Just Going Along

Three hikes, two mountain ranges, two hours of sleep

Aug 02, 2026

A hiker in a black beanie, tank top, and teal backpack stands on pale granite slabs, looking toward a small whitewater cascade where a creek pours between boulders. To the right, a black and tan dog in a harness climbs a dirt path up a rocky rise, mouth open mid-pant. Thick fog closes off the view beyond the creek, fading the farther boulders to grey silhouettes. — Cassidy and Astra on the Reed Lakes Trail at Hatcher Pass

It started out as our third day in Hatcher Pass. It was July 3rd. It ended over 150 miles away, as the crow flies, in a different mountain range. But it didn’t really end. Three hikes blended into one. There was an anxiety attack.

A view up a green tundra valley strewn with grey boulders, low brush in the foreground still dark with rain. A sharp rocky peak rises at right, its lower slopes green, while heavy white cloud pours over the ridgeline and drifts in patches partway down the mountainsides, hiding the valley's head. — Our campsite view, looking a little wet

It was foggy and overcast in Archangel Valley. It rained heavily the previous day. The forecast had more rain coming in the evening, which was supposed to continue through the weekend, so we figured we'd be looking for bluer skies and drier rock when we were done here.

We got a later start than planned. But we also went our separate ways. Cassidy and I were on our way to the Reed Lakes Trail while the rest of the group went to climb.

We were already time-limited, having agreed to meet the group by 2 or 2:30. Sometime around then. And it was overcast. I didn't take many photos on the way up.

A whitewater creek tumbles down through a narrow rocky gully between banks of green tundra, brush, and grey outcrops. Above, the slope climbs past a patch of old snow toward a talus bowl, where thick fog swallows the upper mountainside, greying out the cliffs behind it. Everything is wet and saturated green. — Reed Creek from the Trail

Close-up of mountain forget-me-not flowers, small sky-blue five-petaled blooms with yellow and white centers, clustered atop thin dark stems. Behind them, a fiddlehead fern unrolls in a soft-focus spiral of pale green, with blurred greens and browns of the understory filling the rest of the frame. — Mountain Forget-Me-Not (*Myosotis asiatica*) along the Reed Lakes Trail

There were a lot of people on the trail. Not quite as many as there were on the Harding Icefield Trail earlier in the week, but still a lot.

Neither of us had hiked the Reed Lakes Trail. The description said a talus portion was not passable for dogs. Despite getting a little spooked early on, Astra did spectacularly, quickly scrambling across the boulderfield and up the creek.

A hiker in a black beanie, tank top, and teal pack steps carefully down big pale granite boulders beside dark pools of water, watching her feet. Above her, a black and tan dog in a harness sniffs its way down the rock. Fog whites out everything beyond the boulderfield, leaving only a faint cliff silhouette. — Once Astra got the hang of things, she was kind of unstoppable

A black and tan dog in a teal harness creeps nose-first down a steep granite slab toward its owner, who stands braced on the rock below in a beanie and tank top, one hand resting on the slab and the other reaching back toward the dog. Dark water pools among the boulders below them. Fog fills the background. — Astra and Cassidy

Beyond the talus we climbed into the cloud, running out of time and wondering if we were going to be able to go all the way up to the upper lake.

A calm, clear stream winds between low banks of brown grass and tundra, its water a pale glassy green over sunken boulders. Sparse green leaves are just emerging on the bank brush. Upstream, patches of ice cling among rocks at the base of a talus slope that fades upward into thick fog. — Reed Creek in the Fog

Cassidy and Astra in the foggy and muddy tundra. Astra taking the wettest route possible.

Lower Reed Lake was in the fog and mostly ice-covered. My anxiety was already elevated from all the passing on the way up, and the crowd scattered across the tundra spiked it more than I expected. I’m not a big fan of hiking around people, especially groups, and I hate leapfrogging. There are multiple parking areas for the trail, and ours was very full, so I had no way to do my usual count to prepare mentally for how many people we might encounter.

Lichen-covered granite boulders sit in a slope of deep green crowberry and moss in the foreground. Below, the shore of a lake emerges: grey water and rotting ice sheets patterned with white, scattered with rocks, everything beyond a few dozen yards erased by fog. — Lower Reed Lake, barely visible through the fog

The shoreline of a mostly frozen lake seen from a low tundra bluff. A band of open water along the near edge shows pale green under a cracked, translucent ice sheet, which whitens with snow cover farther out before fog swallows the far shore entirely. Brown tundra and mossy boulders frame the near shore. — The edge of the mostly frozen Lower Reed Lake

I’m still really friendly and courteous on the trail. Way more so than most of the people I encounter. It’s just that every interaction, every person we pass leaves a little wake of turbulence in my head.

A hiker in a dark camo beanie, black fleece, and large teal backpack stands on brown tundra, hands on her hips, smiling as she looks off to the side. A collapsible teal dog bowl clips to her pack. Beside her, a black and tan dog in a colorful harness sniffs at the ground, tail up. Behind them, the pale surface of a frozen, partly snow-covered lake stretches into heavy fog that erases the far shore. — Cassidy and Astra on the trail

We'd hit the turnaround time we'd need to make it back to the group. We both wanted to keep going, and talked over whether the upper lake was worth being a little late. But the fog wasn't lifting, and we did want to get on the road. We turned around.

Backtracking, we got to the parking area shortly after 2 pm and drove back to camp to meet the group. My first 7.8 miles and 1,800 feet of elevation gain were behind me.

I'd been checking weather forecasts for the whole state for about a day, another version of the same anxiety-related counting. After striking camp, the caravan was off to the Deltas in the Eastern Alaska Range.

Hike 2: Overnight in the Rainbow Basin

Between the number of people on the Reed Lakes Trail and the close quarters with our group, my social battery was running low. I love all of them, have been working with them at the gym for years, but that doesn’t change my underlying social anxiety. I can fully handle a smaller dynamic; I was perfectly happy with Cassidy and Elliott, I had been riding with them this whole trip, and we were on day 8. But with the rest of the group added in, the turbulence in my head was building.

We shared music for much of the five-hour drive. While we had thoughts on where we might camp, there wasn’t a plan; we were just going to wing it based on where the weather looked the best.

Our first stop was near the Gulkana Glacier. There was a boulder nearby that no one in the group had climbed on before, though Cassidy and I had checked it out while hiking in June. The rock looked great. Of course, there is plenty of hiking in the area for those of us not wanting to climb. I liked the idea of staying here; there were great spots for tents, no one else was camped in the area, and it was already past 11 pm. But the group outnumbered me, and they wanted to find a spot in Red Rock Canyon. So we went back on the road.

By the time we got to Red Rock Canyon, it was past 11:30. On the way in, RVs filled the steep initial canyon. People were biking and running ATVs around the makeshift town. Continuing up the road, we found that most of the better camping spots, including the one Cassidy and I stayed at the previous month, were taken. We turned around and found a large open spot to stay.

Shortly after setting up camp, the fireworks started. My low social battery immediately dropped to zero. I don’t come out to the backcountry to hear fireworks. I’m well aware that this is a very popular off-roading spot, another reason I wasn’t keen to camp here on the Fourth of July weekend. We chose to be here, so I tried to make peace with it. But I was past my tipping point.

I packed my bag. I think at this point, everyone guessed I was going to go hiking; the anxiety was readable. Cassidy asked me to wake her and let her know when I returned. I agreed, and then started up the road.

A dim selfie beside a milky, blue-grey glacial stream at twilight. A bearded man in a dark maroon headband and black jacket looks into the camera with tired, wide eyes, an orange pack on his back with a small orange GPS communicator clipped to the strap and a camera slung across his chest. Behind him, brushy green banks and a gravel bar line the rushing water. The light is the deep dusk of an Alaska summer night. — 1 am selfie at the stream crossing

My mind was spinning, and it was getting a little dark (as dark as it gets in early July in Alaska), so I didn’t take many photos along the way. I hiked 4 miles up the road, taking a footpath nearby when possible. I kicked up a ptarmigan at the same spot we saw one three weeks ago. I remember wishing Cassidy was with me to see it.

I turned uphill into the Rainbow Basin, the same hike I did as a solo overnight backpacking trip 8 years ago. By 3 am I was up in the snow at the head of the basin. The sun was already rising. I wanted to keep going. But I also didn’t want to be incapacitated by exhaustion the next day. I turned back. Head still spinning.

The video above shows the area with my narration about glaciers that once existed in this valley. I misspeak here and call the Canwell Glacier the Cantwell Glacier. The Cantwell Glacier is in Denali National Park.

A snow-filled alpine basin in the pale blue light of an Alaska summer night. Smooth snowfields sweep up toward a dark pyramid of rock at left and a broad snow-covered summit at right, with thin bands of exposed scree breaking the white lower slopes. High cloud streaks a dusky sky tinged faintly pink near the horizon. No trace of people anywhere in the frame. — Up in the snowy Rainbow Basin, looking at Canwell Peak - Taken at 3 am

Low mats of purple mountain saxifrage bloom magenta-pink across a slope of grey and rust-colored scree in the foreground. Beyond, the ground drops to a deep valley, then rises again as a massive snow-streaked mountain wall, the pointed summit of Silvertip catching a band of sunset color under heavy grey cloud. Small patches of yellow lichen dot the rocks among the flowers. — Looking over the purple mountain saxifrage (*Saxifraga oppositifolia*) at Silvertip from the basin

Looking across a wide gravel outwash plain threaded by a small braided stream, from a foreground of rocky, sparsely vegetated ground with one large dark boulder. Across the valley, eroded grey bluffs rise to green tundra slopes patched heavily with snow, under a pink-grey dawn sky of soft cloud. — View over the Creek Basin and the Canwell Glacier lower moraine

A broad glacier fills a mountain valley, its lower reaches buried under dark rock debris so that only stripes of white ice show through, widening to clean snow-covered ice upvalley. Snow-laced peaks rise on both sides, and the dawn sky glows pale pink and lavender through breaks in soft grey cloud. The light is the quiet, shadowless pink of an Alaska summer sunrise. — View of the Canwell Glacier on my way back to camp

I stopped by Cassidy and Elliott’s tent on the way back and tried to softly tell Cassidy that I was back and what time it was. I heard a little mumble, but not much response. At my tent, throwing my pack in the vestibule and untying my shoes, I wasn't sure she'd heard me. I’d promised to let her know when I was back. I walked back over and said a little louder, “Cassidy, I’m back.”

She responded, “ok, was the hike good?"

“Yes,” I replied.

“Did you say it was 5 am?”

“Yes.”

This brought my total distance to 19 miles and 3,800 feet of elevation gain. I had 2.5 hours to sleep before the group was waking up.

Hike 3: Gulkana Glacier

Waking up at 7:30, I wasn’t as tired as I had expected. I stayed in my sleeping bag until just before 8, when the group was supposed to be getting up. Everyone kind of pitter-pattered their way through breakfast. It was heavily overcast, but not raining. I set a timer for Lacey eating her bagel.

A girl in a bright magenta beanie and black jacket sits in a blue folding camp chair at a small white camp table, spreading something from a plastic container onto a bagel. A blue water bottle and a phone in a teal case sit on the table. Behind her, a maroon SUV is parked on the gravel with camp gear piled nearby. The ground is loose grey river rock in flat, overcast light. — Lacey preparing her bagel. Timestamp: 8:59 am.

While people were eating, we saw the truck that was parked in the better campsite leave. Quick decision time: could we grab their spot? Clearly, Lacey wasn’t going anywhere soon, so I packed up my tent as fast as possible, threw it in Jules's car, the only one not blocked in and ready to go, and we drove out to the other campsite.

It was still open. I set up my tent in an obvious spot so no one else would be tempted, and we drove back to tell the group the good news.

I have no idea how long it took Lacey to eat her bagel.

By 11 am, the new camp was set up, and we were off to find dry rock. First, we drove back to the Gulkana Glacier area, where we had been just 12 hours earlier. The rain started just south of our campsite as we passed Rainbow Ridge on the Richardson Highway, and it rained hard all the way to the Richardson Monument, which overlooks the Gulkana Glacier Valley.

From the monument, dark clouds were stuck in the valley and everywhere south. It was dumping.

So we turned around and drove north toward the Black Rapids Glacier overlook. Most of the group planned to climb. I was definitely hiking. Cassidy and Jules were hyped to hike, but Cassidy was also stressed about homework after hardly spending any time on it in a week and a half. It’s one of the few times I recommended she not go with me; it wasn’t worth the stress, and we’d be out hiking in the area soon enough. Jules and I decided to drive south again and find somewhere on the edge of the rain to hike, but had no real plan.

As I carried my pack from Cassidy’s car to Jules’s, I dropped one of my full Nalgene bottles, and the thing hit the pavement and split clean in half. All three of us were kind of stunned. I’ve seen broken bottles before, but never like this.

A hand holds up the bottom half of a mint-green Nalgene bottle against a background of sunlit birch forest. The bottle has failed catastrophically: its upper portion is torn and folded over on itself, the black screw cap still attached to the collapsed top, the printed volume markings warped where the plastic deformed. A black watch band circles the wrist holding it. — My Nalgene remnants

We said bye to Cassidy, letting her know that we’d message her updates through my InReach, and jumped back on the road.

It was about 1:30 as we passed Red Rock Canyon. The sky looked much clearer south past Rainbow Ridge than it did earlier. I chuckled at the thought of it being clear down at the Gulkana Glacier; a few hours earlier it had looked like the kind of rain that wouldn't let up for a day or more.

But it was sunny. So we kept driving.

Jules got excited about the prospect of hiking out to the Gulkana, something she'd been wanting to do for a while. It was starting to look like she'd get to.

We reached the Richardson Monument for the second time that day. Blue skies over the glacier.

As we started, I warned Jules that I probably wasn't going to move very fast. She's a notoriously strong and fast hiker; as I'm writing this, she's out hiking the 27-mile Pinnell Mountain Trail in a day. I was tired from the miles I'd already done, and my body hadn't had time to recover.

The trail hits a single-file suspension bridge early on. It spooks a lot of people, and they take their time crossing. And there were a fair number of people on the trail, so I sped up to get us ahead of everyone. We crossed the bridge and never slowed back down.

A selfie taken mid-crossing on a narrow wooden suspension bridge over a milky grey glacial river. A bearded man in a blue shirt with an orange pack and sunglasses pushed up on his head looks into the camera, tired-eyed. Behind him, a girl in a pale patterned hoody, beanie, and sunglasses steps carefully along the single-file planks, holding the cable rails on both sides. Heavy grey clouds hang over a brushy green hillside beyond. — Jules and I crossing the bridge

It only took us 45 minutes to get to the glacier toe (about 3 miles from the car). That might be a record for me, definitely a record while hiking with another person. We maintained a steady pace up on the ice too, stopping a few times to look at moulins (video below), and so I could go over glacier dynamics and safety with Jules.

Looking up the white surface of a glacier toward an icefall, where the smooth ice buckles into a chaotic wall of pale blue seracs and crevasses spilling between dark rock buttresses. Bands of rock debris streak the ice in long diagonal lines. Snow-covered peaks flank both sides under a sky of thin cloud with one patch of blue. The foreground ice is rippled and streaked with meltwater channels. — Sunny view of the Gabriel Icefall as we walk up the glacier | Prints and Wall Art

As we moved into the Gabriel Icefall, dark clouds rolled back in and brought scattered showers. Most of the time, it was light enough that we didn’t need to put on rain gear.

Standing low on the buckled ice of an icefall, looking across ridges of dirty grey-blue glacier ice split by crevasses, one dark slot opening just right of center. The ice rises in pressure ridges toward pale blue seracs above, and beyond them a black rock peak with snow-filled gullies stands against a flat grey sky. Bands of rock dust streak and darken the ice everywhere except a few clean white patches of snow. — Looking over a crevasse at Ogive Mountain

I messaged with Cassidy a bit along the way, sending some photos from the glacier through my InReach. She messaged back that she was feeling a little jealous, and it made me feel bad for sending them. I know she really wanted to go. And I really wanted her here. I reassured her that we’d be out here together soon.

The snowline sat right about at the icefall, so we couldn't safely venture much further. The cliffs overlooking the icefall were also shut off by snow. Without ropes or my snow probe, crossing wasn't an option; the area is heavily crevassed. But there was plenty of exposed ice heading up into the glacier, so we put on our microspikes and continued.

Seracs in the icefall and Ogive Mountain

Eventually the snow closed off everything ahead of us. We were overlooking massive ice cliffs, so I made Jules walk out toward the edge to capture the scale in the video below.

We turned around, my third reversal in a day and a half. The sun poked out of the clouds again. The return had some of the most dramatic light I've seen out here.

A girl in a peach beanie, grey patterned hoody, and black leggings walks toward the camera across bare white glacier ice, watching her footing. Behind her, the glacier steps up in long fractured tiers of grey-blue ice toward a saddle between two dark, snow-patched peaks under heavy overcast. — Jules walking back from the snow edge

From high on the icefall, sculpted towers of blue-white ice stand in the right foreground while the view drops to a vast grey outwash valley, where a braided stream winds over gravel between dark lateral moraine walls. Far beyond, sunlight breaks through storm cloud onto green lowlands and the pale sheet of Summit Lake, with rounded mountains on the horizon under a shelf of nearly black sky. — Icefall seracs and light on the Gabriel Icefall outflow. Summit Lake in the background under a darkened sky. Prints and Wall Art

A tiered wall of glacier ice, white and pale blue, banded with dark debris lines, stretches across the frame below a dark rock peak streaked with snow gullies. Smooth snowfields lap against the base of the ice cliffs in the foreground, under a flat grey sky. — The ice cliffs under Skull Peak | Prints and Wall Art

Hiking down the Gabriel

From the top of the icefall's snow-covered seracs, the view runs down a dark moraine valley to distant lowlands, where a grey column of rain pours from a huge storm cloud onto the plain around Summit Lake, the water just catching a strip of silver light. Snow-patched dark ridges frame the valley, with one corner of blue sky surviving at upper left. — The top of the seracs and rain over Summit Lake. It was incredible how fast the weather would change. Prints and Wall Art

I fell twice while jumping over isothermal snow streams, snow at the melting point all the way through, with no strength left. This was stupid both times; I just misjudged how far it was to the other side, and my heel landed short, going into the slushy snow. At least Jules got a good laugh, and I got the video below, hoping maybe she'd slip too; instead, I got a smug look.

Somehow, I kept up my pace for the return. Maybe I actually slowed down a little, but it felt good to keep moving. The anxiety was mostly quiet for the hike, a welcome change.

That was the end of my walking. Closing out with 28 miles and 6,000 feet of elevation gain in 38 hours.

I checked the forecast while we were driving back to camp. Rain was supposed to set in overnight and continue through most of the next day, our last day out. I suspected I wasn't the only one who'd want to call it early. I didn’t want to spend another wet night out, and then have to pack up a wet campsite in the morning.

Driving into camp, we were greeted by the rainbow below.

A vivid rainbow arcs down out of a grey sky and lands behind a ridge of dark mountains, its colors intense enough to silhouette a spruce tree standing directly in front of the bright base. A fainter secondary bow is visible at upper left, and subtle extra bands of green and purple line the inside of the main arc. In the foreground, dense green brush and scattered spruce climb a hillside on the right, with patches of blue sky breaking through beyond. — One of the brightest rainbows I've seen, in Red Rock Canyon in the Alaska Range. The primary bow dominates the frame; a faint slice of the secondary is visible at the upper left. Just inside the primary's violet edge, you can see faint extra bands, mostly green and purple here. These are supernumerary bows, and they come from wave interference in the falling rain. They only show up when the raindrops are both small, under about a millimeter, and closely matched in size, so the interference from many drops lines up instead of averaging out.

Back at camp, I chatted with Cassidy and Elliott about the weather, and we brought it to the group. After some hesitation, we did agree to leave before the rain set in. With scattered showers already falling, we broke camp, intending to stop somewhere dry to make food on the way back to Fairbanks.

This wasn't the end of a long day; it was the end of the trip. I was sad to be on our way home, but simultaneously relieved. And excited to shower. Looking back, the days all fold into each other, the same way the three hikes folded into one. Turbulence and all, I'd do the whole thing again. And we will. And we'll be out here together soon.

Field notes from the north

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