One of the most awesome features of this place, you know, this Alaska place, is that we're always mere minutes from spectacular wilderness adventures.
My first hike as an Alaskan was recommended by a fellow clerk who grew up around here. He pointed us towards Hatcher Pass and the Independence Mine... I am a total sucker for old, decrepit buildings and rusty machinery, so my ears immediately perked up. We drove about 45 min or so, past Palmer, off on a side road, on past Wacky Alpacky's Alpaca Farm (I missed the photo, but we plan to go visit next time), and up to near the pass. We parked at the visitor's center at the Independence Mine State Historical Park, puttered around the old buildings for a bit, then set off up the nearest path. We had ambitions to go up one of the big surrounding ridges, where we could see a few great little shacks perched in unlikely locations, but didn't think the rocks were really scramble-up-able. The surrounding mountains and valleys were gorgeous, and we climbed up a good ways, but we had an unfortunate view of the parking lot most of the time. Until we found an awesome alpine lake, called Gold Cord Lake. Despite being moments from home, from our car, it felt like the most secluded place ever. So gorgeous.
Hike #2 we took when the clerks came from Juneau for 4 days, to attend orientation with the rest of us clerks in Anchorage. We went up Flat Top, which is sort of the quintessential Anchorage area hike. This one was even more crazy-close than the Independence Mine. It was a bit of a cold and yucky day, but we decided to brave the elements and shoot all the way for the peak. It's not a very long hike, but there's quite a lot of climbing involved. There's a lot of stairs and scrambling up rocks. When we'd almost made it, the wind became pretty outrageous and it started snowing! Not just like "oh, look, the rain is a little bit frozen," but really huge flakes flying horizontally. Luckily I've taken all our orientation admonitions to heart ("Layers!" "GoreTex!" "Polypro!") so I had plenty of warm clothing. When we reached the top, the wind was whipping over making a sound like a raging waterfall, and we couldn't stand up for fear of blowing over. We had to crawl all the way to the very tip top, just to say we'd made it, and couldn't look into the wind because the snowflakes were like little ice needles. We stayed at the top for about 3 minutes, then scrambled back down before the rocks got too wet. All in all a great and challenging hike!
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