A Fat Old Lady Keeps On Climbing |
| Found some new place to climb: |
| It was cloudy in the mountains, but it didn't rain. We had a really nice climb, with beautiful views all along the way. As usual, the alpine tundra was covered with colorful little flowers that grow out of the rock. And Jascha alway enjoys seeing the ground squirrels that live in the mountains. There weren't very many people climbing Mt. Baldy today. One of the climbers was a big dog, a malamute, that seemed to be all by himself. He came running up the trail and attacked Jascha! Then he seemed very surprised to discover that Jascha was larger and perfectly willing to defend himself. So the malamute abruptly stopped fighting, and continued to run up the trail. By the time we got up to the summit, the other dog was gone, maybe down the other side. Jascha wasn't hurt, and he seemed to be proud of himself. Doesn't he look majestic in that upper left photo? |
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The mountains are starting to show their fall colors now, so I'm trying to get up in them as much as I can before the snow makes them too dangerous. I wasn't really thinking about how Bear Point got its name until I happened upon some bear scat on the trail up there. Jascha bristled at the sight and went into full alert mode. He stood on tippytoe and sniffed the air intently in all directions. Then he relaxed and went on trotting the trail, which I took to mean, "No bears here now." He could have been lying to me, but we didn't encounter any bears. Jascha was a big help pulling me up the muddy trail. His inclination to pull does get a little scary on the way down however. (There was that one time on Bird Ridge when he had me airborne, a la SuperWoman, but I've let bygones be bygones.) From the alpine tundra on the top of Bear Mt., there were great views of Peters Creek, Knik Arm, Mirror Lake, and other peaks in the Chugach range. The summer tundra flowers were few and far between up there, and are being replaced with fall foliage colors. |
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| We camped overnight about 30 miles from Seward, at the Carter Lake trailhead, and hiked that trail the next day. It was a very nice climb of about 1000', over 2.5 miles or so. The lake was very beautiful, nestled into a pass, surrounded by mountaintops. |
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More Adventures: Flattop... '01 |
