Ben and Me

Well, I went with another male from the St. James House (a church run home for college aged kids who want to stay active in the Orthodox church) to go hike Crow Pass. Unfortunately, we ran into a few troubles along the way. First, we were unable to drive all the way to the trail-head and were forced to hike to it from about two miles out. The way was blocked by snow that was still on the ground as well as an avalanche or two the came across the road. Second, as we were hiking along, the trail disappeared along the side of a mountain, covered with snow that was just asking to avalanche. After seeing that, Ben Temby (don't actually know how to pronounce it properly) and I started to hike straight up the side of the mountain to where we could see it was clear of snow. When we got up there, we saw several piles of what appeared to be goat fur and a lot of bear signs. So we decided to head back down and find a place to camp because it was about 1:30 A.M (did I mention that we started about 10:30 P.M?). On our way back down I lost one of my Nalgene bottles. We found a place to camp and made spaghetti for "dinner" and then slept. Don't worry, we stashed the food in a tree about fifty feet away from our tent. We ended up setting the tent up on snow, which was a bad idea because the snow got frozen at night and I couldn't move my left hand at one point when I woke up in the night. We got up at around eleven o'clock in the morning, packed up and headed down. When we got to where we were dropped off, we saw a Beamer with a man in it asking about the conditions. We told him and then started hiking back to Girdwood. He ended up turning around and gave us a ride to the Alyeska Highway (which is kind of an ironic name because it is really just a road, not a highway). Then Ben and I walked to the Girdwood gas station. On the way there we got ahold of Liz Chafen (also a member of the St. James House, I don't know how to spell her last name...) and she agreed to pick us up there. While we were waiting, Ben and I ate cold oatmeal and sat around in front of The Bakery. Ben smoked his pipe while I sat in silence. After waiting about a million years (1.5 hours), Will Klatt (to some, his last name is Ihde) and his fiancee Liz came and drove us home. I got home at around 2:30 in the afternoon.