Girdwood - Mountain Biking

Thursday, August 10, 2017
Anchorage, Alaska, United States

It rained all night!  Since we were camping in a forested area, the drips from the tree on the van were loud.  We decided to drive further down the Crow Creek Road and ended up at the Cr ow Creek Pass trailhead (to Raven Glacier).  Although the hike to Raven Glacier was originally on our list of hikes, it was still raining pretty hard and Ryan really wanted to go mountain biking.  The original idea was for Ryan to do some downhill mountain biking at Alyeska Resort, but the mountain is only open Friday – Sunday.  We headed back into town and rented bikes for our other planned hike – Winner Gorge creek loop.  This is a really cool hike as you take a hand tram over the gorge.  Unfortunately, after biking back up Crow  Creek Road to the trail head, we found out that the rope for the hand tram had been damaged the day before and was closed until repairs were completed.  After riding/walking the backs through a couple sections of the Iditarod Race Trail, we headed back towards town where we encountered another sub adult black bear off the side of the road.   We walked our bikes and spoke noisily making sure the bear was aware we were around.  He seemed pretty content to be finding berries along the road.  We had just passed our 2 hour limit with the bikes so decided to keep riding.  Emily and I rode the bike path toward Alyeska Resort and had some nice views of the glaciers, while Paul and Ryan rode the Blueberry Pancake Trail.  We were all pretty tired and the kids wanted to fish, so we headed back towards Portage and the Williwaw campground area and stopped at portage draining for some fishing.  No luck whatsoever!  Headed to camp, ate what was leftover since this was officially our last night in the van, finally had a fire to use our wood, played some Scattegories and called it a night.  That was until Emily went to use the restroom and came back to the van to tell us there was a full rainbow that ended right near Middle Glacier, while it had an alpenglow.  Unfortunaately, my phone didn’t capture the whole rainbow but it was beautiful!

Other Entries

Comments

2023-05-30