Wednesday 10 July
We headed out from the campground back into Seward and Mt Marathon. Weren’t completely sure of what the view would be like as there was a bit of cloud around. One of the campground managers wasn’t what you would call helpful, as we asked her if she knew what the weather was going to be like, and possibilities for clearing cloud to which she replied something along the lines of “I’ve got no idea, I’ve only just woken up!”.
The first part of the hike resembled Grouse Grind, a wider path, but just as steep and rocky. After the first part, the track leveled out somewhat and was a nice gradual climb, snaking up the mountain through some trees and then out into some subalpine bush with plenty of fireweed and great views back down to Seward and the port, with snow-capped mountains in the background.
One we climbed out of the sub-alpine region, the going got quite a bit harder with some steeper rocky climbs, and in one part a schist slope that was very steep and quite challenging. In this upper part of the climb, we were in and out of the cloud, and the temperatures dropped significantly. We climbed to above where there was snow, and the signpost at the beginning of the trail was certainly accurate, describing it as an ‘unmarked trail’. As long as we were going up, we must be getting closer to the top? Walking on this schist rock terrain, came with the saying “oh schist” when something went wrong or we were frustrated, and the saying became quite the laugh.
After a fairly tough 4 hours, we finally made it to the summit at over 3000 ft above sea level. The clouds cleared and the views did not disappoint, just stunning, and certainly enabled some of us to take our minds off our weary legs. Now for the downhill back to the truck.
Some say walking downhill is harder than uphill. We may have doubted that at the beginning, but towards the end, it certainly was tough going. 4 hrs up and 21/2 back down, all feeling pretty weary by the time we got back to the truck. Dani started off the hike saying “I hate this” but as we continued we heard more comments like “This is so cool”, so was definitely well worth it once it was all over.
We stopped into the supermarket to get an ice cream and iced coffee to reward ourselves afterward and to keep us going for the trip to Homer, and Tayla said “Can I sit in the trolley?” when we walked in the doors. Let’s say, it was quite a slow trip around the supermarket with our sore legs. We also used their bathrooms as we had gone the whole hike without using the bathroom! Well, the girls did anyway…
We got back on the road to Homer late afternoon, and when we turned off onto the Sterling Highway, the air was very thick with smoke from all the fires burning on the Kenai. Some nice scenery on the way to Homer but nothing compared to the road in and out of Seward. We got into Homer at 9pm just minutes before the campground office closed, and then headed out to get dinner and went out onto Homer Spit, which was really unique. It is a lovely fishing village, one of our favourites so far. Found a cafe, Fresh Catch, on the spit, and had dinner which was Clam Chowder, Fish and Chips, and Bison Burgers. Our waitress was called Molly and had been to NZ and worked in Whangarei for a time. We went to the supermarket to stock up and by the time we got back to the campground, it was really late. We had a site next to Kay and Joyce, and they had taped a welcome message to their windscreen inviting us for coffee and bagels for breakfast the following day.
