 Previous Day |
Katmai National Preserve 6.0 mi (9.7 km) |
 Next Day |
Fog and slog, everyone!
The wind and rain faded overnight, thank goodness, but this morning was darn chilly and required extra hot chocolate! After yesterday’s wind-blasted trek, we all got going really late, which was just as well because we didn’t have too far to travel today. During breakfast, the clouds started to lighten up, giving us our first peeks at the landscape which had been hidden by fog all day yesterday: lakes upon lakes, all shrouded in mist!
 |
Finally leaving Cold Camp shortly after 11:00, and returning into the boundaries of Katmai National Preserve, we trudged out of the basin and through a wide mountain pass. We crossed multiple long snowfields intermixed with rivers and wetlands, which was just fine because all of our feet were still soaked from yesterday and could not get any wetter! One river was rip-roaring out of the base of a snowfield, which meant we all had to trek uphill onto that snowfield and cross in a very carefully spaced, single-file line. As fast as that river was rushing, who could say how long it would be before the ice collapsed?!
 |
 |
By 1:30, we ascended to drier ground above the bogs and streams, and it seemed like we’d crossed our final snowfield of the day! Ahead of us was a grassy, pebble-strewn slope and a clear view of the mountain we’d be circumnavigating to get back to Mirror Lake. Could it be? The biggest challenges of our adventure might now be behind us!
 |
Well, sort of. Poor Niko had lost his sunglasses, so we paused among some huge frost heaves covered in bellheather flowers to wait for him and Tim to conduct a sweep. Really close to us, I noticed a bear dig that looked mighty fresh! This whole time, we’d seen old bear poop but no bear tracks or bears themselves. There were plenty of digs, though, the whole way. Grizzly and brown bears have a big hump of muscle on their backs that makes it easier for them to haul up massive amounts of dirt at once. If you see one, it means a bear was digging up ground squirrels, and because we didn’t see any ground squirrels anywhere beyond Mirror Lake, it was clear that the bears up here had been particularly skilled at devouring them!
 |
 |
We, of course, would not be devouring any ground squirrels today. Instead, around 2:45, we had our best full lunch of the whole trip: fluffy pitas packed with olive tapenade and feta cheese! It was a salty, savory, sumptuous feast, which we enjoyed while watching a red fox saunter its way across the tundra and curl up for a nap on the leeward side of a frost heave! It was very light-colored, so most of us thought it was an Arctic fox, but Niko’s monocular proved us wrong. Their range doesn’t extend this far south anyway!
 |
Just past our lunch stop, and beyond one last talus field, was a familiar sight: Mirror Lake! We were within eyesight of our adventure’s conclusion, from a whole different angle. It didn’t look that far, so even though we’d gotten a late start, we weren’t exactly running behind in our day’s agenda. That meant we could do a little wandering!
 |
Philip led a group of us up onto the mountain behind our lunch spot to get our last high views of the terrain we had crossed. By this point, the clouds had risen well above the ground, blue sky was even peeking through, and the rock tripe lichen had returned to being both crispy and crunchy! It was a steep slope, but with all the gear left below with Tim and Brian, we may as well have leapt up that mountain! Off in the distance lay the site of our first camp, and somewhere in between, a plane will be picking us up tomorrow… weather permitting!
 |
Well folks, I don’t know about you, but that’s some mighty pretty country we’ve just passed through! Most of those mountains have never been named, most of those lakes have never hosted bathers, and in all this vast stretch of land, I didn’t see a single sign of garbage! Cheers to all those leave-no-trace practitioners! Boy oh boy, in spite of all the trials of trekking in the wild, I sure am going to miss the simplicity of being out here and the folks I’ve been trekking with. Niko let out his final battle cry of “Riiiiicolaaaaa!” from the highest point we reached, and then we started our descent.
 |
The way down crossed a super steep snowfield, which spoke to our most primal instincts: SLIDE! Tim, Niko, and Stephanie led the charge up the hill and slid as down as far as they could, but the snow wasn’t as slippery as it could have been for sledding purposes. I decided to make every step extra long for some pseudo-skiing instead! This took us down across more frost heaves and streams until we pulled up to our final campsite not too far from the shore of Mirror Lake. Here, folks laid out their Cold Camp clothes to dry out in the brisk, but generally dry, wind picking up out of the mountains where we’d just been.
 |
And then, the day had one last big surprise in store: we’d camped just above a stunning meadow of lupines (Lupinus nootkatensis)! Obviously, that made this Lupine Camp. Like the last two plants I spotlighted (mountain avens and alder), lupines nourish the soil by fixing nitrogen from the air, making it richer for other plants to grow, and wow, they sure put on a show! After days of bright, but very small, speckles of color on the tundra, this sea of purple was a real treat for the eyes and a really great sendoff from the wilds of Katmai!
 |
 |
Over a scrumptious dinner of mac and cheese with chile and roasted garlic (hoooo boy!), our guides gave us the rundown for tomorrow. We’d all taken our time getting out of camp the last few days; tomorrow, we wouldn’t have that luxury. We’d need to be at breakfast by 7:30, out of camp by 8:00, and to the pickup spot no later than 10:00. We were relying on a very small aviation company with limited time, so we’d better not be late! After enjoying some Baby Ruth dessert bars, we all agreed to be punctual and conclude our Alaska Alpine Adventure as smoothly as possible.
See you lakeside!
Previous Day |
Total Ground Covered: 32.5 mi (52.3 km) |
Next Day |