Best hikes in Alaska – PART ONE

It’s hard to wrap one’s mind around a place as huge as Alaska. Where do you even begin to plan a visit that hits some of the best sights?

When I started planning such a trip last year I didn’t realize I was lucky – my traveling partner and I had decided to venture into Lake Clark National Park to see Dick Proenneke’s remote cabin as our reason for the trip. Getting there was the most challenging aspect of visiting Alaska, and we would be tackling it on Day One.

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Proenneke was a modern-day pioneer, not of Alaska but of selfies! He had ventured to remote Upper Twin Lake in the 1960s and filmed himself building a cabin by hand. He wasn’t completely alone up there as hunting cabins sparsely dotted the landscape, but the trip was challenging, involving float planes and lugging in supplies. Some of his self-made video is shown by public broadcast channels (PBS) and that is how we found out about this destination. While he spent something like 20 winters in his cabin we’d just be there a few days to drink in the scenery and to hike around a bit (the cabin itself is kind of a guy thing, lots of men stopped there to study Proenneke’s hand made tools and hewn logs. Yawn!). Since the 1980s the area has become a vast national park encompassing thousands of square miles of mountainous land with numerous salmon rivers and huge lakes.

There are no roads to travel between remote portions of this four million acre national park.

We flew by small plane (6 passengers) over the mountains from Anchorage, 100 miles away, into Port Alsworth, the small settlement on Lake Clark that hosts a lodge, religious community, and the National Park office. The trip by air was stunning as we viewed glaciers, ruggedly steep mountain tops, and azure blue lakes from the sky. We landed on a dirt strip cut into the trees and wandered down to a lake speckled with float planes of every color. After a quick turnaround at the Alsworth Lodge we were back in the air on a float plane for another awe-inspiring trip, this time north to Twin Lakes where we planned to camp for four days.

The size and scope of the wilderness in Alaska is humbling, as it should be. With 663,000 square miles inhabited by just 731,000 people, it offers vast areas to explore. When looking at a map of the state, Lake Clark barely registers 100 miles southeast of Anchorage, but it is enormous – 40 miles long, five miles wide, and surrounded by dark mountains. Emptying into the lake are several large, churning rivers of glacial meltwater that turns the lake a stunning shade of blue.

The flight from Anchorage was about an hour long, the float plane trip to Twin Lake a little shorter but no less stunning. Once we landed and the plane left we began to grasp the remoteness of the lake, the size of the park, and the majesty of Alaska.

Other than wind in the trees, a brook that ran by the camp, and waves lapping on the rocky shoreline the area is silent. It’s sublime yet it took a couple days to fully embrace it. Daily float plane visits – and some days there were a half dozen – became somewhat annoying although they continued to fascinate.

Hikes around the campground at the Proenneke cabin allowed us to get our footing – to get used to making noise when on a trail and to get used to carrying a can of bear spray everywhere (even to the outhouse). The hardest thing to get used to was the lack of trails. Indeed Alaska hiking encourages dispersed use of the land, meaning you bushwhack rather than follow established trails a lot of the time.

That said, we were hemmed in by tall mountains, making a lakeshore hike or a canyon hike the only real options for the short period we were there. The lakeshore hike requires bushwhacking through dense willow, trying to walk on the rocks that line the lake, and/or taking a “high” route above the overgrown fringe on the lake’s edge which were all exhausting.

We carried fishing rods just for the opportunity this lake offered and were not disappointed. Among the freeze dried dinners we ate while camping here were a couple of delicious fish dinners (one lake trout, one salmon) that will forever be remembered. Another thing we’ll remember forever is jumping into this glacial lake … it was a mad scramble after a long hike to strip down and immerse oneself before sanity prevented us from dunking. I can’t imagine the actual water temperature — in mid summer I’m guessing 45-50 degrees? Soaping up and rinsing (biodegradable soap only of course) took an extra dose of mental stamina.

At the campground we met a few people who were on organized hikes and paddle adventures but didn’t feel that their experiences were in any way better than our do-it-yourself trip. In fact one group’s 30-mile bushwhack from Turquoise Lake didn’t actually sound like much fun at all!

Twin Lakes/Proenneke Cabin = highly recommended.

Stay tuned for best hikes in Alaska Part 2 and more!

Tags: Alaska, backpacking