What do you do when there's no snow to ski?!

Winter hiking of course!  Conditions have been near perfect, as long as you take your Katoolah's (otherwise known as spikies, but not the non-aggressive, help-you-across-the-parking-lot kind --- the substantial ones!  Last weekend we took a hike with Lance, our former landlord, on the Middle Fork Loop trail, from the Prospect Heights trailhead.  A loop that we did a month or two ago, it's described in "Hiking Alaska" as "A Chugach Mountain sampler - a lower elevation and therefore good marginal-weather hike" with moderate difficulty.  The total elevation gain is about 1300 feet, and it is a 9 mile loop - it took us about 4 hours and 15 minutes.

The day was MUCH warmer than we had expected, especially the first half of the day - about 46 degrees when we started.  About halfway through the hike a breeze started up, and a welcome one, as we were all over-dressed!  We had half-expected rain, so the hike overall was a huge success - a dry day, hardly anyone on the trail, and we even had partial sun!  You can see how little snow there is though - highly unusual for this time in February!  You can't see well in the picture, but there is water running across the frozen ice field here, so it was kind of an unusual spot.  Four hours is a long enough hike that we were happy enough to stop, but it was another glorious day to be outdoors!