July 10, 2007

Our summer weekends have been pretty spectacular. The weather even mostly cooperated this weekend.

We drove to Ptarmigan Creek Campground, about 20 miles north of Seward, on Friday night. We had a campsite reserved, but we were frustrated to find that our campsite was occupied and that no reserved sign was posted. The people in the site had already paid for the site and had posted their receipt. We drove around looking for a campground host, but could not locate one. Kris called the reservation company and waited on hold. We finally realized that the campsite we were standing next to while making the phone call was not reserved for the weekend. It was the last site available and we grabbed it. We are still trying to get our reservation fee refunded since it did us no good and of course it was a little frustrating not getting the site we reserved. We ended up in site number one which was closest to the road. The road noise was noticeable, but it was no louder than the creek and less noisy than the occasional trains.

On Saturday, we slept in a little and then hiked up the creek from the campground to Ptarmigan Lake. It was about 3 miles to the lake. We took our time on the relatively flat trail. It was an easy hike compared to our recent activities, although I was carrying a little more weight. We arrived at the lake and sat down on the shore.

I put together one of the fishing rods I was carrying and put on a small spinner. Within a few casts, I caught a small Dolly Varden. I gave the rod to Kris and set up the other rod. Soon we were catching small Dollies while seeing lots of even smaller ones chasing our lures. We ate lunch and then hiked up along the lake, stopping every once in awhile to make a few casts. We caught fish at every stop. Most of the fish were about a foot long. They were pretty fish and aggressive in their attacks. I thought about keeping a couple, but they were just a little small.

The trail along the lake was lightly used and overgrown. We frequently were hiking in cow parsnip up to our armpits, blocking our view of our feet, threatening us with the nasty rash and blisters associated with this unfriendly plant. Sometimes we would brush through some of the vegetation only to discover that some of them were actually devil’s club which looks remarkably similar from the top but replaces the blistering effect with a more immediate attack with thousands of pointy spikes on its stem and under its leaves. Luckily it was a cool day and we were comfortable in pants and long sleeves. The limited visibility and the frequent bear scat kept us chattering and singing, trying not to surprise any wildlife. It was the kind of trail where you can step on a bear if you‘re not careful.

We enjoyed our day at the lake, hiking and catching Dollies. The return hike was equally easy going, but we ended up spending over 8 hours out there and we were exhausted. We used our shower in our tent, cooked dinner, and crashed.

It rained a little overnight. We were pleasantly surprised to find it not raining on Sunday, but we were not expecting it to last. The forecast was for rain so it was a pleasant surprise to instead have some occasional glimpses of blue sky as the day wore on.

We went mountain biking to Lost Lake. It was a 1500 foot climb over about six miles. The climb was somewhat variable with a few breaks from the pain of climbing. Other stretches provided the technical challenge of getting over big roots while climbing. The key is momentum and maintaining momentum uphill is exhausting. We often had to get off the bike and walk because we just couldn’t sustain that level of effort. Kris had a couple problems on the climb including a fall that drew just enough blood to make the ride official by our mountain biking standard.

As we climbed near tree line, the trail went through a couple hundred yards of nasty steep and narrow. Knowing that we were coming back down the same way was demoralizing. It mostly looked like stuff I could ride, but that far out in the wilderness and with a significant dropoff on one side of the trail, I knew it was not stuff I would try. I didn’t really want to walk any stretches on the downhill. We finally emerged above treeline, perhaps the first time we have done such a thing on bikes. We rode along a rolling ridgeline dotted with small trees with numerous small lakes providing a unique scenery. The distant views included glaciers and the massive Kenai Lake. We made it to an overlook of Lost Lake, a moderate sized lake. We didn’t ride down to the lake because we were only in the mood to give up elevation in the interest of returning to the car. We really didn’t want to have to climb back up to the ridgeline from the lake. We had a quick lunch and headed back.

The mostly downhill return trip went quick. The stretch on the ridgeline was fast and fun with a few steep sections that hadn’t seemed so steep on the way up. Then we arrived at the scary part. While I hopped on the bike a couple times between the scariest sections, I did demonstrate reasonable discretion by walking the bad parts. Below that, things got fun. We started to really fly. The roots tested our suspensions. I found plenty of places to launch into the air.

I recognized many of the obstacles on the return trip and had even planned my approach. I arrived at one that I knew could only be flown aggressively or completely bypassed. As I found the line and made my final approach, I chickened out, slowed down, and headed down the bypass route. I was a little confounded by one small root on the easy route. I slowed and tried to steer around it. I ran right into it and came to a complete stop. The bike started to lean left and I fought to stay on top. The bike hit the ground first and I fell on top of the upright end of the right handlebar, almost impaling my inner thigh or worse. My weight pounded the left handlbar 3 inches into the ground. I took a couple seconds to recompose myself before heading back down the trail. We made the rest of the ride without incident.

I was a little surprised when I got home that my left arm hurt. Because of the nature of the pain I felt in my crash, I didn’t realize I had landed hard on my left shoulder. Now, while I do have a black and blue mark on my thigh, it is my arm that is really colorful. And to top it off, Kris has wanted to get my attention not once, but twice while I have been writing this post. The first time she slapped me on the arm and I screamed out in pain. She realized what she had done, but only a few minutes later, she wanted to point out some silly cat behavior and poked me dead center on the bruise. Anyway, it is a familiar experience having large colorful bruises from mountain biking. It has been a few years, but it is a nice familiarity. I remember having such bruises routinely in my last couple of years in Ohio.

Yesterday I tried fishing for kings at the Eklutna Tailrace with a friend from work. We fished for about 3 hours. We saw quite a few fish swimming around us. We saw two hookups in the small crowd, one that broke off and one that was snagged and properly released. We both felt like we had a hit or two, but we had no real action. After standing in knee deep glacier water for that long, we both were feeling a little hypothermic and called it a night. I could finally feel my feet again about half way home.