We were back in Cooper Landing on our way north off of the Kenai Peninsula, heading towards Denali NP. When we had been in Hope previously we had discovered the hike at Palmer Lakes but didn’t have time for it. We also said if we had another beautiful sunny day on the way back north we’d take another shot at making it up to the lakes.
One constant that we’ve had in the six weeks in south central Alaska is rain. We’ll get a couple of days of sun here and there, but only a couple followed by more clouds or rain. I looked last week at the Pacific Ocean and realized that this summer the North Pacific High is very well established and very strong. Once the high gets too strong, all the lows shooting off the Chinese mainland get bounced up and over the top of it, and that brings rain here. We learned that sailing across that big ocean many years ago. And now we’re here where all the rain is landing. But we decided today not to let the rain stop us from a hike we really wanted to do. And we thought it would break mid day and give us some sunny skies.
So we packed a lunch and drove the 90 minutes back up to Hope and down into that beautiful valley. The rain came and went all along the drive, and it was barely sprinkling when we started the hike.
Being mid summer, the underbrush was thick. And wet from the recent rain. So we got a bit damp just navigating through the lowlands and up off the valley floor.
The clouds settled in for a good rain, and we came upon a pretty good sized creek. The path was smaller going up around the creek, and there was a definite path across the creek.
It was raining so hard the screen on my phone wouldn’t work to show me the trail, even though it was downloaded an active on my AllTrails account. We went across the stream and started a steep uphill climb. We saw three people way high up and believed we were on the right path.
More than once I thought it sure looked like we were just walking up a stream bed. But we continued.
I looked off in the distance and saw a lake quite a ways away. Hmmmm.
Finally the rain stopped enough to check my phone, and sure enough! We are the blue arrow and the green is our intended trail. This was another trail, but not the one to the lakes.
Our house sitter this summer calls herself “Wrong Way” when she hikes, and apparently I’m now the same. But when we turned and saw this vista and how far we had come, we were more than happy that we had taken the path that we did.
This is a picture I swiped off the AllTrails website for that lake. I am going to make it up to that lake someday, it’s firmly on my bucket list. When we were changing out of soaking wet pants at the truck (to put on the dry rain pants that were still in my pack), I get a notification from AllTrails that said “It looks like you took a wrong turn”. Thanks for the obvious and you could have told me that earlier!.
Pix of the Palmer Lake hike are here