Its Thursday afternoon and I'm planning my weekend out with some looong fatbiking on local trails to get ready for next race called Little Su 50. While I'm going through all the possible routes I got a note from my girlfriend that we are going on the overnight trek to Talkeetna Mountains with our friends.
Damn it! biking is ruined. Hurray!! Adventure weekend! We packed our overnight camping gear along with snowshoes and we embarked on the overnight fun early Saturday morning.
To be exactly specific the plan was to hike 8 miles on the Gold Mint trail in Talkeetna Mountain to the Mint Hut up in the mountains, settle in the hut have some nicely cooked dinner, some happy beverages, watch the full moon and hopefully northern lights. Well that is not really how it went down.
In the backpacking world less weight in a gear is a king, well when you hike/snowshoe in Alaska winter in the middle of nowhere into a hut without a wood burner you better bring some extra gear to be on the safe side, especially when you have never been there and you do not know where exactly the hut is.
So we started with backpacks along with the sled being pulled behind. I would say overall we had probably 200 pounds of gear :-), which promised a good, warm and cozy night up in the mountains. The valley which we went through is just piece of true Alaska nature very rugged and just spectacular views. The weather was on our side as well, partially blue sky, some snow showers here and there and temperature around 15 Fahrenheit. The trail was not too steep but the gear got fucking heavy and the snow got deep. We ditched the sled and put all the gear on our backs and kept chugging along.
We had probably 0.5 miles left to the hut and environment dramatically changed from this gradually uphill hike through the valley to pretty much full blown climbing terrain in this almost canyon like valley with a high risk of avalanche and shit ton of snow. The bottom line is we could not make it up there to the hut. We were already pretty exhausted so couple options pop up. The obvious one, to go back 7.5 miles out of the valley, dig ourselves nice snow shelter and stay overnight in the current spot (not too smart due to possibility of avalanche) or walk back 2-4 miles and camp out in the wide open valley.
We arrived back at the parking lot around 8pm after 10 hours (we left at 10 am) and 15 miles of exhausting hike in the snow totally beaten up, but full of good memories. We did not know how good decision we made to hike out of the mountains until 1:30 am on Sunday when 7.1 earthquake struck Anchorage. If we stayed in the mountains we could possibly end up under the avalanche in the middle of the sleep.
It was a day which we might remember for long time and the full moon was just ready to be howl on!
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