"Never wear pants that only go to your knees with hiking buddies who like the snow" in Hatchers Pass
So this hike was Sean and I's first hike together as hiking buddies and it was a fun one... but also a cooooollllddddd one! I wore a little less clothing on my legs than I should have, it was a warm day so I wasn't thinking about the fact we were heading to a snowy hike. During this hike sean and I had just become friends so it was a great hike to get to know him and see that making friends in Alaska was certainly easier for me than in South Carolina haha. So we started the hike by going the hard way up (I mean this, we didn't know it at the time, well at least I didn't, but we missed the actual trail and were instead hiking up a partially frozen waterfall. It was not the simplest part of the hike as it was pretty icy and I was just wearing tennis shoes. I was wondering the whole time what in the world I had gotten myself into. I kept thinking... maybe it was a bad idea to go hiking with such a new friend... maybe he is taking the hard trail to try to make me fall and kill myself (haha kidding about that, I wasn't actually thinking he was going to kill me but I was def wondering what I had gotten myself into). So we get to the top of the waterfall part of the hike and I was like sorry I know I am a wimp but I need a break! So we sat down on a rock to let me rest. While we were sitting we saw a dad with his daughter on his shoulders walking down. Seeing this made me realized we certainly had gone the hard way... no way did that little girl climb up the waterfall! The little girl was super funny though, she asked her dad as they passed us why we didn't have a little girl with us... obviously you cannot go hiking without a little girl with you! What were we thinking haha. So we continued on our hike finally and came across the lake you see below. It was super pretty, and much of it was frozen over. We continued on, with me a bit nervous on what was to come (the waterfall had me gun-shy). The hike wasn't bad at all, it we hiked up to one peak and decided to continue until we got to the highest peak. The view you see in the second picture below is the view from the top looking towards the town of Willow. It was so beautiful it reminded me again just how happy I was I had moved to this wonderful place! As we had been walking to the top of the mountain Sean kept saying that he was going to go straight down the mountain instead of walking the trail back down, I kept thinking oh he is just joking, just giving me a hard time. Until it was time to head down and he was like well you can come with me or if you don't want to you can walk down the trail. I was like I don't really want to walk down the trail alone so I guess I will go his way. This could have been a super fun way to go down except as I said before I didn't really wear appropriate pants... so instead of being like its really fun to walk/slide down the snow I was going oh my gosh my legs hurt so bad! By the end of the trek down I could not feel from my knees down, it was fun but super painful haha. (The trail we made on our trek down is in the final picture below). Sean felt really bad for putting me through that but really it wasn't his fault, I could have worn pants that went to my ankles haha. It was a crazy start to my hiking adventures and totally worth it, plus Sean has turned out to be a great friend and willing to go hiking in not always the warmest or best weather ever.
Below are photos that show a few parts of the trip, there are more in my facebook album titled Alaska.
Proof of my inadequate pants haha
The awesome view from the top!
The footprints from our treck down, you are correct that was not the trail we took up...
Well that's all for today, I think tomorrow will be too busy to post but I am hoping I can talk about a few more hikes this weekend! Be on the lookout for another post (still 5 hikes to go! haha)
-Nicole
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