Lake Clark National Park

The home base for Lake Clark National Park is the tiny town of Port Alsworth. While it's theoretically reachable by water, it can take weeks to get there via that route, so it's typically reserved for large machinery. Everything (and everyone) else gets there by air. There are two private airstrips in the tiny town, apparently traced back to the feuding Alsworth brothers who each built their own.

It was a short flight for us out of Anchorage, and my goodness was it beautiful. Our pilot stayed low the entire time, keeping us under the clouds, so we were able to get great views of the mountains and glaciers. Of all the flights we took while in Alaska (10 legs), the flight to Lake Clark was only rivaled by the flight back from Lake Clark.

Quick aside: If you go to Alaska and are able, you absolutely have to get up in the air. Take a bush flight; take a helicopter tour; take a commercial flight from Juneau to Anchorage. Do what you have to do to see the state from the air. It's amazing.

There is a grand total of two maintained trails at the park, so we knew what we'd be doing when we arrived! There is a lodge in town (associated with one of the airstrips), but we passed on that due to the cost. It was cheaper for us to buy all new camping equipment than it was to stay two nights at the lodge!

Why did we need new camping equipment? Because this was our first backpacking camping trip. We've done a lot of so-called "car camping," but we've never had to haul our gear on our backs before. We weren't sure how it would go, so we didn't go all in on gear.

We got some lightweight tents (our existing tent was huge and way too heavy). What we didn't get was hiking backpacks. We knew this would make our hike more difficult, but it was a tradeoff we were willing to make to avoid spending a bunch of money on gear we may never use again if we didn't enjoy it.

We arrived at the park around noon and headed to the visitors center, where we like to start all of our national park visits. The ranger gave us some tips for the trail and told us to "head down the runway and turn right at the food truck."

Got it. Wait, what?

We are in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere that is effectively only accessible by air, and there's a food truck? Apparently so. Remember this.

Sure enough, we walked down the runway and found the food truck. Along the way, we passed a building with the word "Samaritan" on it. That triggered something deep in the recesses of my mind, but I couldn't place it and shrugged it off. Remember this too.

The food truck was closed when we passed it, but we noted that they served milk shakes. Also remember this.

There are no proper campgrounds at Lake Clark, so you are on your own to find a spot to pitch a tent. The rangers simply advise you to be aware of wild animals (read: bears) and send you on your way. Unlike the more popular parks in the lower 48 where you are not allowed to go off trail in many areas to protect the park, there are so few visitors here that you can go wherever you want. The odds that two people blaze the same trail are very low.

We took one of the two trails for a few miles when we came across a group of people fly fishing at a waterfall. At most parks this would not be out of the ordinary, but "seeing other people" is not a common activity at Lake Clark, so this struck me as odd.

We were due for a break, so we decided to sit on the bank and watch them. As we did so, I noticed a few of the older people fishing had nametags with the word "Samaritan" on them. The rest of the people were a motley crew who didn't seem to fit the stereotypical profile of "fly fisherman."

At this point, it clicked! Julie has been getting the Samaritan Ministries newsletters for years, and I've read about their "Operation Heal Our Patriots" program based out of Alaska. It's a retreat for wounded soldiers. As it turns out, it's based in Port Alsworth, Alaska, and we had just run into this week's campers.

After chatting for a few minutes, we continued another half mile or so up the trail and started looking for a place to pitch a tent. Being in the middle of nowhere, you'd figure this would be an easy task. It was not. Open spaces were few and far between, and those that existed were not level.

When we did find some level(ish) spots, we had to contend with about a foot thick layer of moss. Thick moss is fun to walk on, great for sleeping on, but not so great for staking down tents. Fortunately the forecast wasn't calling for wind, so we did our best, put our gear inside, and called it good enough.

Camping on a huge pillow of moss

We had plenty of daylight left after setting up the tents (this is Alaska in summer, so honestly, we had a lot of daylight left), so we went for a hike. We continued down the trail to a beautiful lake. We passed a few fisherman, but that was the extent of the living creatures (human or otherwise) that we saw.

Knowing that we probably wouldn't sleep that well, we ate dinner, which was basically a bunch of snacks, and turned in early. We had a big hike planned for the next day.

You'll recall that there are two trails at the park. We were camping off of one of them. The other one led to the top of Tanalian Mountain. We didn't want to just sit in our tent all day, so conquering that trail was our goal, and we had an entire day to do it. It figured to be a test for all of us. We had done a lot of hikes during our trip, many including a bit of distance, but they were typically flat. This hike was long (4 miles one way) with a fairly severe elevation gain (3,800 feet, most of it in the last mile).

Courtesy of AllTrails

Also courtesy of AllTrails; Lake Clark in the background

The first 3/4 of the ascent was through forest and was quite pleasant. There were few bugs (which always makes hikes nicer), and the weather was cool but not excessively so. Given the choice, I'll take cool weather over hot weather for a hike any day.

Having researched the hike beforehand, we knew we were in for a challenge once we got to the tree line, so we were anxiously looking around each corner to see if it started clearing. Once it did, we were both excited and anxious. But before the steep climb began in earnest, there was the matter of blueberries. Namely, we discovered that the zone between the forest and the rock was prime wild blueberry habitat!

Wild blueberries are tiny, and they grow very close to the ground. Picking them is a lot of work, but at this point we were both ready for a break and ready for a snack. So we got down and went to work. Well, Jordan and I did. We are the blueberry fans. The boys took off up the trail.

Jordan went with the squatting strategy, but I found that simply laying in the middle of a patch and getting my face as close as possible to the source was more efficient!

Picking wild blueberries

After half an hour or so, we felt refreshed and started to wonder how far the boys had gone (we had walkie-talkies, so we were able to stay in contact). We figured we should get moving.

Once we got out of the vegetation and into the rocky zone near the top, it was clear just how far behind we had fallen. And the boys even got separated. Caleb had zoomed up the mountain (a decision he may have regretted later), and Asher was huffing it in between us and Caleb.

Jordan and I finally caught up to Asher, who was worn out. To be fair, we all were. But we were so close that we couldn't give up. Plus, Caleb had been waiting for us at the top for an hour. This is where I should mention the wind. Once we cleared the vegetation, we were exposed. The wind was brutal. It was strong, and it was cold. We would later find out that Caleb spent most of his extra time curled in a ball behind a rock to protect himself from the wind.

We started breaking the hike into chunks of a few hundred yards, taking breaks after each one. It worked, and the rest of us finally made it to Caleb at the top and took shelter behind the same rock for a snack. The view of Lake Clark and the surrounding mountains was breathtaking, but the wind made it difficult to fully enjoy.

After enough time to rest and enjoy a snack at the top, we headed back down. As you'd expect, the trip down was much faster than the trip up!

We had to be at the airport at 11 AM the following day for our flight out, and we spent the time discussing how excited we were to get milkshakes from the food truck on our way back into town.

We crashed quickly when we got back to our tents. After dinner (read: more snacks), we all passed out, completely exhausted but proud of the day's accomplishment.

Descending Tanalian Mountain with Lake Clark and Port Alsworth in the distance (note the parallel runways) 

We broke camp the next morning and headed back to town, milkshakes on our minds.

Well, as it turns out, while we had looked at the menu when passing the food truck the first time, we had neglected to look at the hours. It didn't open until noon. Oops.

This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. The full weight of the exhaustion coupled with two days of granola bars topped off with our new disappointment completely overwhelmed Caleb. He broke down.

I remembered that the ranger told us about a small café at the lodge on the other side of town (which isn't bad when the town is two runways wide). Trying my best to salvage the situation, I quickly offered to head over there and get whatever I could find to buy my way out of this crisis as any good dad would.

Caleb chose to collapse on some grass and wait while Asher, Jordan, and I headed off. We ended up procuring some hot chocolate, a few pastries, and some candy. This was sufficient to salvage the situation and get us back to the airport... where we were immediately told that our flight was delayed two hours by a milk run (that's Alaskan for "the plane had to deliver food to some remote village" first).

Aside: I would find out upon our return to Anchorage that they emailed me to tell me the flight was delayed. Uh... thanks? Maybe they had forgotten that I was in the middle of Lake Clark National Park at the time?

But do you know what a two hour delay means? It means the food truck would be open! We ditched our packs at the airport (honestly, the terrible packs were a huge part of the problem) and headed to the truck. I told the kids to order whatever they wanted. (A food truck in a town only accessible by air is not exactly reasonably priced, but I was in no mood to ration.)

The kids got their milkshakes as well as burgers and chips. All was right with the world.

While eating, a few of the folks we saw flyfishing showed up to eat. I spent a long time conversing with a man who had volunteered with Samaritan Ministries in Port Alsworth every summer for something like 10 years. He explained how the program worked. The week we were there was focused on married couples; there was a mix of marriage counseling and retreats, such as fly fishing or bear watching.

He also explained the food truck. There used to be a restaurant in town, but the ministry bought it out for their lodge. Rather than leaving the residents with no option to eat out, they brought in a food truck (on a barge and from Charlotte, NC of all places). Participants in the Wounded Warrior retreats ate for free. He said that Franklin Graham (head of Samaritan Ministries) remarked, "we could charge $100 for a burger and still lose money out here, but it doesn't matter." So $75 for two burgers, a hot dog, and two milkshakes all of a sudden struck me as downright reasonable! And I didn't mind it one bit. The truck was a ministry.

Plus, they had milkshakes.