Alaskans Don't Believe in Switchbacks

Beginning part of trail

A friend from work and I have been talking about getting out for a hike for a while, and yesterday the timing worked out to do an evening hike at Rainbow Peak.  We were joining the mountaineering club, who quickly left us in the dust (I'm a slow hiker).  The hike was listed as "easy to moderate," which makes me think Alaskans have a slightly different difficulty scale than I do.  I've also noticed on many of the hikes I've taken here that Alaskans don't seem to believe in switchbacks, and this one was no exception.

The weather was a bit threatening, but luckily is was only ever a slight drizzle, a bit (sometimes a lot) windy, and on the cool side.  It definitely looked worse on the other side of the arm.  The hike starts of on a pretty gentle (though enough to get me pretty winded) climb up through the birch trees which are gloriously green right now.  Once you're at the point of leaving the trees, an unmarked trail goes straight up.  Luckily there were some smaller stunted trees you could grab onto for leverage.  The views from up there were pretty spectacular, and worth the effort to climb.  I definitely would have been ok with some switchbacks though!

The wind was bad enough that making it to the top wasn't really in the cards.  I would definitely like to go back on a better weather day though.  On the hike we saw multiple eagles, a few dall sheep, and a bear (all from a nice safe distance).

More pictures on picasa.