Bold Peak July 2013

There it is! BOLD PEAK! looking all majestic and what not. July 2012

My goal for the summer was to get up Bold Peak! I have wanted this peak for a long time, and I was going to crush it!

Access for Bold is out of Eklutna, a campground in Chugach State Park. Eklutna is one of my favorite places on Earth! I have been leading groups of children on overnight trips there for four summers. Its a great place to take younger kids on biking and hiking trips. Since I lead mostly those skills I get to spend A LOT of time there! Bold has been teasing me for years!

 Peak Stats:
 Elevation: 7522 ft
 Elevation gain:  just under 7000ft
Trail Conditions/Route: Eklunta Lake trail is the easiest trail in the history of trails to follow, East Fork is easy as well. There is no trail to summit Bold, but the route finding is relatively easy
Mileage: 22 miles round trip by bike and roughly 7 or 8 round trip on the mountain.
Time: It took us 13 hours round trip. I have read accounts of people summiting and biking out in 6. Pretty amazing!

The approach for Bold is fun, you get to bike! Once you get to the Eklutna Trailhead and Campground you bike a flat, easy 11 miles on the Eklutna Lake Trail to the East Fork Trail which is referring to the East Fork of the Eklutna River. You ditch the bikes and that's were the bulk of your journey begins. Bold can certainly be done in a day, but my friends Scott Fritz, Adam, David, and I turned it into a weekend retreat. We biked in on a Friday evening and sat up camp at the Alex Back-Country Campground 9 miles in on the Lake Trail. This put us at an easy morning bike ride to the East Fork Trail the next day.

We woke up early and got to the trailhead of the East Fork around 9 am. After locking the bikes to a tree, we followed the trail for roughly two miles to the start of Stiver's Gully. To find Stiver's Gully you look for cairns on the left side of the trail put there by fellow hikers. It could be easy to miss, but look for large rock piles as well as a small creek draining into the East Fork. You follow the cairns as you slowly begin to make your way up the gully. In about 20 minutes it begins to open up and gets steep. You start getting out of the trees and into the rocks! Luckily we had low fog and poor visibility so we weren't able to see how large and encompassing the gully truly was! Rocks and rocks and rocks, with two big walls on each side! As Adam put it "Welcome to the next three hours of your life!" It seemed like a never ending scree and talus field. In the gully you gain a lot of elevation fast, a change of pace comes when you make it to a steep, tight section that has a fixed rope. The rope is helpful on the way up, but the way down is where you really need it!


After the rope, Stivers gully travel becomes slightly easier, you come to talus field, then we had a snow field for a small section, and one favorite parts was a high meadow (I believe it was above 5000 ft not positive on actual elevation!) Around the high meadow we started peaking out above the clouds, and were treated to a bluebird sky and some sunshine! Bashful the highest peak in Chugach State Park was also making an profound appearance. With the summit in sight the last stretch was another nice long scree slope. David and Adam summited about 20 minutes before me near 6 pm

Talus field!

Bashful, highest peak in Chugach State Park. Next summers goal!

Above the clouds!

Adam and David lounging after some 'scree skiing'

The descent goes way faster then the ascent! After catching our breath and taking in the unbelievable views we quickly headed back down to get out before dark. It took about half as long, we 'scree skied' a good chunk of it. The roped section was sketchy to say the least. You need to trust the rope! Moving quickly but carefully we all made it through and crushed Stiver's Gully on the way back down. We were back on bikes around 9:30pm. I found the last two miles on the East Fork Trail a nice way to cool down after a long day. The bike ride was nice as well. I contemplated riding out and when I do it again I would, BUT it was nice to have a tent waiting for me at the campsite!

'Fixed rope' section. SUPER SKETCHY.

Looking down Stiver's Gully

 Just because rocks are fun! Here is a list of the differences in sizes of rock. Ya never know could come in handy!

 Scree- Smaller than a soccer ball but bigger than sand.
Talus- Bigger than a soccer ball but not bigger then a cooler
Boulder- HUGE. Range in size from a cooler to as big as a dump truck.

Boulder fields are sketchy! It requires traveling over the top of car sized rocks, you can get trapped in between it, requires good balance.

Scree slopes and talus slopes are pretty standard game in the Chugach! good ol'chugach choss!

Oh yeah dont ever say there is a boulder field when its actually a talus field.That's just confusing