Pictures

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Leg 1: Kenai Mountains -- Hope to Homer

The small hamlet of Hope (pop. 200), a gold rush boomtown in the late-1800's that boasted a population of 3,000. Nowadays it receives a small amount of traffic from Kenai Peninsula-bound tourists, many more of whom head to Seward, Homer, and Cooper Landing. My purpose in being there was to begin hiking the 40-mile Resurrection Trail.

Near Resurrection Pass (elev. 2,700 ft). Notice how brushy the tundra is here -- the Kenai Peninsula receives more precipitation than most other parts of Alaska due to its location and its temperatures are moderated by the ocean, resulting in a relatively good growing climate. It's thick around here!

"Combat fishing" on the Kenai River. These fishermen were trying to catch a few of the thousands of salmon that were running up the Russian River when I floated down through here on my packraft. The catch limit is 12 salmon per person per day!

I paddled easily almost 5 miles across the glassy Skilak Lake, which normally serves up severe winds whipping off the Skilak Glacier and the Harding Icefield.

The Killey River valley as seen from its east side just upstream of Upper Killey Lake. This was a torturous valley crossing: I had to descend 2,000 vertical feet down out of beautiful alpine tundra through thick alder and huckleberry thickets and devil's club, cross a flooded glacier-fed river, and then ascend an equal distance through comparable nastiness in order to regain the tundra. Oh the joys of hiking off-trail in the Kenai!

The flooded, glacier-fed Killey River, the first of many treacherous rivers I forded in Alaska. This one swept me off my feet about two-third of the way across but I made a successful lunge for a small eddy on the other side and was okay, though wet up to my chest.

The northeast shore of Lake Tustumena

It seems like I saw another grizzly bear around every corner on the Kenai Peninsula, which generally is great bear habitat: lots of salmon, berries, moose, and bugs and worms. There is concern among wildlife biologists about the viability of the Kenai brown bear population, however, due to outdoor recreation and resource extraction pressures on the Kenai.

The spruce bark beetle has killed tens of thousands of spruce trees in Alaska; the Kenai Peninsula has been especially hard hit. This outbreak greatly aggravates any attempt to travel through forested backcountry -- these areas were always thick, and now they're covered with sharp windblown snags and new brushy growth that is taking advantage of the open canopy. On the Hope to Homer Route, the most difficult section is unequivocally the 4 miles between Lake Tustumena and the Fox River -- it took me 6 hours and I ripped my rain pants in four places!

The northwest beach of Kachemak Bay is fast and pleasant.

Brentwood Higman and Erin McKittrick, of "Journey on the Wild Coast" fame, came over from Seldovia with their baby Katmai to hang out when I was in Homer. In addition to good conversation and company I was treated to a personal slideshow about their trip, which frankly was such a leap from the conventional ultra-long-distance trek that I'm not sure many people understand just how impressive it was.

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