The departure for the Glacier has be delayed 4 hours, so in my hang time I wanted to attempt something.  

 

I spend a bit of time with a friend from Soldotna this week, and we went on an amazing run Wednesday evening at Glen Alps.  Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a camera to document one of the most beautiful runs of my entire life: the picture at the top of the blog is unfortunately one from my Flat Top adventure.  While we did see a ton of flowers and plenty of lupins, there is no visual documentation from the recent run.  When I mentioned this to my running buddy, he said I should try a word picture instead.  I am not sure that a public place is a good one for this, as I have not tried any descriptive writing in a very long time, but I thought that it would at least get me to take it seriously and perhaps produce some honest feedback.  Read on at your own risk:

 

    As we left the parking lot at seven thirty, it was a perfect sixty five or seventy degrees out.  Clothed in deliciously less cumbersome material than most runs, we headed out to the powerline without much of a plan.  The lack of a plan made the outcome all the more wonderful as the run seemed to unfold perfectly.  Deciding against hoofing it all of the way up to the Ballfield plateau, we made our way smoothly down-valley to the bottom of the Williwaw drainage.  Apart from the occasional spice of quality mud bogging, the trail was a nice firm but moist dirt.  The sun had a friendly late afternoon glow and all of the alpine flowers seemed to beam at you from everywhere; I remember thinking about the notion that people just read about having wildflowers all around them.  It was firmly dispelled.  The blooms formed a nice even sprinkling of color throughout the downy verdant coating of the lower slopes of the ridges,  happily drinking up all of this evening warmth and sunlight.  Having no pressure to push the pace, recovery workouts are a good time to explore and go by inclination. There is no need to get a solid workout in, so running for a while on a rolling gradual downhill, picking your way effortlessly around all of the small rocks, bushes and streams, is absolutely acceptable.  In fact it’s wonderful. In addition, one is much less likely to be counting down until turn around time, so you are much more able to focus on your surroundings and really experience the place.

    Rounding the fork and heading up the Williwaw drainage is a right turn into a bowled valley.  The stream can be heard somewhere off to your left, and the first part of the trail is in an old stream bed...