Two Trails

There are over a hundred trails in Juneau, or so I've been told. As much as Scott and I get out to explore these trails, our range isn’t that great and of the handful of trails we’ve walked or snowshoed on, we’ve already done a few of them twice. This past weekend though, Scott and I did two brand new trails – brand new for us that is – Mt. Jumbo trail on Douglas Island and the Herbert Glacier trail way out the road in Juneau.

 

Going up Mt. Jumbo with Juneau below us.

For most of the way going up Mt. Jumbo I almost felt confident. There were steep inclines but I did them and I felt that I had finally figured out how to use my snowshoes effectively on such gradients. Also, Scott was breaking trail leaving behind nice, stair-like notches creased in the snow. As we got to the part of the mountain where the trees started to disappear, I looked up at what I suspected was not the summit (the summit is always farther than what I hope) and knew I couldn’t go any further – I didn’t have the will or the strength (I almost never have the will to summit a mountain even if I have the strength). My pace had slowed considerably and my confidence had more than waned. I had already, before we even reached that spot, asked Scott if we could turn around. Scott knew my time was up as well. Clouds were moving in and Scott wanted to get to the top before it was completely socked in. I took out my down coat from the backpack and hunkered down as Scott kept going up and up and up. He disappeared from my sight within a few minutes. When I had asked him how long he would be, he said, “Thirty minutes,” which felt like a long time to me, but, in reality, it wasn’t nearly the appropriate time one would need to get to the top from where I had stopped. But true to his word, thirty minutes after he left me, I heard his footsteps racing down. His face was red and he looked a bit worn out, but Scott had made it to the top in likely record time. There hadn’t been a doubt in my mind.

Scott breaking trail.



Scott rushing to the summit.

Any confidence I had felt going up the mountain quickly escaped going down. For me, mountains are always steeper doing down and with deep soft snow, I had no control. For most of the really steep sections, I crouched down, placed my butt on the back of my snowshoes and slid. My mechanism for stopping was just falling over. Writing about it makes it sound fun, but it wasn’t. It was pretty miserable for most of the descent down Mt. Jumbo but, as always, I made it unscratched.

Even if our Sunday choice of hike wasn’t nearly as challenging as Jumbo, the 8-mile roundtrip walk to Herbert Glacier and back still supplied us with some good exercise. The snowy trail was packed down enough by cross-country skiers and other walkers, so we left our snowshoes in the truck. Much unlike Jumbo, the Herbert trail was flat, gloriously and wonderfully flat. Sometimes hiking can be relaxing (although since the trail was flat, that meant we had to walk at a fairly fast pace). Most of the walk was through a forest of trees with furry green branches. On the trail, we encountered a jogger, two cross country skiers with a walker, and a group of three walkers with a Jack Russell dog wearing booties. Once we got to a good view of the glacier’s face, we sat on a high rock and ate lunch.



On the Herbert Glacier Trail.

Our first view of the glacier.