tonight but we'll wait for the show and tell til the last fabricated piece we're waiting for is in place!