Family Hike Series - Part 5

We had all the ingredients for a true Alaskan Experience at our last Family Hike: we got lost out in the deep underbrush, we had to keep a vigilant watch for marauding bears, we were being eaten alive by great swarms of mosquitoes, we had only a handful of cherries to share between the 6 of us, and only two people had water with them.

As one might suspect by reading the above list, the hike took considerably longer than planned. Mother and Kelly had both planned on shooting up on the mountain afterwards, but were thinking that the others had gone on without them since they were so late.

Rachel and Ellie had nothing in particular planned, but since Ellie did so well (she didn’t complain about being tired at all, even though she so clearly was and had every right to say so) they ended up stopping somewhere to get a special treat to celebrate the fact that we did finally find our cars again.

My guest Rich (from the Denver Zoo) and I had dinner plans that night, but were in no particular hurry – however, we had just come from Kincaid Park where we hiked for about 3 miles along the Coastal Trail, looking for wildlife (and found a mother moose with two calves!), so were getting more than a little tired ourselves.

Poor Rich: he kept saying “I know exactly where we are. We need to take THIS trail.” He finally had to admit that he had no idea where we were - not an easy thing for a biologist who routinely treks for miles out in the Mongolian Steppes.

A majority vote put us on a trail that did eventually lead us out of the woods, thankfully. We’re guessing now that we ended up going about 8 miles instead of the 4 we had planned on.

The original intent was to take the new Campbell Tract Loop trail that circumnavigates the Campbell Creek Science Center and the BLM Land Management offices in the Chugach National Forest – a place that has been in the news a lot lately, due to a girl being mauled by a bear not 5 days prior to our hike! We had several people with bear spray and bear bells, and spent the entire time talking amongst ourselves, so felt relatively safe enough.

The problem was the maps. The BLM has trail markers out, but it seemed like each one had a different map on it. The map I had downloaded from their webpage was not matching up with any of the trail markers, and even if it did I had somehow managed to leave the thing in the car up at the trailhead anyway! By the time we got to a map that made any kind of sense to us, we realized we’d gone WAY off the mark and were miles away from where we wanted to be.

I think this hike will not be put back on the list for a while. Let’s let the BLM update all their trail markers first before going back there. On a more positive note: our next hike out at Gull Rock will be an 11-mile hike… so this hike could be viewed as a warm-up hike for that one!