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Fall hikes around the Anchorage area (10-12-2005)
Broad views, empty trails and autumn scents make walks unique
By Craig Medred and Elizabeth Manning / Anchorage Daily News
Anchorage's best trail is the one in your neighborhood.
This is the trail that beckons on a frosty fall morning or wraps you in a cloak of intrigue on a misty fall evening.
The lucky among us have ready access to the Chester Creek Trail, the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail, the Campbell Creek Trail or a handful of other well-established, well-maintained routes.
Some even have an informal trail on the Hillside, in South Anchorage or Muldoon -- many without names. In other places, bits of trail connect into more-established routes.
For those living in the best of worlds, it is easy to become addicted to local trails, but there is a whole bunch of options out there -- and no better time than now for exploring them.
Something about fall makes every trail inviting. Maybe it's the sweet smell of decaying vegetation or the eerie images of naked branches against a darkening sky or the opening of vistas screened all summer by a veil of leaves.
About this time of year, Helen Nienhueser, author of "55 Ways to the Wilderness in Southcentral Alaska," likes to bike to Alaska Pacific University from her Rogers Park home and hike the University Lake trails.
Those trails are blanketed with leaves, and the taste of fall is in the air.
"It's a good leg stretcher," she said. A well-maintained, hard-ground route encircles the lake, and a maze of unpaved ski trails can be found in the woods north of the school.
The area near the lake, however, is especially popular, and one side of the lake has become an informal dog park. Hikers might want to be alert for that.
If you want to avoid dogs and people, Nienhueser suggests Russian Jack Park, one of her favorites. She likes to park her car in a small lot along Boniface Parkway or at the Russian Jack chalet and head north on a paved trail that slips through an underpass beneath DeBarr Road to join a loop trail on the park's north side.
"It's one of the least-used parks in the city," Nienhueser said. "It's pretty deserted this time of year."
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