Talk about Arduous!

Kyle has joined us in Alaska for the past week.  Ryan and he have been doing a lot of salmon fishing, Kyle has been quite successful in catching silver (coho) salmon.  We made a trip up to Denali at the beginning of the week but I will wait to post pictures after I get pictures from Kyle.  The three of us completed a 8 mile, 3,500 feet hike to the top of a mountain to get a view of the Harding Icefield in Seward. 

The hike was all uphill.  It took us through a cottonwood and adler forest, rocky edges, waterfalls, heather filled meadows, above the treeline into a rocky field.  The above picture shows the type of rock we hiked over as well as a first glimpse of the icefield.

The hike up was a struggle!  I needed lots of rest stops.  I thought San Francisco hills were bad, climbing up a mountain is horrible. 

 There were bear warning signs everywhere and we saw 3 bear scats on our trail.  They are pretty gross and huge!  The warnings pretty accurate, we saw a mom and cub black bear about 100 yards from us.

You can see we are above the tree line and into the meadow.  Further up, all the vegetation was gone and replaced with rocks. 

There was also snow still up on the mountain.  The sun was so hot that I didn't feel cold at all.  I actually wanted to make snow angels to cool off! 

The picture of the icefield hardly does it justice, it was pretty amazing!  You can see the blues in the ice and there were parts with deep crevasses.  Although the hike was probably the hardest thing I've done in a while, it was well worth it. 

Here's a view from our way down, the way down wasn't easy like I thought it would be.  It was hard on our knees and toes!  It was a beautiful hike, I would recommend that everyone does it once in their lifetime.  Ryan and I agreed that this would be our first and last time!