Route:
From Prospect Heights Trailhead we took the Middle Fork Loop Trail and joined up with the Williwaw Lakes Trail, following the Middle Fork Campbell Creek up the Williwaw valley. We eventually stopped and camped out near the drumstick shaped lake in the back of the valley, for the first day this was about 7 miles. The next day we hiked up into the Long Lake Valley and got onto the Campbell Canyon Long Lake Trail, this eventually turned into the New Near Point trail and we decided we’d continue on and not campout the second night. We then summited Near Point and took the Wolverine Bowl Trail back to the Prospect Heights Trailhead, finishing the second day with about 12 miles for a total of 19 miles round trip.
Field log day 1
So i'm recording this at the end of the day while in my sleeping bag, we got started at 11am and stopped hiking around 6 pm. Overall it was pretty good, it was kind of wet as we were moving through the trees and the open fields, but the trees soon thinned out. There is a really pretty section of trail (the end of Middle Fork Loop Trail) just before the bridge where the trees are nicely framing the trail. When We got onto the Williwaw Lakes Trail, after an hour or so, Someone spotted sheep up on the mountain, I don't know how they spotted them because they’re literally just these tiny white dots on the mountain side. Continuing on at some point we made a “river crossing” around the first of the Williwaw lakes, supposedly there was another place deeper in the valley where we could have made a river crossing but I now understand why we didn't, its was so wide it was basically another lake (but its was really shallow). After the river crossing we continued on and saw more sheep on the mountain. It was around here that I started slowing down a lot. We routed to the northside of the big lake with a seagull nest on the big rock. The north west side of the lake is cool because the meandering creek forms a braided stream micro forests or fresh water tide pool sort of environment. Around this point I was going about a mile an hour and dragging ass. There was a bear that ran out in the distance that I just missed because I was too far back
We eventually get to the chicken drumstick cooking lake and set up camp and ate dinner (I ate mac and cheese, macadamia nuts, and chocolate). After finishing dinner I had the terrible task of cleaning my pots and the water was so cold (because of this I now bring a sponge rather than scrub my bare hands in the freezing water to clean my pot). I hung out with the other campers for a little bit, boiled some water, and now have my hot water bottle in my sleeping bag (I have gotten addicted to this, it is tooo easy). I had to go to bed because I couldn't stay outside any longer, it was too windy and cold.There is a third herd of sheep that are really close to us and seemingly venturing further down the mountain toward our camp. The snow on the mountains has me worried and I fear that we will be snowed on during the night. Maybe we can get all the way back to Anchorage by Saturday night.
Field log day 2
I got zero hours of sleep, I listened to my audiobooks about Julious Caesar for literally 8 hours. The winds in the night were very gusty, supposedly up to 64 kph and the wall of my too small tent kept hitting my head. I think however that I fared better than the other people that night, 2 people’s tents collapsed in the middle of the night. When I finally got up I ate a quick meal of my snacks and packed up all my stuff. For the first part of the second day we had a steep climb to get to the top of the drainage divide and head down into Long Lake valley. On this climb we were going through my favorite environment, the rocky high alpine. There was a very cool waterfall (almost Icelandic) pouring out of Walrus lake. We went to the top of the pass and ate lunch. At this point it was lightly raining and I was a little cold, while eating I think I saw a juvenile eagle (or maybe a hawk). After lunch we hiked down into the valley and, while following a creek, kind of skipped down to Long Lake. At the “delta” of the creek that flowed into Long Lake I saw about a 3 inch fish swimming about. And then we pretty quickly traveled down the valley of Long Lake (stopping for lunch) got to the point where we were going to camp for the second night, but after some deliberating we decided to push the last couple of miles and get home that night. I'm glad we did it, but it was tough.
On the way to the summit Near Point we passed through some grassy fields which were very pretty. At the summit of Near point we couldn't see a lot because of the low hanging clouds so after a little bit we just bombed down the hill, this was probably the worst part of the trip, my toes were smashed and my legs were tired from the 10 miles we already did but we got to the bus and I had my Sunday off.
