Eagle River Nature Center

Our stay at Donnelly Creek has ended and we are now at Eagle River Nature Center for our next volunteer job. Got to spend a little more time in Fairbanks before leaving where we visited Pioneer Park again and basked in a hot, sunny afternoon. Then on the 6th we caught a ride to Eagle River with a local named Dirk. I think I'll leave a short description of Dirk for another post as he was another AK character, but here's a picture of our lunch stop where he unexpectedly treated us to smoked salmon, hummus and veges, and the last piece of his blueberry-apple-sour cream birthday pie!

We had a brief view of Denali in the far, far distance outside Fairbanks then clouds in, so here's the view of clouds in front of McKinley (Alaskans call it both).

Eagle River Nature Center is a non-profit within the Chugach State Park, the 3rd largest park in the US at 1/2 million acres. The center is at the end of Eagle River Rd and has many trails, daily interpretive hikes and NO camping.

The views are grand. In a couple weeks the salmon will be swimming up here and we're told we'll be able to watch bears out in the distance having dinner.

The longest trail is the Crow Pass Trail that goes about 27 miles to Girdwood and requires a river ford of glacial temperatures. We'll be doing that sometime probably as a 2-day backpack.
Lots of folks hike it daily and it looks like some of them have a bit of help carrying gear!

Today we hiked a trail in Eagle River called Baldy. Once on top, you can follow the ridge for a couple miles more. On a clear day you can see Denali, but this was not one of those days. The views, though hazy, showed Anchorage, the Knik Arm, and beautifully green and red vegetated mountains. The first picture shows Baldy with Knik in the background. There are many, many social trails on the side of the mountain. We took a wrong turn, missed the main trail and ended up bushwacking straight up which was an adventure! Walked the ridge out toward the view of the second shot.