Top Travel Memories: Mount Marathon Hike

Before we had kids, we were a little more gutsy than we are now. I'd like to say that it's because we became boring, but the truth is we became TIRED. And quite frankly, you can't do stuff like what I'm about to describe to you when you're getting broken, light sleep all the time. Or rather, you can, but who the heck would want to?

If you recall, in September 2011, we took our "babymoon" to Alaska when I was 17 weeks pregnant. There were some pretty hard-to-top memories from this trip. (In fact, FOUR of my Top Travel Memories are from this trip alone!)

While there, we did a LOT of hiking, and to be honest, this particular day started out pretty bland. Alaska was strange like that: You expect it to be all wilderness and what not, but when you're in the city, it's pretty regular, excepting that you're on the ocean and in the mountains at the same time.

We had a boring morning, rested a bit, and then around 2pm, we decided that we had enough energy to check out Mount Marathon.

We TOTALLY underestimated this hike. See, every year, there is a big race up and down the mountain, so we told ourselves, "Shoot - if people RUN up this hill, it can't be THAT big a deal to hike, right?" Oh.My.Goodness.

What we didn't realize was that the "race" up the hill looks a little more like this, than a full out sprint:

Photo Credit

Yeah, totally ridiculously fit people about ready to pass out, and climbing slowly up the inclines. It's ridiculous. But, of course, I never researched that. And ya know, who really cared anyways, since we weren't racing, right? I mean, they have an entire safety course that people are encouraged to attend before taking on this race. And they encourage you to be well-schooled on how to get yourself down the mountain if injured because there is no medical staff along the way. It's a pretty hard core race! But I digress.

The mountain trail really starts RIGHT in town. We were expecting some winding road to take us a little ways out of town and then have a trail head and stuff, but literally we drove down this road, parked on one side of the street, and directly on the other side of the street was the trail head.

It was insane! We took the Switchback trail, and even that (avoiding the dangerous, slippery inclines) was pretty intense. I don't even know what the incline was on those first couple stretches (probably something like 40%), but it felt like we were walking up a wall, and my calves were killing me. I was a sweaty beast by the time we reached the second stretch.

I'm sitting here puzzled when looking at this picture, trying to figure out why on earth Mark was wearing his dressier shoes for this hike. Weirdo! ;) After coming to the end of the Switchback trail, we heard rushing water and figured we must be coming upon a waterfall, so we followed the sound, and we found a little babbling brook coming down the mountain.

Our one regret about this day climbing Mount Marathon was that we didn't start sooner and bring a sack lunch with us. It would have been nice to not be in a hurry to get back down the mountain before it got dark, and maybe we would have actually made it all the way up.

We found some wetter parts of the trail (I was GIDDY when we came across these incredible flat stretches, even if they were muddy at times).



It was just incredibly beautiful here! It felt mystical wandering through the jungle-like trails: So peaceful, so serene.



We would occasionally come to a clearing, which would allow us little peaks at the views to come!





I know you're totally curious as to how we took that picture of the two of us with nowhere to set our camera in the wilderness, no? Yeah, we totally dangled the DSLR from this sign and hoped that it would take a decent shot without blowing in the {non-existent} wind.

At this point, we were about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, but seriously - we just couldn't make it further. We wandered for a little while, but we were wiped, moving way slower than we should have been, and it was getting later in the day. We were terrified of getting stuck here in the dark, so we stopped and started back down shortly after.

Not to mention, we started coming across moose tracks...fresh ones...in hoardes. And moose poop.

But we did go slightly further, then trekked back into the brush a little bit, behind some trees, until we saw this:


Here's the place where we saw the imprint of where a moose had layed!! Crazy!!

We made it all the way to here...and there was the top of Mount Marathon, but after we talked a bit with a guy who regularly hikes the trail, he said even an experienced hiker would take at least another hour of hiking to get to the top there, so we decided to call it quits.








The hike back down the mountain proved almost as difficult as it was getting up! Our knees were killing us by the time we made it down!

It was an incredible hike, and one of those memories I'll never forget! I would highly recommend it to anyone physically fit enough to not pass out with those insane inclines!

Top Travel Memories : Hiking to see Grewingk Glacier

During our visit to Homer, Alaska at the end of August 2011, we had a few unplanned days. We initially thought maybe we'd just take the ferry over to check out Halibut Cove, but after doing a little more research, we decided to take a ferry over to do the Grewingk Glacier hike instead.

It was a clear morning, and a short ride over to the trail head across Kachemak Bay, and before knew it, we were getting off the little ferry shuttle and taking in views like this:

And the NEXT thing we knew, the ferry was gone, and we were there. Alone. And there were signs about how to handle bears and wild animals - YIKES!

The walk was out of this world! It was so peaceful and quiet and serene. We did see the occasional trace of fresh bear droppings (okay, it was all over the trail), which instilled a bit of the fear of God in us - especially with no weapons to defend ourselves, and (stupidly) no mace.

The hike, although very easy hiking for the most part, seemed to take a lot longer than it should for only 1.8 miles, but before long we saw the sign pointing us toward the glacier, and we finally saw the first other hikers we had seen on the hike, which made us feel a little less alone and lost in the woods.

It wasn't too much longer before we finally got our first view of the glacier. Breathtaking!

It was such a surreal moment for us being all alone in the wilderness. Incredible, really!

Of course, the part that I failed to mention until now about this trip (for those who haven't followed too closely) is that this was our "babymoon" of sorts, and here I was 17 weeks pregnant with our son!

It was really cool to see the big chunks of glacier ice floating in the secluded lake!

It was COLD down by the water there, but we were able to stay warm enough :) Mark enjoyed skipping rocks for a while.

We even got to pick up some big chunks of glacier ice - SO cool!

After a short visit at the glacier, we knew we had to keep moving, as our ferry pickup was in just a couple hours, and we didn't know how long the rest of the hike would take us. (The full hike round-trip took just about 4 hours)

It's a good thing we got started when we did, because while the walk in to the glacier took just a very little time, the hike out to Halibut Cove was exhausting with lots of hills and obstacles.

It seemed like we had been hiking forever when we finally spotted this sign!!

We were thrilled to finally be at the brink of Halibut Cove and so close to the trail head. However, we still had our work cut out for us, since it was all downhill zig-zagging all the way down to the water level.

We finally did make it down to the landing, though, and thoroughly enjoyed the absolutely incredible views once we finally got to sit down and take it all in:

We were completely exhausted by the end of the day, and were so grateful for the hot tub and some Fat Olive's pizza (YUM!!) that evening before an early bedtime to rest our sore bodies.

It was an experience that absolutely will be hard to top in our lives. Hiking to a secluded lake made from glaciers in the wilderness in Alaska while 17 weeks pregnant? Yep - I did that!