A little Charlie Brown tree where we camped the second night:
It was the only tree on this bare ridge, poor sad thing. All it needed was a little love!
Arctic ponds:
Formed only from snow and rain, with no inflows nor outflows, they have concentrated salts and are not healthy to drink!
Snow had dusted the peaks in the night;
And that is what they mean by termination dust! Summer has terminated!
Very creative cairn, likely placed by a rock climber!
The end of the ridge hike, before our descent:
Down there is Byers Lake.
The group contemplates:
The descent is through greener country:
We slipped and slid and inched our way down the steep, muddy trail, along which I took exactly one photo:
which I liked because only the willow gave any sense of scale. It could almost have been a photo of a towering waterfall in a tropical region.
No other photos as I could barely take a break from my fight against gravity. When we finally reached the bottom, my shoulders were aching and my quads were trembling. The dogs were still bouncing around just fine.
A fellow hiker had lots of extra food in her car. Yay food!
Finis! We collapse in the parking lot at the Byers Lake Campground and eat 1000 calories a piece in the span of 20 minutes.
After sitting there for five minutes, the dogs got back up and bounced around playing some more. :)
Poor Kant!
Kant got lugged the whole 28 miles, and got soaked as my pack cover wasn't put on well, and I didn't even read him! That was a brand-new book when we left!
After three days of hiking in rain, wind, and mud, with the former two lashing and buffeting our tents both nights, we returned home and found that Fairbanks had had a gorgeous, sunny, warm weekend, which we had missed. Oh well. I had fun!
2 comments:
I like your pictures. The small waterfall can fool for Hawaii.
Lovely! So interesting to see that trapped salt pond. I have seen glacial silt and arctic humus (hummus?!) something-or-other sold in the gardening store - supposedly the minerals are good for your garden. I cannot imagine the carbon footprint.
How wise your friend is to keep end-of-arduous-trek snacks in the car. Very very smart! What in the world possessed you to bring such a giant book with you? Next time just take some extra bricks with ya, huh?!
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