The day breaks cloudless blue so the popular trails around Juneau will be crowded.  Hoping to enjoy sun in solitude, Aki and I start up the ice covered Lake Creek snowmachine trail. It leads to Auk Nu Meadow where the few scattered trees can’t block the sun.

With my ice cheaters we make good progress through some muskeg meadows, their stunted pines decorated with frost feathers. Then, the climbing begins through a thick evergreen forest. They made the trail for snow machines so its all long steep climbs and has no sharp turns to challenge a snow go’s primitive steering system. The first steep sections, offering only slick ice, rock and dirt, should force any machine to turn back. We never see one.

Aki patrols ahead. Falling into a climbing rhythm, I think about the men who made this trail just so they could drive snow machines to the meadow. While I was out fishing they firmed up the muskeg stretches with gravel and cut a path though these steep woods. Each winter they have  to wait for enough snow to open the trail and suffer through each thaw that melts it. Even on good days it takes hard work to drive their machines all the way to Auk Nu.

After climbing a series of false summits we break through to the meadow, now an undulating sea of snow broken by islands of stunted spruce trees. Frost feathers on the snow sparkle in the unrestrained sun.  The recent thaw followed by hard freeze firmed up the surface, making for easy passage. We exploit this chance to stretch out our strides, no longer worried about slipping on ice.

Snowmachine trails are everywhere and we follow one to meadows edge and look down upon the glacier flowing through the rugged Mendenhall Towers. There is no wind to complete with the bird song drifting up from the forest below. Drunk on sun, space and heartbreaking beauty I begin to understand why those guys built this trail.

Basin Road supports a tendril of Craftsman houses along the flank of Mt. Maria. There’s a high wooden trestle at road’s end that forms our portal to the woods. From here you can see Mt. Juneau quickly rise from Gold Creek to the sky.  Arms of the spruce forest reach high up the mountain’s flanks, separated by avalanche chutes and now frozen waterfalls.

The plan was to walk from Chicken Ridge to Basin Road and take the old mining road to Ebner Falls. A strong morning wind pinned Aki’s ears back when we left the house. Smelling ice in the wind, she threw on the brakes so we reversed course and dropped into Evergreen Bowl and took the Christopher trail across Gold Creek to the Flume Trail. While I was pulling ice cheaters on to my boots Aki alerted and a group of animals broke into the brush uphill of the trail. Later we learned they were 7 mountain goats apparently sheltering by the creek. There is always a price to pay for companionship.

Ice covered the trail from creek to flume trail and it took all my remembered rock climbing moves to make it up the steep path to the flume. This wooden rectangular shaped pipe feeds water to a small hydro electric plant at the edge of the Indian Village. It passes under some major avalanche chutes so we moved quickly and soon joined the trail to the Ebner Falls and the Perseverance mining district.

There is no hope for winter sunlight on this canyon trail, even today with its cloudless blue sky.   It’s all on the mountains above us. With eyes on the icy trail I think of the ghosts of man’s works now collapsed by weather and buried by new growth. Down below some mine buildings survive through the hand of man. The rest is long gone like the ore stamping mill that once thundered day and night at the head of Ebner Falls.

I think of other ghosts like the ones that Aki appears to see on the trail ahead or the soul of the high school student who fell to his death from this trail. We stop and think of him while looking at the ice locked falls.

This morning breaks gray but dry.  Wanting to avoid another slog through soft snow I park the Subaru next to Egan’s Expressway and head onto the wetlands. We walk over thawing grass lands drained by narrow channels. One channel is decorated with red rocks as if just visited by Andy Goldsworthy. The tide is out so we could walk all the way to Douglas Island but stop at the edge of a diminished Gasteneau Channel.

In one day users of these wetlands may enjoy wide spaces created by a minus 3.7 foot low tide but would have to protect themselves from the effects of a high tide of over 19 feet. Aki loves the broad stretches of dry sand exposed at low tide, running circles at top speed. She doesn’t know that if we stayed six hours she would drown under the 17 feet of salt water that will cover almost all the land we crossed to reached her sandy playground.

Others exploit low tide today.  Hundreds of Canada Geese, chased from Lemon Creek fly noisily over our heads. Shortly after a big flock of mallards stirs and a handful of Rock Sandpipers flies close by. Aki watches all but does not chase.

We explore two islands of old moraine thick with spruce, that form battlements above the wetlands. During high tide land animals find refuge here while eagles rest on the trees. A single coyote track shows recent passage through the spruce.

The islands also provide a refuge from the muted wetland colors by offering the dark tones of Sitka Spruce and the fresher greens of low growing broad leafed plants emerging from melting snow. More strong greens shine from the mosses that break down stranded drift wood and cover dwarfed alder trees.

Checking my watch and the water level we head back to the car. On our way three adult bald eagles form one circle of flight while an immature one flies alone. The now rising wind that bothers Aki just adds to their dance.