19 July 2006 Powerline Pass

For the past 7 years my Wednesday evenings from April through September have been devoted to riding with the Wombats of Anchorage (Women's Mountain Bike and Tea Society). I've become a much better mountain biker by riding weekly with the 'bats and have made some great friends. We meet at various trailheads around Anchorage, mostly riding in two large municipal parks. These parks offer rooty dirt trails through birch and spruce groves. My favorite ride of the summer, however, is up Powerline Pass. We drive to the edge of Anchorage to a trailhead in Chugach State Park, the huge park to the east of Anchorage. We pedal half a mile through a grove of twisted mountain hemlocks to reach the rocky four-wheel drive road that heads up the treeless valley to the pass. The road is closed to vehicles in the summer. Few hikers walk more than 2 miles out the road, and few bikers go up there. So soon we have the trail and valley to ourselves. We turn around about 5 miles out at a tundra lake up against a ridge.

The openness of the valley and pass are a welcome change from the trees of Anchorage. I love the forests of Alaska, but we're often in them at home, at our cabin, on our camping and kayaking trips. So many of our Colorado trips took us to the high country. I don't realize how much I miss those alpine tundra landscapes until I'm in this valley, able to see miles around me. In the summer we often see moose on the other side of the valley. One winter while skiing here, I saw a wolf loping along high up on the hillside. He embodied the free feeling I had, high in these mountains, yet only a few minutes from my home.

(This year someone discovered this huge boulder next to the trail and those with good upper body strength pulled their bikes up for photos. That's not me in the photo -- I'm taking it of course. That's my friend, Jamie, who was born the same week I was in 1965.)