Unfortunately, I have lost some photos from a Bessie Peak trip so can't show too much of her until I ask my friend Quentin if I can post his photos from that trip. Anyway, let's meet Virginia's sisters!
This is Bessie Peak and her daughter Bessie Junior looking at their south sides which means I was looking north (more northwest actually). Helen Peak is between Bessie and Virginia, Bessie to the north, Virginia to the south.
Keep those lakes in mind as I will be talking more about them in a bit. For whatever reason, I refer to them as Helen Lakes.
Just another view of Virginia before moving on further up the approach to Helen's summit.
It is still a fairly long way to the top of Helen Peak from this spot and at the time, I was ignorant as to the best, most efficient route to the top and thought traversing the north side of the ridge would save me A LOT of elevation gains and losses from going up and over the several high points along the ridge. As seems to be the case with most things in life, trying to shortcut or cheat ultimately makes things more difficult in the long run and trying to traverse beneath the ridge was one of those cases as I kept getting stopped by impassable sheer rock faces causing me to either backtrack or climb straight up to the top of the ridge. Trying to save time cost me more time and gave me at least two different high pucker factor moments that I would have been happy to have not experienced! A bit of advice to those thinking about hiking in the high country of Southeast Alaska -- follow the animal trails!! They know where the best routes are and have travelled them for many, many, many years. I didn't say the animal trails are necessarily safe, easy, or for the casual hiker, but they do follow the BEST route.
That is Helen Peak close to the center of this photo with a beautiful alpine lake below. I hope to get to that lake someday in the future. The shoulder of Bessie is just in frame on the right.
These two photos are of one of the Virginia complex peaks .
More of Helen's summit from a little bit closer. The bottom photo has Helen on the left with Bessie and Bessie Junior on the right.
A Sitka-black tail buck and Virginia Peak. I don't remember now just how many deer I saw on this trip but I do remember seeing at least 8 different bucks and at least as many does. I honestly don't think any of these deer have ever seen a human before as the ones I was fairly close to didn't run away or actively approached me with very curious demeanors. This buck in particular followed me for several minutes. In the Virginia Peak post, I mentioned the fact that I know people who have been to the top of Bessie and Virginia but have personally never heard of anyone going to the top of Helen, the behavior of these deer was proof that humans very rarely venture into the alpine of Helen Peak. In the bottom photo, the peak on the left is where I spent the night on my recent Virginia Peak trip.
There's the summit of Helen very close now with a deer trail leading right to the summit. The summit of Helen is very broad with plenty of room to have a few dozen people. It would be a great place for a wedding! (And that probably explains why I have never been married better than I could ever explain!)
Bessie Peak from the summit of Helen Peak. Look at that left side of Bessie!! Wholly crap that is steep! I can't believe I descended that with a big, heavy pack and then went down that descending ridge leading to the left, into that valley and then up the other side to Red Mountain!! Sometimes I wish I had hobbies that were easier! I expect to have artificial knees in the not so distant future!!
The view south from Helen's summit.
Another view to the south of the Virginia complex.
This is the view kind of to the southeast from Helen's summit. On this trip, I camped on the vegetated knob to the left of the light gray colored knob above the lake. This was a long hike!
A musk ox on the summit of Helen Peak? This is Musty the musk ox my mountain climbing and adventuring mascot. Yeah, I don't have a good explanation, it just became a thing. That is Bessie Peak in the background.
Virginia Peak complex from Helen Peak
A view of the ridge leading to the summit of Virginia Peak. The bears contemplating making little bears that I watched on the Virginia Peak trip were in the area in the bottom center of this photo.
The upper lake and its outlet looking down into the valley where Helen Lakes lie.
This pile of rocks is actually much more than a pile of rocks. It is really more of a mystery than a pile of rocks. The pretentious way of saying "pile of rocks" is cairn, it is also the more efficient way to type "pile of rocks" so I will refer to it as a cairn for the rest of this discussion. These cairns are found throughout Southeast Alaska in the high alpine areas and are particularly well known in the Stikine River valley, my experience has also shown that they are prevalent in the Three Sisters Range as well. I have found them on all of the sisters, Bessie, Helen, and Virginia, and on Red Mountain where there are quite a few of them with some of them being quite large requiring quite a bit of effort to build. That was quite a few quites in that last sentence. These cairns are also obviously very, very old as determined by the growth of lichens on them that almost seem to hold the pile together like some sort of living mortar. The most accepted theory as to what these cairns are, and the theory that makes the most sense to me personally, is that they are ancient route markers marking routes of travel when this land was covered by massive glaciers thousands of feet thick. Contemporary geological evidence shows that most of Southeast Alaska was covered by ice sheets in the somewhat recent past with the exception being the very western coast and islands of SE AK. My thought is that these cairns could have been route markers for some route into the interior of the mainland. Interestingly, but very unscientifically proven, it seems to me from my explorations of the Three Sisters that the cairns I have found on Virginia, Helen, and Bessie's eastern ridges seem to line up fairly well with each other like they were some kind of waypoints to be lined up to reveal the route to cross the glaciers that must have filled the valleys separating the sisters from each other. But, who knows?
These next several photos will take us out of the alpine and down to lake level.
This is not a particularly interesting photo but it helps to explain the upcoming ones. This is Kunk Lake which is a pretty 1.3 mile hike from the saltwater on a human trail to a 3 sided shelter with an outhouse and woodshed. There is also a rowboat provided allowing hikers to travel on the lake. This is the view from the shelter with the long ridge leading to Helen Peak visible on the skyline, Helen Peak is the broad peak a little off center in the photo. That ridge was the one I was hiking in the previous photos. This next series of photos was from a trip that I did about 3 weeks ago in which I kayaked from Wrangell Island over to Etolin Island and the Kunk Lake trail, hiked up the trail to the shelter, rowed the rowboat across the lake to a spot roughly one quarter of the way into the this frame from the left side, hiked over to the creek that flows out of Helen Lake, hiked up that creek to Helen Lake with my packraft which is a small inflatable rubber raft, and then paddled around Helen Lake. This trip, mainly the hike up the creek to Helen Lake, kicked my ass! Scouting this trip from maps and Google Earth showed me that the creek flowed through a small gorge after it left the lake so I expected it to be difficult but I underestimated it a little.
Although I admittedly underestimated the difficulty of this trip, I did achieve my goal of getting to the lake. I got to the lake much wetter and colder than I had hoped though which made me alter my plans fairly significantly. That is Bessie and Bessie Junior in the distance.
I paddled to the far end of this lake with the intent of hiking to the other lake beyond this one with the packraft and paddling it. This didn't happen. The weather changed enough to be a deciding factor with clouds moving in front of the sun and a strong wind springing up. By the time I got to the far end of the lake, I was pretty cold and my teeth were beginning to chatter a little. I had a dry change of clothes with me so I wasn't too worried about hypothermia, my main concern was how I was going to get back to Kunk Lake from this lake as I DID NOT want to have to hike back down the creek through the gorge which I hiked up. Hiking up the creek through the gorge required ascending two spots that I really did not want to have to negotiate going down and I fell twice on the way to the lake which could have resulted in injuries but fortunately did not. I was somewhat certain that I could find a way out of this lake and back over into Kunk Lake but was concerned that I would not find one which would force me into retracing the hike down the creek through the gorge which filled me with a moderate level of worry and anxiety. What I'm trying to say is, this wasn't a carefree day of frolicking in the woods, my body temperature was lowered, my anxiety level was heightened and my return trip was very uncertain so I did not accomplish my goal of getting to both lakes. So be it and thank you for the lesson in humility Nature!
A closer look at Bessie.
A seagull nest on a log at lake level. I think the gulls were too surprised to see a human here to harass me from their nest as they just flew above me rather quietly.
This is the outlet "creek" from the higher lake below Helen Peak that was in a few of the photos earlier in this post.
One last photo of Bessie. The lake that I did not make it to is just on the other side of the trees on the bottom left of this photo. It wasn't very far away from the edge of this lake but it didn't feel like a wise decision at the time for me to hike to it and in hindsight, while I'm disappointed I didn't get to it, I think it was the right choice for me to have made. I did find a different way to get back over to Kunk Lake that was much safer and slightly easier than going back down the same way I came up so now I know how to get back here again in the future to get to that other lake!! Stay tuned.
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