Beary Berry Blog

Yellow Raspberries at Crow Creek

It's berry season in the 49th state!  With the fireweed blossoms nearing the tops of the stalks, rumor has it that winter is only 6-9 weeks away.  It's so hard to believe that, given we just celebrated our 1-year anniversary in this amazing place.  Usually I try to update you on a week's worth of happenings, but our latest "adventure" warrants a blog all its own.

Heading up Crow Creek Pass

The days this week have been much warmer than usual, rising to 82 degrees on some days.  With no rain and minimal wind (and no air conditioning), the temperatures in our house have almost reached the same digits.  Thank goodness we can open the windows!  Window box and ceiling fans do help, and when the temperatures plummet to 40-50 degrees in the night, the house cools down quickly. With such great weather, we get out whenever we can!  This past Saturday, we headed to Girdwood, Alaska, for berry picking.  Ironically, their Blueberry Festival is actually this coming weekend; but when the raspberries (yellow and red) and blueberries are ready, you alter your plans to fit their harvest schedule!

Crow Pass, Girdwood, Alaska

Girdwood, Alaska is like most of the outer communities -- it's an eclectic little town, bustling in the summer with tourists and bustling in the winters with locals.  It is home to Alyeska Ski Resort where the "haves" from Anchorage and the Valley ski in the winter.  We walked through the hotel before a hike, and felt like we should pay someone just for stepping into the lobby. It was that nice... Interestingly, people pay LOTS of money to ski there when they could go to Hatcher Pass with their own equipment and ski for FREE.  We're very glad we live closer to the freebie.

Beluga at Sunrise

At any rate, we began our journey early, hoping to get some good berry picking in before the temperatures soared.  The tide was in as we passed Beluga Point and the sunrise made the waters in the bay just sparkle.  As the Seward Highway winds out of Anchorage toward the Kenai Peninsula, we could just make out three of the four glaciers for which Girdwood is known: from left to right, Crow Glacier, Goat Glacier, and Eagle Glacier.

Crow Glacier, Goat Glacier, and Eagle Glacier

Our initial trek took us down Crow Creek Road. We debated about stopping at the Gold Mine for "berry directions," but opted instead to continue until Crow Creek Road dead-ended at the foot of the glacier on Crow Pass Trail.  We could see a few berries on the side of the gravel road, but decided to finally stop at the trailhead parking lot.  As we climbed the gravel road and crossed two one-lane bridges, it felt like we were the only ones on Earth. And then...we pulled into the trailhead parking lot...hikers, bikers, campers, dogs, and berry pickers were everywhere!  Michael's deductive police skills told us "this must be the place"...too bad his skills (and our previous experiences) didn't tell us, "maybe you should bring the gun."  Crow Pass Trail winds its way through thick mountain foliage to the base of Crow Glacier.

Crow Glacier

Unfortunately we didn't make it all the way to the glacier because we really wanted to harvest the wild raspberries and blueberries -- and that was slow going!
Ethan is not a very good harvester of berries; well, actually, let me rephrase that. He's a great harvester, but a poor saver.  He announced at the beginning of our trek that he intended to eat every berry he found! At least he is true to his word.

Eating all the profits!

Climbing trees at Crow Pass

Michael Dives in Head First!

Buried in Raspberry Bushes

We found an amazing tree to climb and could see the mountains for hundreds of miles.  Ethan even said that Crow Pass was almost more of a favorite to him than Hatcher.  Because of our recent harvesting of fireweed and our experiences with "pick your own fruit" farms, we definitely had a different vision for berry harvesting.  As we hiked, we would each catch glimpses of red and gold raspberries which would cause a frenzied scramble into the brush.  After grabbing a few berries and getting scratched by the thorns, Michael donned his work gloves and dove into the bushes head first -- literally.  Ironically it wasn't until after I looked at all of our pictures that I realized how very dangerous it was for us to have left the gun in the car.  We were making plenty of noise, but the brush was sooo thick there could have been any number of wild animals munching berries and we would have never known it!

The Crow Trail with Mountain
Waterfall in the Background

Throughout the trail we encountered numerous hikers and only a few other berry pickers.  We never did determine if they were having the same difficulty harvesting that we were.  After a couple of hours of disappointing returns, we decided to head back to the trailhead and walk across one of the bridges to another spot that we had eyed earlier. As we walked through the parking lot, Michael grabbed his gun "just in case" while Ethan and I cooled off down at Crow Creek.  The creek itself was flowing like a river, and because Ethan is all boy we cannot walk past any water body here without getting close to it, touching it, walking in it, or throwing a rock or stick in it and watching what the falls will do to our objects.  Only this time, as we raced to the creek, Ethan surprised some sort of animal that tore off through the bank-side brush causing quite a stir.  Ethan has been faster than I have for a long time; but as he reached creek-side, and I caught sight of big, squatty, furry hindquarters tearing through the bushes, he froze!  FIGHT or FLIGHT?! FIGHT or FLIGHT?!

Ethan's Bear Scare at Crow Creek

Well, neither for us, actually.  Michael arrived, with gun in tow, and couldn't figure out why in the world we were frozen at the creek's edge, and not skipping rocks into the water.  I sounded like a broken record..."I think we just saw a bear. I'm pretty sure we just saw a bear. I really think we just saw a bear. Do you think we might have seen a bear?"  Since what we saw ran away on all fours and was much smaller in stature than a moose, and since almost any dog runs toward humans instead of away from them, Michael was pretty convinced that we did, in fact, see a bear.  Thank goodness it was running that quickly in the opposite direction!  We have no idea if it was a grizzly or a black bear that had brown fur (yes, those are real things), but that part really doesn't matter.  What does matter is that we think we saw a bear...did I mention we saw a bear?  And that it was Ethan's running toward the water that surprised it back into the brush?  So what did we do? We threw rocks into the water, revised the creek's nomenclature as "Ethan's Bear Scare" (interpreted a variety of ways!), and took pictures.  Then we continued across the bridge to our next berry patch.  Ethan and I picked along the roadside while Michael scaled the side of a hill and buried himself, yet again, in the berry bushes.

Giant leaves in the Rainforest

The Northernmost Rainforest

From there, we traveled back down the mountain, stopping at the Northernmost Rain Forest (another real thing) and along the roadside to gather a plethora of blueberries!  The blueberries really made the difference in what might have otherwise been an unsuccessful harvest.  With 1/4 of a bucket of berries, we decided to take a break and head to Alyeska for one more hike.

Plethora of Blueberries! Ethan can't show a "real" smile because his mouth is full of blueberries!

We hoped to hike the Winner Trail to the hand tram across the Gorge, but that hike was longer than the time we had available for the remainder of the day.  We had opted to leave Ahtna at home with Alex, but with his work schedule, we knew we couldn't complete the hike and be home in a reasonable time for our responsibilities to her.  We did get about halfway to the Gorge before turning back and heading for home.  Alyeska was running its own tram to the top of its highest ski lift for the tourists, and Michael was just itching to do it.  Ethan and I both looked at him and told him he could go for it!  We would pray for him and wait at the bottom.  Bahaha!

Alyeska Tram

Two Trams Crossing Paths at Midday

No trip to Girdwood is complete without a stop at the Tesoro Ice Cream Shop. With death by chocolate ice cream and fireweed ice cream inside waffle cones, our day in Girdwood came to a very pleasant end!  Ethan and I slept almost the whole way home.  Michael may have, too; but I hope not, since he was driving!  And what did we have to show for our adventure (besides some amazing pictures and memories)? 4 cups of berries that translated nicely into a pint and a half of tri-berry quick jam.

Alaskan Wild Berries

Tri-Berry Jam

And as we recall our beary, berry adventure, we will praise the Lord for His creation and for His protection!  Wishing you all a very blessed week!

"Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble;
thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance." Psalm 32:7