Saturday, July 10, 2010

Falls Lake Hiking Trip

Scott decided that he wanted to take advantage of the good weather and go on a hike. Jackson was sick so he had to go by himself. After it was over, Scott was glad he went by himself becasue it was a hard hike. He decided to hike the Falls Creek Trail up to Falls Lake. This is the beginning of the trail. It is a three mile hike (one way) with 3600 feet of elevation change. That means really steep! For those that use the incline on a tread mill, that would be the equivalent of being at 23 degrees of slope for three miles. He started hiking at 7:15 pm.

This shows some of the lush vegitation along the hike.

The trail was very narrow at times. For a majority of the trail, it was only one person wide.

This is Falls Creek. The trail followed it all the way up to the lake.
This was the start of a little side trip Scott thought would be cool. He had seen some Big Horn Sheep up in the rocks and thought he could climb up to get a better picture. The mountain he climbed up was so steep he had to climb it on all fours. These were some of the beautiful wild flowers growing on the side of the mountain.

Here are some of the sheep Scott saw from a distance. The following picture shows how far he had to climb in order to get to them. He got within 100 yards to get this picture. He wishes he could have taken a shot at these!

The white dots are the sheep from the other picture. As you can see, it was quite a climb to get to them.

This is a picture looking back at the ocean.

As the trail went higher into the mountains, some of it was still underneath the snow!

The river is underneath the snow coming from the bottom left of the picture.


This shows the lake. It is more of a pond though. It is surrounded by mountains and is fed by the melting snow.

There were areas in the lake that still had ice in it. Scott dipped his head and hands into the water. The water temp was in the 30's!


This is another view as Scott came back down from the lake. This was taken at around 10:30 pm.

This is Scott really glad to be back at his truck done with the hike. He was completely exhausted. He finally finished the hike around 11:45 pm. He is still recovering today!

3 comments:

McKinney Madness said...

These pictures are GREAT!!! I cannot believe he did that by himself, and that it's still so light at such a late hour!! Man... looks like ya'll are living it up there. Hope you're getting used to it! LOVE YOU!

Brooklyn said...

Beautiful scenery!Scott is really in his element. Good thing you and Jackson stayed behind.

Erin Lewis said...

THAT IS AMAZING!!! I still don't know if I would have the guts to go on those hikes, but your pictures make me want to go! I can't believe the sheep and waterfall. You could sell the waterfall picture - it is so gorgeous! Alaska is beautiful and it is great to see your adventures. Take care of one another and see you soon!!!