Hike up O'Malley Peak

Yesterday Adam, my roomate, broke me in to hiking in Alaska with a four mile, 3500 ft elevation gain climb up O'Malley Peak. I was surprised at how close the trailhead was to our house. It took us no more than 30 minutes, even while going past the post office. This is very different from hiking in Colorado, where you sometime have to drive for 2 hours down dirt roads before you can start hiking.

We started about 12:30 or so. This morning the clouds were really low, so the whole trailhead was in a cloud bank when we started. Cloud banks kind of look like a really dense fog, and it feels like you are sweating four times more than you really are. The first part of the trail was muddy, then the next part was really steep, and the third part was six feet of snow. I definitely got a taste of what Alaska hiking is like. Anchorage's climate is similar to Seattle's, so during the summer, it is raining more days than it is sunny.

After slogging it through the snow on the northern side, we crossed over to the southern side of the peak, where more sun hits the rock. The whole side of the mountain was coated with mounatian tundra. The tundra is mossy and spongy, and feels like someone laid down a huge, multi-colored carpet on top of the rock. I wanted to lay down and take a nap on the ground, but knew I should go on and bag this peak.

The last part of the mountain was covered in scree. Scree is smallish rocks about 2 ft deep. When you try to take a step in scree, the joke is that you take one step forward and go two steps back. Suddenly, the wind picked up a little and the cloud bank we were in disappeared. As soon as it moved away you could see miles of clouds in all directions, like being in an airplane, and snow-coverd peak sticking up through the clouds. It was one of the most beautiful mountain-scapes I have ever seen. Unfortunantly, camera ran out of batteries, but I got some shots on my phone, which doesn't do the scenery justice. At this point we were about 400 ft from the summit, but we just stood there looking around for a while until the clouds came back again. We reached the summit, but while we were up there all we really saw was white clouds. We sat at the top for 30 minutes, waiting for the clouds to clear again, but they never did. I was not disapointed though because we still got to the top.

On the way back down, the frusteration of scree turn into pure joy. Instead of fighting gravity, now it is your best friend. When you put your foot down, it slides an extra 3 ft, so you can 'skate' down the mountain, going 5-6 mph down the steep slope. It is so much fun, and we were not at a big risk of getting hurt. And the snow was even better. Instead of hiking step by step up the ice, we sat down and butt-slid all the way down. As we raced, Adam was winning so I got and ran the last 100ft. This put us in good spirits, and I didn't mind that the clouds and wind were making me pretty cold. We continued hiking and got back to the trailhead about thirty minutes later.