Alpenglow (Hike)

Nearing the summit. Credit: Matt Rafferty

You can’t take your eyes off of her: The elegant Mount Alpenglow presides over Turnagain Arm. Her delicate ridges descend to the sea like folds in a geologic dress. Her train, a chiffon-thin western ridge flecked with tundra and meadows, floats behind her with the airiness of mist on the Arm and twilight over Cook Inlet.

Every hiker, skier, and backpacker has nearly driven off the side of Seward Highway at one point or other, gazing at her from across the arm. Yet hardly anyone climbs this stunning and singular peak, because there is no trail, no trailhead, a river blocking access, and some 2,000 feet of brush. According to the summit register--a small peanut butter jar that Wayne Todd cached among rocks 17 years ago--only about a dozen or so groups have climbed Alpenglow in the last two decades. Years go by in which nobody climbs the loose scree slopes to her summit. Based on finding only the faintest of game trails, even goats rarely venture to those heights.

Yet Alpenglow is not a particularly arduous or technically challenging hike. With views stretching from the Tordrillos to Carpathian, the Eagle River high peaks to the Harding Ice Field, and the most lofty view of the bore tide from anywhere along Turnagain Arm, it should be on every hiker’s short list.

To hike Alpenglow, park at the takeout for Six Mile’s Third Canyon, taking care to leave enough room for raft company trailers to pull in and turn around. This takeout is at the end of an unmarked gravel road at mile 7.1 of the Hope Road. The gravel road is about a quarter mile long, and has convenient informal campsites for hikers who want to drive down the night before.

An Alpenglow ascent starts by crossing Six Mile on a canoe, packraft, or some other boat. The water here is flat but relatively fast moving, and almost always too deep to ford. A cable that used to cross the river is severed and no longer an option to get across the water. After crossing the river, hikers can head directly uphill toward the ridge or follow a small informal trail upstream and parallel to the river before hanging a left up the ridge. The low elevation woodlands at Alpenglow’s base have less heinous brush than you might expect. There are patches of devil’s club, but also extensive old growth forest with a  fairly open understory and decent walking. Several hundred feet higher, bark beetles and climate change have caused extensive deadfalls, among which devils club flourish. This is the worst bushwhacking on the trip, but fortunately it is not continuous. Try patching together stands of intact forest to minimize time in the areas of deadfall, generally aiming to stay on the ridgeline.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 feet of altitude, the forest gives way to mixed alders and meadows and then transitions quickly to alpine tundra. This part of the ridge, with a small false summit known as Bradley Peak, has prolific blueberries in late summer. It also has views that will make the fastest hiker slow down to a crawl. The ridgeline is directly above Turnagain Arm, and from thousands of feet up the Arm’s muddy channels look like delicate floral tendrils. During more extreme tide cycles, this ridgeline provides a bird’s eye view of the bore tide surging up the inlet, with its miles-wide mass of water washing over a succession of mudflats.

The ridge line begins with easy walking, and becomes narrower and more uneven as it climbs toward Alpenglow’s summit. The most treacherous part of the climb is a long scramble up a steeper pitch of very loose, sharp rocks. Exposure to falls isn’t as dangerous as the potential to dislodge a rock onto one’s climbing companions below. It is wise to bring a rock climbing helmet, and be sure to maintain enough distance so that one climber is never in the fall line of rocks from her partner. This requires spacing out several hundred feet in one spot on the steepest and loosest part of the ridge, which is high above the remnant glacier in Alpenglow’s massive northwest-facing bowl.

The final few hundred feet to the summit are lower angle, and on a broad, easy ridge. Alpenglow’s summit also has plenty of room to lounge and enjoy nearly limitless views. The common ski slopes of Turnagain Pass look small with Carpathian and Isthmus Icefield peaks looming behind them. Beyond Portage Lake and Bard Peak, massive glaciated peaks loom at least a hundred miles away. Beyond the mount of Turnagain Arm, the full sweep of the Tordrillos and Neacolas line Cook Inlet. To the south, Silvertip and other fairly high peaks around Summit appear diminutive compared to the massive rock and ice further south around the Harding Icefield.

If only you could fly down. Well, some can. And should. Because everyone else has to descend back down through the deadfalls and devils club. Carhartts are the best apparel in dry weather, ideally with leather gardening gloves. Crossing Six Mile at the bottom of the descent, Alpenglow’s distant peak, bare rocks above an old glacier in a vast alpine wilderness, seems as distant and even more mysterious than before.