Bear Who?

It has been an absolutely crazy week this week since it is my midterm...time flies!! I am very much behind with my blogging, but I will do my best to catch you up…

As I had written in a previous blog entry, my first hike was up Bear Mountain was unsuccessful, since I pretty much hyperventilated 3000 feet up in the air. Well, I had the opportunity to go back up again last week. And boy, did we pick a great day to go up…

It is officially autumn here in AK. It arrived about 2 weeks ago and probably won't last much longer. It's absolutely beautiful, but also rainy. It has been raining lightly but steadily, enough to make a trail extremely muddy and slippery! Mud and steep slopes should NEVER be friends!

So Jon, Carolyn, the dogs, and I decided to be brave and hike up the slippery Bear Mt, mainly because I wanted to conquer the ‘mound’ that got the better of me a few weeks ago. What made it even more challenging is that, with the amount of daylight decreasing, it was still completely dark at that time. Because we had to get to work, we had to start our hike in the dark while wearin headlamps!

The muddy trail was so slippery that for 60% of it, we had to create our own trail through the grassy patches around the actual trail for whatever ‘grip’ we could get (if any of that made sense at all). On the way up, there was a slippage of some sort at least every minute or two. It took much longer to get to the top, but I finally made it!!!

Interestingly, my fear of heights was almost completely gone when I was standing at the top. I guess ‘they’ were right (whoever ‘they’ are) when ‘they’ said the best way to overcome your fear is to face it. It was beautiful, as expected, especially with the snow starting to accumulate!

Me and Kavi at the top (and the sun came out)

On the way down, we didn't even think about running/bouncing/skipping...that’s how slippery it was. At several points, I thought I was surfing/skiing down the slope. Some of the rocky places were tricky, as any fall would have been very unpleasant on the tush. This was definitely another hiking experience like no other. I guess 'normal' hiking does not exist here.

Finally, this is for those of you who always make comments about how clean my shoes are... Little Red are officially retiring...it's a sad day! :-(