Flattop CLIMBED! Another thing off the bucket list.....

Hi, Everyone:

Sorry for the delay in updating; not much has been going on the last few weeks (aside from Steve's sister graduating from Michigan State University . . . hooray, Leah!)  But, for those of you keeping track, we are currently at about 17+ hours of daylight and the temperature is in the 50s.  In other words, Spring has sprung in Anchorage.

Anyway, here was a recent visitor of ours:

Spotted.

We have two even-more-recent visitors: Jim and Rese (our friends from college).  They got into Anchorage last night and are spending a few days with us before heading home.  Although they've only been here for 24 hours, we've already had a ton of fun with them.  Last night we went to Bear Tooth (a local movie theater/restaurant pub) for micro-brews and some delicious burritos.

Then today we decided to hike Flattop mountain.  This is a hike that we have been wanting to do for a while (it was on our bucket list) and we decided to take care of it with such great friends.  It takes you up to the summit of the 3,510 foot mountain, which provides awesome views of Anchorage, Mount Foraker, and other surrounding mountains.  There are also two ways to climb it: a well-defined path on one face of the mountain and a steep-climb on the backside.  We decided to do the latter with Steve's co-clerk Aesha and her sister Bryn (who is also in town).

Here's a picture of the mountain:

Anyway, the hike started out totally devoid of snow.  However, it was pretty steep:

About half-way up, the snow became only partially melted.  This left for some needed navigating to try and avoid the pockets of 2-foot deep snow that remained.

As we expected, the views at the top did not disappoint.  It's still an incredible feeling to get 20 minutes outside of downtown Anchorage, and within the hour have hiked to the summit of a mountain.

You can see downtown Anchorage in the distance:

Here's Rese standing at the top looking over:

And then, of course, the requisite picture of us taking it all in:

The views on the way down were also cool.  We got to spend some time looking at (what we think is) Wolverine Peak.  This is one of our favorite peaks in Alaska, mainly because it is named "Wolverine."  GO BLUE!

The hike down was a bit painful on the knees given the steepness but we made it and it was amazingly beautiful.  Thanks to Aesha for the "backside of the mountain" recommendation.  Tomorrow we're trying kayaking in Whittier!  Hopefully we'll have another post for you by early in the week!