Moderate Hike at Wide Bay on a Picture Perfect Day

One little misstep could mean disaster, when hiking in Alaska. I may have been playing it up a little for the camera here.

 

Walking on the plateau, with beautiful lakes and ponds between the ridges. There is some interesting geology going on here.

What scenery! The landscape here at Wide Bay is out of this world. I couldn't believe our luck as the weather held out for another wonderful day of hiking on our 10 day Alaska expedition cruise. Today we are at an outer bay in the Ugashik district of the Alaskan Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge. What a mouthful. I had a group of hikers who wanted something in between a hard charger level and a beach walk easy level. The moderate hike was born.

I took them to a very nice beach landing, where we slid out of the small boat into the shallow water. Not a problem since we all had the 'Alaskan tennis shoe' on, aka. big rubber boots. We saw a couple of red foxes playing farther down the beach. I had been here before, but I wanted to try something different today, so we started down the beach to look for an easy way to get up ontop of one of the 60ft high ridges that could take us deeper into hiking territory. The cliffs were a bit steep, running down to the beach, but there was a rocky edge to a trickling waterfall that looked almost like steps. I tried it out and luckily it wasn't slippery, so up we went.

Once we were ontop of the ridge, we had views for miles in every direction. It was a plateau, covered in wildflower and soft heather tundra. There were no trees anywhere. The tallest plants were some alder shrubs that only sparsely popped up. The meadows were filled with wildflowers, and we made sure to stop and appreciate them. It was a moderate hike after all. But we ended up covering some distance as well. We trailblazed out way from plateau to plateau, find poisonous monkshood plants to an amazing rack of caribou antlers. We ended up on a cliffside providing a great overlook of our boat. We even found some pretty fresh bear scat, reminding us that there were bears in the area recently.

Wide Bay was a huge hit. Even after I made the group scramble down a very steep section at the very end, they all enjoyed and appreciated the trip. A little extra challenge just adds to the overall feeling of accomplishment. And I think the whole group felt like they accomplished something special today.

  Shortly after getting picked up by the small boat, our other group spotted some caribou on one of the little islands. We jetted off to go check it out. I was able to find them and get a couple shots. What a day!

Caribou! One of the rarer creatures that we can see on this itinerary.

Beautiful monkshood flowers blooming in the field. A potent toxin can be made from their roots, called 'wolfsbane.' You do not want to accidentally ingest any part of this plant.

I thought this moss, sending up its fruiting bodies, was too beautiful to pass without a picture.

I had to look this unusual plant up once I was back on the boat. This is a cream gentian, or Gentiana alba. Hopefully the bee is just pollinating the flower and not dead. They are one of the only pollinator strong enough to pry open the flower to access the pollen.

A call for all those that wanted a medium hike. The hard chargers went up a mountain, and the laid back group took a skiff tour, but this team wanted some in the medium challenge range. We ended up doing a little climbing, and covering some distance, but we spent lots of time looking at wildflowers and taking photos as well.

The beach landing and entry to our hike was sweet. We did bottom out on a rogue submerged rock on the way in, but then was all nice from there. We even saw a couple of red foxes playing farther down the beach.

These caribou horns were a big hit. They were pretty heavy, so I was impressed when folks were able to lift them up above their head for a shot like this.

Cow parsnip, late season.

The landscapes in this part of the Alaskan peninsula are stunning. Walking across these meadow filled tundras was like something out of a movie. Every direction we looked was a beautiful scene.

Here is looking the other direction, out over the water, to more islands and peaks beyond.

A couple months ago this was all lupine, not the same color wildflower exist, but it is monkshood splashing the hillside blue.

A random survey marker was found on our hike, right near the end. It didn't say USGS on it, but I'm sure it was for early mapmaking and figuring out the elevations of things.

These rocks provided the perfect path to climb up on top of the plateau for hiking.

Surrounded by the Alaskan wilderness. I would be smiling too!

Is this Alaska, or Jurassic Park? What a beautiful scene for a hike.

We took frequent stops to check out the scenery, but we also made some moves and covered some distance. It was a very nice hike.

The hard and the moderate hiking groups happened to meet up here, so this couple could momentarily be together for the perfect shot.

I saved the hardest bit of hiking for last. At the very end, we had to climb down off the plateau back down to the beach level for our pickup. It ended up being a slide-on-your-butt decent for some of the group.

We didn't see a bear on our hike today, but we were hot on the trail of one that had been here recently.

Sometimes the vista is just too grand for a normal landscape photo....time for a panorama!