Alaskology : Flattop, May 29: Blizzard

Alaskology

About the blog: Alaska is a wonderful and fascinating place. Whether its backcountry hiking, coastline kayaking or dining on a downtown deck, there truly is something for everyone. This blog picks up where the annual Daily News Visitors' Guide leaves off. The guide is published in late April, but that's just when summer fun starts heating up. Throughout the year, we hope to give readers a look at Alaska through local eyes. The blog also serves as a calendar of what's going on, a place to look for some outstanding vacation deals and other cool stuff. We invite your comments and your questions. E-mail me at alaskology@adn.com.
About me: I live in Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, and I served as the special sections editor at the Anchorage Daily News for nine years. My wife and I have been Alaska residents since 2000 and never plan to leave.

Flattop, May 29: Blizzard

Posted by Alaskology

Posted: May 31, 2009 - 10:36 pm

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Snow moves across the Chugach Mountains in this view from the Flattop summit on Friday.Noah had this great idea about midday Friday as rain clouds gathered over Flattop Mountain. He called saying, "Let's hike Flattop in the rain."

But by late afternoon, it was sunny and looking pretty nice over the mountain. We made the hike anyway, enjoying the exercise going up. We had hot chocolate atop the mountain. (Sadly the person responsible for bringing the Bailey's Irish Creme forgot.)

When we started down it looked like Noah's wished-for rain was about to soak us. Only it wasn't rain, it was snow ... blowing, stinging snow ... a May blizzard atop Flattop.
The snow pelts Noah and Katelyn on our way down from Flattop Mountain on Friday night.
We made it safely to the bottom of the mountain, even being blessed with a rainbow (or snowbow) in the valley as we neared the parking lot.

We've hike Flattop so many times, it seems hard to believe we could get an entirely new experience, but we certainly did. It was cool -- literally.

-- Steve

The snow moves in behind Gina and I as we hike down Flattop Mountain on Friday night.

Gina, Noah and Katelyn carefully make their way down a scree slope amid Friday's mountaintop blizzard..

Gina, Noah and Katelyn sit in a rock shelter atop Flattop. Our hike up was nice, on the way down we encountered a May blizzard.

A snowbow (it wasn't raining so it must have been a snowbow, whatever that is) appeared after we reached Blueberry Knoll on our Friday night hike to Flattop.