This is my nephew, Brent Peterson, at the start of the Resurrection Pass Trail, in Hope Alaska. We are heading to Cooper Landing, about 40 miles through the Kenai Mountains in the Chugach National Forest.
Oops, you have to wear long pants in wetlands Alaska, or else the state birds (mosquitos) will eat you alive.
The good thing about hiking in Alaska is that there is usually plenty of water.
Brent was relegated to refilling our water containers. My pack was too heavy and I could not bend down to reach the water! Ultralight, here I come.
These are our homes for the evening. It’s a good thing we did no go much further down the hill as this was a horse camp earlier in the year.
Brent, the master chef, is working on dinner using the bear safe as a workbench.
There was plenty of opportunity to get your feet wet. It rained a couple of days before and started raining again about two days into the hike.
The trail was lined with blueberries. Fortunately the salmon were running on the Kenai River in Cooper Landing, keeping most of the grizzlies near the river. Some did venture up this high during the evenings but they seemed to miss us.
This is a look ahead of where we were going. We had to cross the mountains in the distance.
We started beyond the mountains in the distance, down near Turnagain Arm in Hope. There was still a very long way to go at this point and the weather was starting to turn.
Brent went to the creekside to refill our water containers. I was huffing and puffing watching him.
We reached the top of the Resurrection Pass. We encountered two hikers for the Czech Republic here and had a good conversation with them. A majority of the hikers we encountered were from other countries.
We hiked down this valley and to the right. I encountered a ptarmigan that followed me for about a quarter mile feigning injury. I have read (John Muir) that this is their way of leading predators away from their babies. They are pretty smart birds.
Juneau Creek is forming in the valley below.
We are heading down the Swan Lake Grade. There was some pretty steep and rocky sections along this trail. Swan Lake was about a half mile off trail, to the right. We decided to bypass it.
We watched this floatplane circle and then land on Juneau Lake. The pilot left the plane and used a stand-up board to fish the area. We were tempted to ask him to fly us out but he was too far away.
At Juneau Falls, we decided to turn left and exit using the Bean Creek Trail. Unfortunately Cathy was familiar with the Sterling Highway. Bean Creek is seldom used and we saw no humans, there was virtually no signage, no marked trails, we walked through farms and yards until we found the Princess Lodge in Cooper Landing and texted Cathy to pick us up there. We hiked nearly 40 miles, over Resurrection Pass, from Tunragain Arm to the Cooper Landing on the Kenai River in three days.
Travelling with the Schinglers 