South Fork Eagle River Hike up to Rendezvous Ridge

It was another beautiful weekend in Anchorage - at least some of it!  A rainy Saturday at the start, but cleared in afternoon, and we were running around anyway - another house project not quite finished when we moved in - the extra full bath, which needs a bathtub replacement, new flooring, tiling, etc.  Brian to the rescue!  Picked out our bathtub and fixtures, and now all that he had to do is get it ready and put it all together!  Just kidding Brian - lots of work there for him, but he always comes through with such a nice job -- and we've decided to get a gas insert for our old fireplace, so that will come next - or at the same time!  So nice having a husband who's a contractor!

Saturday night was a "house concert" that we always appreciate being invited to at the home of Tom Begich and Sarah Sledge -- always nice to have good music and great company with about 40 other people packed in to hear the people that Tom invites up - usually folk singers, broadly defined, and always impressive and enjoyable!  Then, since we hadn't been outside other than to run errands, we went for a walk downtown and ended at Crush, one of our favorite places, usually for a glass of wine, this time for a wonderful warm apple cake and great coffee!  A beautiful night for a walk.

Sunday morning is almost always a planning time for "Where should we hike today?"

So first I have to share my favorite picture from our hike today!

 After a great omelet, if I do say so myself, with onion, mushroom, celery and swiss chard with feta cheese (I should have taken a picture!), we took off for the South Fork Eagle River trail.  I've always wanted to do the ridge trail from Rendezvous Peak out of the Arctic Valley, and it seemed from the guide book that it was a 10 mile trail necessitating dropping a car off at one location and driving to the end.  We had never gotten quite organized for it, and I was intimidated by wondering if we were in shape for it.  We discovered that you could access the ridge trail from several places, so today, we started from the South Fork Eagle River trail.

Almost 2 miles from the trailhead, a narrow path starts up with signage for the Rendezvous Ridge trail.  It is a gradual climb up that intensifies considerably along the way, initially through some pretty tall grass on both sides.  We know there are berries still out for picking, so Brian stopped and got out his whistle and confirmed the bear spray was "at the ready!"  If I was a bear, I'd hang out here - it's beautiful!

We went from sunny and fairly warm hiking - it was about 59 degrees and very sunny - to extremely windy and cold closer to the top - this was a notch that we came to before having to continue on, where we met a photographer who had been in Brian's class when he took black and white photography a year or so ago.  The hiking got much steeper towards the top, necessitating much stopping and recovering of breath by me!

Once at the top, you can continue along the ridge for several miles!  The reward!  The views are incredible, and we liked doing the hike in this direction.

There were SO many cars in the parking lot, and we saw hardly anyone on the hike.  We met two guys and their dog on the last peak before we started down, and this picture is looking south over the ridge that we had hiked.  There was definitely weather moving in, and we weren't sure if we were going to get rained or snowed upon at the higher elevation before we started down!

The hike down, though highly anticipated, is almost as difficult as the hike up - easier on the heart & lungs, as Brian said, but murder on the thighs and hip flexors from bracing and uneven descent.  We stopped at one point for a rest, as we were pushing across the ridge, unsure of how quickly the grey-black clouds were moving in.  As you're returning, the town of Eagle River is spread out for viewing along the valley - so pretty!

Ah. . . you can see why we love living in Alaska!!