Weather and Rendevous Peak

Our fall is moving rather quickly now. What felt like October last week (falling leaves, cool temperatures) has quickly moved into November. November to me means cold that's enough to make you want to eat soup and coffee, winds, and chilly precipitation. This weekend was rainy, cloudy, and the temperature never got over 45 degrees. This is all in line with our pace towards winter -- the expectation is that snow should be on the ground by mid-October. In anticipation, we bought studded tires for the Subaru.

This Saturday, Frank and I took advantage of the relatively good weather to do another hike recommended by our guide book. We drove up to Artic Valley, a ski area/golf course almost on Ft. Richardson Army Base. After travelling up on a gravel road for about 7 miles, we made it to the ski area. The trail goes under the ski lifts, then follows a stream until it breaks upward toward the peaks. It was a really difficult hike, especially considering how high up we were and how cold it was that morning. There were actually ice spots and in some places, snow. But we made it, here are some pictures from the top:

Climbing to the Top

In this next picture, you will see some buildings on the hill above. That's the military base. Some parts of this area were ruins from Nike missle tests.

Frank looking out towards Anchorage

You can see how far we are up...in the middle of this picture, you see the parking lot and our car.



Did I say it was cold up here????

Mountains in the distance

You'll notice Galileo does not have any leash on. We've found in many cases, he's better off leash and able to explore. During this hike, Galileo kept tracking the ground squirrels (not marmots) that had holes all along the trail. As usual, he always was way ahead, since he has built-in four wheel drive ;).


Puppy having a great time


There were still some blueberries unpicked up there (probably because it's such a hard trek), along with these red plants:

Plants and blueberries

There was also this spongy type of plant that was a really unusual yellow-white color:

Spongy ground plant