On what looked to be a dreary Saturday, I drove north to join the Valley Mountain Bikers and Hikers for an outing on the Rippy Trail. In south-central Alaska, the "valley" commonly refers to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which is composed of two large valleys formed by the Matanuska and Susitna Rivers. The Mat-Su Basin is the location of my primary project at The Nature Conservancy.
The Rippy Trail angles across an eastern flank of the Chugach Mountains just above the lake and wetland complex of lower Jim Creek. Strong winds in the previous week had knocked most of the leaves off trees in Anchorage, but these hillsides seemed to have been protected. We started walking below large old cottonwoods, and the air was golden with the many leaves still fluttering above us. As we gained elevation, we left the moisture-loving cottonwoods and moved into groves of birch trees in fall colors. From a bluff we could look out over Jim and Swan Lakes, seeing some of the namesake birds that hadn't flown south yet. At the Jim Creek crossing, coho salmon still trying to reach their spawning grounds parted to let hikers pass through.
The skies were gray, but the trail was bright.
1 comment:
Great photo.
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