An Alaskan Adventure

I am currently in Alaska, enjoying the "Great North" summer. Twelve hours after stepping off the plane, I found myself in one of the most beautiful landscapes ever!...on Kesugi Ridge. I surprised my sister for her 30th Birthday and flew up to Alaskaa couple days early to join her and her friends for a 2 day backpacking trip on Kesugi Ridge. This ridge is located North of Anchorage in Denali State Park and offers amazing views of Mt. McKinley! While the weather was nice, it wasn't quite clear enough to see the entire mountain.

The scenery from the top of the ridge

The backpacking crew!

To acsess the trail along Kesugi Ridge, it is a 1,500 foot hike up to the ridge. The ridge is fairly mellow with some gradual ascents and descents. The ridge trail follows a broad alpine tundra plane past ponds, across creeks and around granite boulders. If you find yourself in Alaska and are looking for a good backpacking trip with amazing veiws, I definitely recommend Kesugi Ridge! It is beutiful!

Hiking the trail along the ridge

Me, among the fireweed!

August is a great time of year to go hiking and backpakcing in Alaska because the berries are bountiful! Within the first hour of hiking we found blueberries, watermellon berries, cloudberries, crowberries and soapberries! Yum, yum, yum! We picked a bag full of blueberries to make ourself some "camp-made" blueberry crisp! It was great!

Busy, picking blueberries for the birthday crisp

Watermellon berries. They are very juicy!

As for training, it is going well. I have been doing a majority of my training by myself since I've been in Alaska, but it has been good to focus on doing the "right" workouts for me. I have been doing a lot of classic rollerskiing and double-poling. I am trying to give my legs a little break to relieve some soreness and fatigue that has built up over the past couple weeks. Hopefully with the right training and the right amount of rest, they will be back to normal soon!

My sisters and I

I am in Alaska for another week and I am looking forward to a recovery week filled with some fun adventures in Homer, Alaska with my family. I will keep you posted!