Wanderings in the Chugach #2

Hello!

So John and I took a trip up Jewel Mountain in the Crow Pass area of the Chugach Range and he has already posted up his pictures. I figured that I would post up mine as well and give my side of the hike!

Hiking with John can invovle two different trains of thought. If he is leading usually my brain is saying "His legs are so long! I'm taking two steps for every one of his!" or "Great! He can keep up at whatever pace I throw down." It is also nice that he never minds me stopping to take out my camera for pictures, have the time I would turn around to tell him I was going to take a picture and he had already stopped to take one!

We started the drive down towards Girdwood and got pulled over by a ridiculous State Trooper. I mean the charge was just dumb!! But we didn't let that hamper our fun and we made good time to the mountains base. After a short discussion we decided to forgo chosing the easiest route and went right up the side to the ridge. Seemed like a fun idea! Also it was funny because John is really loving his camera and he looked through it and zoomed in and jokingly said "Oh look theres a goat." Then he paused and said "Wait...there really is a goat! Sweet! I zoomed in direct center on one by accident!" if he needed anything to make him feel better about his camera I think he got it that moment.



We made our way to a ridge which split the two valleys and got a great view of the glacier on the other side. I think that hiking a ridge is my favorite part of hiking. The view are always incredible. The ridge on the direct left was our route.



We tried most things we could to make the ridge hike every bit interesting as it could be. Climbing up little sections rather then going around and feeling at times like the mountain was coming down around us. You can see the beauty of the Chugach Choss by the large rock above Johns hand ready to come down like a bomb.



Another picture of clambering up the ridge. You can see a glacier the left and Termination Dust on the right. Winters a comin!



We were hiking along the ridge and could see some clouds starting to come up to us from the valley below. We knew we wanted to get pictures from the summit and decided to run for it before we lost the view! We tired our selves out nicely as we scrambled along the rock. Finally making it to the summit we still had a beautiful view in front but where we had come from was overtaken in clouds. Here John takes a picture of something... looks likes clouds to me.


A view of Summit Mountain from the summit of Jewel Mtn.



More peaks and glaciers.



John lets out a moment of celebration before we head back down.


We talked a bit about it and both felt it would be nice to go down the other side of the peak and get more scree then rock ridge to head down. So it was up with the backpacks and down with the feet towards the glacier.


We made it down to the bottom without much trouble although the down route would have been murder for anyone in front of us! I would not come up that way. Stopping at the glacier below we got a drink from the stream coming down.


On the final part down we walked around this little knob and John threw his hand up and dropped down. I followed quickly knowing he had come up on the goat. We both pulled out our cameras and the goat had walked a few feet up to actually check us out. We took our pictures and he meandered off. A longer lens would have been really nice as evidence by Johns pictures but I managed to get this picture.



That was the end of that hike! Tomorrow I hope to climb a peak called Calliope. Hopefully that lends to some good experiences!