I haven’t had a long hiking trip since the baby. The two one-day quick hikes in April were nice, but I could still feel the yearning for a real one. Finally I got a chance last week: Wen is going on a business trip to Taiwan and my parents offered to take care of the baby. I immediately took the days off then started planning where to go… at first I wanted to do a chill trip but ended up visiting 4 national parks in 6 days, literally hitting a park every single day, lol. It was quite a park enthusiast’s trip.
Kenai Fjords
My first step out of airport was Seward REI in Anchorage. Picked up a bear spray, a pair of microspikes for Harding Icefield hike but ended up not using, and some trail snacks. I then had a decent burger next door without realizing I’d pretty much live on burger/pizza/salad for the next few days.
The drive from Anchorage to Seward was very scenic. A winding road along the coast, maybe a fjord coast? The water color changes along the way, some parts are in the glacier emerald color and look really beautiful. There are trail heads and pullout whale watching points along the way.
I stopped midway to do a warmup hike to Byron Glacier. It’s a very easy and accessible trail. I saw three babies in baby carriers along the way.. At the end there is a small glacier right by a river. People can easily walk up to the glacier. I’m surprised this glacier hasn’t melted yet.
Then I drove to Seward. Nice seaside town, quite touristy. I checked into my hostel airbnb then drove to a very popular restaurant downtown, Ray’s Waterfront, with people lining up in waiting area, ordered a “fisherman’s stew” and it sucks balls… nothing wrong with ingredients but I just don’t think the chef knows how to cook it, and there are even some pasta in the stew to make you full. I was disappointed by the meal.
After the meal it was 8PM, and I realized sunset time was like 10:30PM in Alaska in this season. At the hostel I read the Exit Glacier short hike was a “must-do” in Seward so I just drove there to do a late night sunset hike. The trail was easy and empty. I had an overview of the Exit Glacier but wasn’t impressed. But, this counts as a visit to Kenai Fjords National Park!
The next morning I got up and went straight to the Exit Glacier trailhead to start the Harding Icefield trail. This trail is so famous that it shows up on every “top trails in Alaska” search I did. After the underwhelming Exit Glacier trail, I was actually a bit concerned if Harding Icefield trail was overrated. Thank god it turned out well worth the fame and effort.
Harding Icefield trail is a classic alpine trail that goes through multiple terrains of forest, meadow, then tundra. You start getting open and nice view once hitting the meadow section. There are also prairie dogs all around and supposedly marmots too but I didn’t see any marmot.. at a point you start seeing the Exit Glacier from a close view, not as close as you can touch the glacier, but you can see the glimmer and texture clearly. At the end of the meadow section there is an awesome viewpoint you can see the full Exit Glacier with those unreal blue ice surfaces. This is about half way to the end, lots of people turn back at this point and I think it’s totally fine. I think they should name this part as something like “Upper Exit Glacier Trail”, as it’s way more impressive than the “Exit Glacier Trail” I hiked the day before, lol.
The second half of the trail was quite tough. I was fatigued and but the steepness was only bigger. The trail was mostly broken rocks and surrounded by snows. There were maybe a dozen times I needed to hike through short sections of snows, but nothing warranted any special snow-walking gears like microspikes. Some of the snows had patches in the pink cotton candy color. I learned at Big Basin National Park that these were microbes, didn’t realize I would see much pinker version here in Alaska. Near the end of the trail you’d see a tiny wooden hut as an emergency shelter. Passing that corner and suddenly you’d be rewarded by an expansive view to the other side of the mountain you’ve been climbing. It’s a wonderful view of the Harding Icefield, with several more glaciers and icewalls fed by the icefield. I read somewhere the visible part from this viewpoint was like 5% of the whole Harding Icefield. It’s hard to fathom the whole scale.
An ice cream at the creamery in Seward was a great way to wrap up this hiking day. Then I started driving back up to Anchorage. I wish I had more time in Seward to do a glacier kayaking tour to view wildlife. Next time.
I made a short stop at Potter Marsh Wildlife Viewing Boardwalk on the way to Anchorage. This is the first time I saw a school of salmon in a river! Aka. the famous salmon run. It’s pretty amazing how many of them just hanging out in very shallow water. It looked like they were resting and preparing for another push upstream. And this place is right by the state highway. Incredible.
I had a bowl of decent ramen at Anchorage downtown that night, thanks to Ginny’s recommendation. It was actually very good, but also very expensive… more expensive than good ramen in NYC for sure. And that shop also sells A5 wagyu by weight.
Lake Clark
My trip to Lake Clark NP started at a nice little “terminal” of Lake Clark Air. There are a row of such charter plane airports right by the main Anchorage airport. It’s kinda of the smallest airport you can think of: an office with a few counters, a parking lot, and a runway with a few small planes in the back. Alaskan people are pretty nice and warm in general, maybe because of the remoteness, maybe because they mainly live on hospitality. Either way it’s a good place for visitors.
I boarded a small plane with ~12 other people. As the only solo traveller I got the co-pilot seat, yes! The aerial view was gorgerous. The plane entered a canyon (or a fjord?) filled with clouds, glaciers flowing down from mountains on both sides. It looked incredible.
The plane made a detour to land at a different airport before our destination, because of fogs. Passengers started chatting and I realized most visitors to Lake Clark NP were national park collectors. Two families on my plane were achieving their 63 national parks on this Alaska trip, and one of them was actually hitting 63 when they land at Lake Clark! I guess it’s because there is no particular reason to visit Lake Clark NP other than checking it off the list? It’s a beautiful park with a nice resort (Lake Clark Resort, where I was staying at and booked the flights and tours), but you could do most activities elsewhere: Katmai for bear-viewing, other parks for fishing, hiking, etc… Lake Clark is an expensive option if only for activities, but, hey the name of a National Park definitely counts for something.
Half hour later the fog was baked off by the sun, and we flew into Lake Clark resort as planned. It was a nice resort right by the pristine Lake Clark, with Mount Tanalian in the backdrop, and several colorful floatplanes by the shore. It seems most workers at the resort are young people and a lot of them are local from Port Alsworth. It felt like this little town evolves around this national park and this one resort. Interesting dynamics. I wonder what the town looked like before national parks became this huge draw.
After putting down my stuff into a fresh painted “wild cabin” which is like 10 minutes hiking from the main resort area, I jumped into a 4-seat floatplane to fly to Katmai to see bears! Lake Clark is kind of half way from Anchorage to Katmai. So… if you don’t care about expense, Lake Clark is a decent “base camp” to stay, eat nice food, and do excursions into surrounding attractions such as Katmai. Note to myself in 10 years, 😂
Katmai
The flight to Katmai had spectacular views. Floodplains with this unusual bright yellow color, big and small lakes in deep blue. Near the shore of these lakes you can often see clear shades of blue, that almost look like tropical waters.
Katmai is this unique and famous place you are guaranteed to see a bunch of bears, as long as you come in the right season. You can even check their bear situation online from their “bear cam”. I arrived in August which can be a hit or miss. July and September apparently are the usual peak seasons. I got lucky and saw 7 bears on that day!
You need to take a ~10-minute “bear school” lesson once you arrive. Here I learned brown bears and grizzly are actually the same species! Then you enter an electric fence and hike a short trail to the bear-viewing platforms! There I immediately saw 4 bears hanging around the famous Brooks Falls fishing.
The main viewing platform limits each person’s visit to 30 minutes. I arrived at a time that wasn’t super busy. I was able to get to the platform twice almost in a row. During my stay I saw more bear showing up. Some stood on top of the falls, but they were actively fishing not just waiting for fish to jump into their mouths. It seems they often attack when a fish just makes a jump and is in this exposed position. More bears actually fish under the falls in the river. And they have different techniques, some pounce with their paws, some dive into the water or rush around. The skill levels are also obviously different: some bears caught a fish every 10 minutes or so, and one poor bear didn’t any when I was viewing.. he was grunting and talking to other bears, maybe begging for some help or leftovers?
The spot on top of the falls apparently has some pecking order. Two younger bears were fishing there side by side for a while, then a big fat guy showed up from upstream. The two young guys caught a glimpse of the big guy and immediately gave up the spot. The big guy moved into the spot, took a sniff, and didn’t even take the spot…
I’m also impressed by how much a bear eats.. each salmon is about 5lb. Bears eat the best parts of salmon with some leftovers, even so, they are still eating at least 10lbs of fish per hour. That feels like a lot..
Our pilot took a different route when flying from Katmai back to Lake Clark. We flew over the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, which is the aftermath of a huge volcano explosion in 1912. The whole valley still looks like a wiped out desert with very little vegetation, and a huge crater with something that looks like a molten core in it. Pretty cool to view from the air. Apparently people do backpacking in this valley too? I cannot imagine.
We also flew over some rivers we could see so many salmon even from the plane. Our pilot pointed out a crashed floatplane from the day before on a riverbank, with two helicopters on the crash site. He did tell us no one died during the incident but still… we saw people on rafts floating in the rivers for fishing, and floatplanes landing in small lakes close to these rivers. We also saw a bunch of bears fishing along the rivers too. I guess this would be a more “intimate” bear viewing experience, as you wouldn’t be on a wooden fenced platform.
Back to Lake Clark
So at Lake Clark Resort I had a nice dinner, and breakfast. I was assigned to a table with 3 other solo travelers and we had good chats about travel experiences. They are also national park lovers, but not nearly as dedicated as the retiree family collectors I met on the plane.
I had another day at Lake Clark resort so I did a moderate hike to Tanalian Falls. This hike turned out to be nicer than I expected. The falls have a pretty big volume of water flow, and you can get very close to it by walking onto some rocks extending into the river. While I was at the fall, the sun came out and treated me with a nice rainbow! I also saw a bunch of different mushrooms on this trail. Overall a peaceful and nice trail. But this trail alone definitely does not worth the dollars to fly in, haha.
Denali
After Lake Clark, I realized I didn’t have much else planned for the last two days of my trip. I could do some day hikes around Anchorage and visit some local spots, which didn’t sound very attractive. The other option was to drive 4 hours north to Denali National Park. Since this was becoming a national park collecting trip… Denali it is. Denali was the 47th US National Park I visited, out of the 63.
My actual experience at Denali was somewhat… uneventful. Denali is an atypical national park. The main road is very long, 92 miles stretching into the park. And it’s currently partially closed due to a landslide. So visitors can only drive up to mile 15, and then take a bus to mile 43. It sounds like bus is the main way to experience the park, and the narrated tour bus was booked up months ahead of time. Another option was to take the “transit bus” which drives the same route, just without narration. And you can get off at any point on the road, hike into the wilderness, then hike back to the road and hail a bus back… Off-trail hiking is allowed and even encouraged in Denali NP. Very different than my usual hikes.. so I only hiked some maintained trails in the Savage River (mile 15) area, and planned to join a outdoor survival skill tour the next morning. But the tour ended up canceled on me because I didn’t finish the payment in time…. so the next morning I just hiked another short trail and wandered around the visitor centers, lol. It was pretty chaotic.
Oh I also visited the sled dog kennels at Denali park. That was fun, to see sled dogs pulling sleds and learn something about them. Sled dogs are very strong and built for long-distance hauling. They are much more efficient than cars and human.
My highlight from Denali was probably meeting this girl on the Savage Alpine Trail. It was a tougher trail than I expected. At the top I saw another solo hiker sitting there coming from the other side, so I started chatting with her. Quite pleasant chats and I was surprised we chatted for so long that I started feeling cold, with swarms of mosquitos flying around us… when we were about to head our ways, I remembered the pizza place at Denali Ginny recommended to me, and asked if she wanted to join me for a pizza dinner, and she agreed! I left my number with her and started rushing down to get signal so I don’t miss the text message (as if I would miss the message if I went down slower, lol…)
That pizza dinner was a blast. I ordered the “MP” price king crab pizza which was about $100 more expensive than any other pizza at the restaurant, and it was delicious! Two full king crab legs as pizza “toppings” was not a scene I expected to see in Alaska, haha.
My best view of Denali was at Mary’s McKinley View Cafe, halfway back to Anchorage, lol. You cannot really see Denali from the first 15 miles of the park road.
Overall, Alaska is a great place. Vast nature, true wilderness, abundant wildlife, truly unique bear views, both mountain and sea, fire and ice. It’s also really expensive, remote, and inaccessible. You have to hire transportations or tour guides to top attractions. You’ll have a good time here if you’re ready to spend, or you’re a true adventurer.