Crow Pass Traverse

This is my face as Carolyn dropped us off and drove away. She left us at the trailhead in the rain and the clouds were thick up where we were headed. And there was snow in the tops of the mountains. Were we headed into snow with no way home except to walk through it for the next 3 days?

This is Paul's face...chillin. This boy doesn't worry about anything.

This is us both calm, cool and collected. Ready to go! (Yes, we match and yes, the first person we met on the trail called out to us with glee, "You match!")-Side Note- Whenever we hike here, we never see ANYONE. It's nice. We saw one grandma with her 2 hardcore granddaughters, all of 5 and 9 years old, coming down the pass that first day. That night 2 different people and a platoon of soldiers passed our campsite and that was pretty much it the whole trip. It's nice, like I said, and also a little scary.

This is part of the iditarod trail. These were some old mining ruins.

All of the elevation gain was done the first half of the first day. But it was not nearly as intense as Pioneer Ridge, so we felt like we were doing pretty well.

This was the first of the snow, of which there was much that day. Later on after we crossed the pass, there were a lot of avalanche gullies that were super steep and it was the most scared I have ever been for my life. I thought I was a goner. One misplaced step and I would have been. The snow started to get a little hardpacked in the middle of the widest/steepest patch of snow. Our poor little feet, begging for a little bit of hold on the cold uncaring snow. There are no picutres of that because it was very delicate maneuvering.

We've climbed up into the pass. There's a public use cabin behind me you can't see, which would be cool to stay in.


Yet another great example of summertime fun in Alaska.

Right as you're coming out of the pass there's this cool glacier.

More hiking pictures.

Our campsite. Paul did a genius job of rigging (Ha! RIGGing...get it?) up the tarp to keep us dry. It rained a lot that day. We were pretty wet and cold by the end of the day. But that crazy tarp flapped LOUDLY in the wind ALL NIGHT. I swear I didn't sleep a wink while Paul was dreaming about herds of Zebras and Rhinos attacking. I made him hang up the food bag when I was already warm inside my sleeping bag so I bear wouldn't get it. I saw him try to hang it up and yelled at him to go further away. All alone. In bear country. He's nice.

This picture is just too good not to include. Waking up outside.

More glaciers the second day. We descended into the valley the second day and the rest was pretty flat.

This was situation 2 where I really thought I was going to die. We crossed that river. This is a picture of Paul after we had crossed and changed into dry clothes. This river is fresh off a glacier, so it's pretty cold. And it was wide and strong. It came up to our shirts. It was pretty sketchy in the middle because it was so strong and so deep. We sure were glad to get to the other side, as evidenced by the grin on Paul's face.

So we kept walking. We saw some waterfalls.

And we set up camp by the river.

We were pretty worried about bears the whole time. We saw lots of...poop...and by the river we saw prints in the muddy sand. We had Quasar's bear spray and hoped that would be enough. We never did see a bear. Thank goodness.

The last day we walked along this river until we came to the end. Then Claire and Eddie that I work with came and picked us up and took us home.

Just one last classic shot of Paul, appreciating nature. Or something like that.