Some quick information about these mountains and then I'll get to the good stuff - the photos!
The mountainous family consists of Red Mountain, the father and the highest of them at 3920' with his mate Alice Peak nearby at 3500'. The sisters consist of Bessie Peak at 3915', Helen Peak at 3856', and Virginia Peak at 3760'. Virginia is the subject of this post and was the last of the sisters that I had yet to summit. Although I have been close to the summit on a couple occasions during deer hunting trips, getting to within a couple hundred feet from the top once, I had never been to the very top which was a situation I decided to remedy recently.
A spell of very nice, summertime weather coincided nicely with my days off from work on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I geared up to hike to the top and spend the night. My previous trips to Virginia involved hiking up with fairly heavy packs with camping and hunting gear followed by hiking down with even heavier packs packed with the results of successful hunting trips. A climb of Virginia Peak goes from sea level to 3760' in about 2 and a half miles of horizontal distance resulting in a pretty sustained steep hike which with a heavy pack is known to be a spirit crushing endeavor, my first hunting trip on Virginia resulted in my friend Nate and I both hiking down with packs ranging from 100 to 115 pounds as we were too successful in our hunt and shot 3 deer between just the two of us. I was happy to be hiking Virginia solely for fun so went as lightweight as possible with only a bivy sack, sleeping bag liner, sleeping pad, a warm coat, a rain coat, minimal food, binoculars, camera, water, and my bug hut which is just a mosquito net with a couple of tent poles.
Alright, enough chitchat I guess, on with some photos!
This is Virginia from the ocean. She doesn't look like much from this perspective but bear with me, it gets better.
These photos were taken from about the halfway point of the hike, maybe more like 5/8 of the way up. For future reference, the right side of these photos is north, the left side is south. The hike up involves going up the ridge in the foreground to the right. There is a pretty significant drop to the north of it offering some good views of the other sisters and of the valley between Virginia and Helen which is the next sister to the north.
This was my first wildlife sighting of the trip seen as I was looking to the north into the valley between Virginia and Helen. These two black bears were on a small "plateau" type area about 200 feet below me. June is mating season for black bears and mating was what at least one of these two bears had in mind. This was a male bear patiently or persistently? or doggedly? or annoyingly? following a female bear with making little bears on his mind. The female never showed much interest or disinterest in the male, she just kept a pretty uniform distance ahead of him as I watched these two for about an hour until they went out of sight over the horizon. This was interesting to watch and provided me with a very funny (to me anyway) hypothetical narrative as to what these bears might have been saying to each other were I to give them a comedic human personality.
Getting closer. These snowfields are on the south side of the mountain on what I will call the summit plateau for future reference. There is some awesome deer hunting up there!
A first view of the family. Starting from the right there is Bessie Peak, then Helen peak, then Red Mountain and Alice Peak. The small knob to the right of Bessie is what I think of as Bessie's daughter and have always called Bessie Junior.
A closer view of Bessie and Helen.
Bessie and Bessie Junior. I have been to the top of Bessie twice which involves hiking the ridge leading to the right and going up and over Bessie Junior, there is no safe way to traverse around Junior, you have to follow the deer trails up and over.
These three photos were taken from a narrow false summit ridge that I wanted to explore as I have seen giant bucks up here on past hunting trips. There were two spots along this ridge that required me to intensely focus on the present moment as this deer/bear trail clung traversed a couple spots that a hiker would not want to stumble on. I particularly like the orange rock and the blue sky in the bottom photo. War Eagle!!
Almost at the same elevation as Virginia's summit here but getting to the summit required losing about 600' in elevation to then reclimb it to get to the top.
Proof that calling this a deer/bear trail was accurate. A precarious perch for a poop! When I saw this, I thought about how much it would suck to run into a bear on this narrow ridge where neither one of us would have any good options to avoid the other. Fortunately there were no bears up there that day.
An even closer view of Bessie looking at her south side. Bessie is the prettiest and most dramatic of the family. I particularly like her red stripes of rock. The first time I summitted Bessie, my friend Quentin and I descended the left side in this photo to cross a valley and then summit Red as well. It was a long two day trip and that left side of Bessie was as steep as it can get without being a sheer wall. It was another place to be very focused on the present moment!
Helen is not as pretty and dramatic as Bessie but she is the more remote and inaccessible of the whole family. Getting to the summit was a long hike with a lot of elevation gain and loss as the only safe route was up and over several smaller "peaks" on the way. I know other people who have been to the top of Bessie and Virginia but personally do not know anyone other than myself who has enjoyed the view from Helen.
The patriarch of the family, Red.
And the matriarch, Alice. Alice is the only peak in the family that I have not been to the top of which is something I intend to change in the future.
This is the view of the saltwater looking south showing the part of Zimovia Strait known as the Village Islands. The top photo is at low tide showing the many navigational hazards in the area that have caused many a mariner some woes while the bottom photo is at high tide conveniently hiding those hazards.
All three of these peaks are part of the Virginia Peak complex with the one on the left being the highest and true summit. That is where I spent the night.
Looking north from Virginia's summit at the hidden gem of Southeast Alaska and the last river of its kind in North America - the town of Wrangell and the Stikine River. This great land of Alaska has a way of making our human presence look minor and fleeting.
More views of the family from Virginia's summit. I think the view from Virginia's summit is my favorite of all of them.
Helen and Bessie on the left, the town of Wrangell way in the distance on the right.
This is the view looking south from the summit. Directly below is what I referred to as the summit plateau with Anita Bay far below. The view to the south looks at more of the very remote and wild lands of Etolin Island.
This is one of the peaks of the Virginia complex, the right rocky side is the north face, the left green side is the south face. I like this photo for several reasons, one of them being a perfect representation of how the aspect of a mountain affects many things, another being just how young, geologically speaking, this land is. Most of this entire temperate jungle of Southeast Alaska, the largest temperate rainforest on the planet, is precariously growing on the granitic bones of the Earth.
I just can't get enough of the view!
The shadow of Virginia beginning to encroach on the sunny waters of Anita Bay far below. I was at the very top of this shadow but was too small and insignificant to register. This shadow has a special memory for me as it represents the beginning of a much appreciated respite from the relentless and brutal Sun that was pummeling the land. The two days of my trip, June 19th and 20th, were the two hottest days we have had in the Wrangell area in at least 3 years. It got into the mid 80s on both days and mid 80s in Southeast AK is HOT!! Almost Alabama in the summertime HOT. I spent several hours literally curled up under a small stunted mountain hemlock "tree" that provided the only shade available that didn't require hiking down nearly 1,000 feet.
Eventually, the Sun did the inevitable and travelled to the other side of the planet offering me an extremely appreciated break from its enthusiasm.
"Red sky at night, sailor's delight" Not the most beautiful sunset but the location from which I viewed it made it wonderful.
Morning from the top of Virginia. There was only enough room for one person at the very top to sleep comfortably and sleep comfortably I did!
A fishing boat heading back to the harbor in the early morning.
The endless mountains of the mainland.
I spent some time exploring the summit plateau as I began my descent from the summit back down to the sea and spotted some more black bears. Look at how fat and healthy that little cub looks in the first photo. He's got quite the belly on him!
I saw a total of 9 black bears on this trip including another sow with a cub and another male persistently following another female in the hopes of getting to know her better.
Back down at sea level at a low tide. This is the estuary where I left my boat and began my hike, my boat is up in the grass on the left. This is a pretty typical Southeast AK tidal estuary and can be a great place to see bears.
So why not one more bear? This guy was number 9 for the trip. I saw him before he saw me so it allowed me the opportunity to prepare myself for some prime bear viewing. I switched lenses on the camera, got my camoflage on, and went and sat in my beached boat waiting for this guy to make his way toward me.
This bear never knew I was there but as he got closer, he could here the shutter of my camera and got wary. He got within 20 to 25 yards of me in my boat before he got a little too suspicious and went into the trees a short way to bypass my boat but as soon as he had gotten passed the boat, he exited the trees back to the beach and spent over an hour grazing on grass and just having a leisurely afternoon on the beach. It was a great way to spend the afternoon waiting for the tide to come in and float my boat.
I got back home beat up, sore, bug bitten, Devil's Clubbed, dirty and sunburned. I love this place!
