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| Hiking | 2.00 Miles |
317 AEG |
| | Hiking | 2.00 Miles | 1 Hour 25 Mns | | 1.41 mph |
| 317 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Another short hike with Mrs OH and our grandson in the Chugach State Park during our 8-day visit to Alaska. The trailhead is easy access directly off the Old Glen Highway with a $5 parking fee payable via credit card in the unattended TH kiosk. The well-maintained trail with a very modest AEG passes a number of viewpoints of the Eklutna River Gorge on its way to a viewpoint of Thunder Bird Falls on the creek of the same name. The trail side is decorated with an abundance of beautiful large leaved Devil's Club with clusters of bright red berries.
We would see the Devil's Club on a couple of the other hikes we did during the week. We would also see fresh bear scat on some of these same trails even though we had been told by locals "Don't worry about bears on trails distant from salmon spawning rivers, they're all down on the riverbank eating salmon." I did some quick research on whether or not the Devil's Club berries are edible after returning from our trip. From Microsoft CoPilot: "While the berries are toxic or inedible to humans, bears do eat the berries - enthusiastically, in fact. In Alaska’s temperate forests, bears have been observed consuming massive quantities of these berries during mid to late summer. Bears also help disperse the seeds through their droppings, aiding forest regeneration. If you're hiking in berry-rich areas, that’s one more reason to stay alert and give wildlife plenty of space." Might have been good to know this before our trip, but then Mrs OH with her obsessive fear of bears probably wouldn't have agreed to go hiking. |
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