|
Deb & Walt - Winter hikes in the Chugach Range in Alaska
|
|
|
These pictures chronicle a series of hikes Deb and
I took during the early months of 2004 in the Chugach Mountains right
behind our home town, Anchorage, Alaska.
None of these are overnight hikes. Most of them were on a Saturday or Sunday.
This is a feature on O'malley Peak I call 'The Dome of Uncertainty". Deb calls it ,"The Dome of Death" You see it hang out into the air adjacent to her head. |
 |
| Here again is the Dome from a slightly different angle. Actually, its more of a Half-Dome. As you can see it is a long way down off to the left. What makes it so "Uncertain", is that you can't tell where the support of the mountain ends, and where you would be on pure snow... |
|
|
In this photo you are looking back across the side
of the dome. Places such as this require me to go first, as you
can see by my tracks. The highest part of the dome is the
flattest, but that is certainly not supported by rock. The bottom
is too steep to traverse.
Deb is following in the conservative 40 degree area that didn't kill me...
O'Malley Peak is a little over 5,000 feet |
|
| At the top of the peak I extend my arm for a self-portrait, while Debbie re-braids her hair. |
 |
| Me on top, looking deeper into the Chugach. |
 |
| Deb descends. There is a large pile of scree that fills up with snow during the winter. You can see our path up which we made a few hour before on the left. |
 |
| From the bottom of the scree pile I look back up. You can see where the shadows cross our paths about half way up. That is where Deb was in the last photo. |
 |
| Another day, another mountain. We are approaching the summit of Peak 3, but first we have to get up this little mini-peak. It was really steep, so when I got on top I whipped out the camera to catch a shot of Deb making the last few feet. |
 |
| She made it. Now Peak 3 is visible in the background. |
 |
| Here I am at the top of Peak 3. Behind me is Ptarmigan Mountain, which we have also climbed, but not on this day! |
 |
| Along the way we find some fresh wolf prints. At the time I had been in Anchorage for 25 years and had never heard of a wolf in this part of the Chugach. Within a year of these photos we encountered two of them while hiking at night. |
 |
|
Yes, there are
wolves in the Chugach!! Deb doesn't have the largest of hands, but this is a good sized print regardless. |
 |
| The wolf's lair! He had spent some time in this little hollow, which had been scoured out by the wind. There was fur in the bottom, and tracks all around. Fortunately, no one was home. |
 |