Last week Toonie and I took a hike to Thunderbird Falls It’s a two mile (Round trip) hike through the snow. One thing that I noticed right away that was different than the Eagle River Nature Center was that the trail was not groomed. This meant that with each step, my feet would fall deep into the fluffy powder of snow.
 |
| Sun already making it's descent 3:30pm |
 |
| Run Toonie, run! |
It was about 3:00pm when we started the hike. Sunset is around 4:30pm but as you can see by the pictures the sun was already making it’s descent. One thing I have begun to notice is that the sun no longer makes it up over the mountains. It’s highest point is around the 1:00pm hour and depending on where you are it does not make a full appearance over the mountains.
Another interesting thing to note is that the sun does not set in the west. It sets more in the south, southwest. This makes for driving on the Glenn Highway difficult when heading to Anchorage between the hours of 3 and 4pm.
Toonie and I arrived at the canyon platform which overlooks the Eklutna River. From here I also caught a glimpse of a beautiful snow capped mountain in the distance.
From there we continued our trek to a long boardwalk (although if I had not hiked before, I would have never guessed with all the snow) and finally we arrived at the Thunderbird Falls. It was interesting to see them frozen. I put on my larger lens to get a close up of the beautiful ice sculptors and frozen waves of water.
 |
| Summer vs. Winter view of Thunderbird Falls |
 |
| Frozen falls |
 |
| Ice sculptors |
After taking in the view, Toonie and I pivoted around to re-trace our steps back to the car. On the way back I couldn't help but notice the snow on all the trees. It just stacks up in the still, calm air. Unlike Minnesota with the constant blowing winds, here the snow piles up even on the smallest of branches creating sculptors of their own. I found a very interesting snow stack (or hang) on a tree branch. The snow looked like little ruffles hanging off the tree branch. This intriguing phenomenon made for a great photo.
 |
| Ruffles on the branch...interesting |
 |
| More ruffles... |
We made it back to the trail head right before dark as it was about 4:30pm the time of sunset. A good hike, in beautiful country.
No comments:
Post a Comment