Fireweed and Berries

After meeting so many women hikers here, I decided to do a girls only trip across Kachemac Bay outside of Homer, AK.  A 30 minute water taxi ride from Homer to Humpy Creek trailhead.  Without a dock, we disembarked the boat in icy knee deep water.  Mussel shells crunched under our feet as we waded through the sea grass. After changing our shoes and a bite of lunch we headed into an over grown fern forest.  The trail had been used frequently, but not by humans.  I think we were all happy about starting the hike off with a climb above tree line.  We gabbed about anything and everything on the way up while taking turns in front smashing the waist high grass.  The view was spectacular from the top.  We could see Homer, AK and the bay.  If you watch any reality TV shows based in Alaska, you have seen this bay.  Our first night was spent at Emerald Lake.  A perfect spot of a campfire on the water’s edge.  Pitching our tents was a different story.  With few flat areas to sleep the park service decided to build tent platforms. One near the like covered in Salmon Berries and the other high on the hill hidden by tall grass.  The four of us agreed that the safest thing to do for the night was to sleep by the lake…and the berries in 2 tents on one platform.  Safety in numbers right.  The second problem was protecting our food.  The ranger I called earlier in the week mistakenly told me that there was a bear box for our food.  Not wanting to sleep with our food, we stuffed everything we could in “smell proof” sacks, wrapped them in a tarp and covered what we decided to call our bear birthday gift with rocks.  Frankly I was shocked to see the food in tact the next morning.  Between all the bear scat, berries, and our yummy camp meals, no bears stopped by.  Before lunch the next day we hiked a side trail to the base of a glacier.  We high tailed it through the glacial flats and crossed the Greywich Glacier River via hand tram.  Our home for the night was the water’s edge of the glacier we had spent the day seeing.  That evening we sat by the campfire and watched the icebergs slowly drift to shore and tumble as they melted.  Our last morning was spent picking up trash around the area from previous campers and made our way to our pick up point at Saddle Bay.  We filled our bellies along the way with blue, salmon, and watermelon berries while hopping over berry colored bear scat.  A wonderful trip with some outstanding women.  

Our water taxi driver

Fireweed blooming