Catching up and Mount Jumbo

I have a lot to catch up on with this blog. I thought about not sharing my summer experiences and just picking it up now, in September, only blogging about things moving forward. But I realized that we did a lot this summer and I want to share it and document it.

Plus I have some photos I want to share. And I didn't realize how much I missed blogging until I started writing again last week.

I guess I will pick up where I left off. May was a busy month for me. We had such nice weather that I was out rock climbing a couple of times a week, and even did my first rock lead. But as I suspected my interest in rock climbing waned after I hit all the regular spots.

Brian and I went on a two week vacation and when we came back we had six straight weekends of trips planned. That combined with bike training and there just wasn't any time to climb.

We took two weeks off at the beginning of June to tour Southeast Alaska by ferry and then headed up to the Yukon for some mountain biking.

After our one way flight to Juneau we stayed with our friend Ben's parent's in Douglas. I think I like the Douglas side better than the Juneau side. You can watch the cruise ships come down the channel and park themselves at a safe distance on the OTHER side of the water. You can hike out on the beach and it's quiet. I don't think tourists make it over there. It feels more like a community and less like a tourist town. I imagine that's what all of the Juneau area is like in the winter.

We decided to head up Mount Jumbo because it was close and we only had about 4 hours before dinner. I now understand why our friend Ben is such a strong and fast hiker. You step out of town onto the trail in Douglas and you immediately start going straight up.

We climbed up through the forest for about 45 minutes and then came out to this boardwalk and the blaring sun. It was about 75 to 80 degrees for our entire stay in the Southeast. A nice change from what we are used to in Anchorage, but not ideal hiking weather.

There was still quite a bit of snow towards the top. We decided to turn around when we were almost to the top because we didn't want to be late for dinner, but we did get some great views of Juneau before heading back down.

My favorite part of the hike was this meadow of wildflowers about half way up.

That night after dinner we hiked along the beach in front of the house.

The next day we decided to try to climb Mount McGinnis before having to catch the ferry to Sitka, more on that to come..