Nick and Amy's Wild Ride: Our First Overnight Backpacking Trip

Nick and I finally went on our first overnight backpacking trip last weekend (July 26th-27th). We went to Eklutna Lake which is in the Chugach Mountains in Alaska. We had a great time even though it rained pretty much the entire first day. On the first day we saw a black bear cub that was probably 10-20 feet away from us and on the second day we saw a black bear that was clear across the other side of the lake from us. We ended up hiking about 20 miles total between both days. We are very excited for our next trip.

Here is a picture of Nick on the side of the trail on our way back on the second day.

Eklutna Lake, Alaska. Beautiful!!

Nick again on the side of the trail. He is so cute!

Here is a picture of my pack. We both carry these packs, mine weighed about 20-25 pounds and Nick's weighed about 30-35 pounds. It doesn't seem like much, but when you are hiking up mountains and carrying this pack on your back for hours and hours, it does get quite tiring.

This is the view from our wonderful accommodations (haahaa), aka the view from our tent.

This is Sunday morning when we were closing up shop and packing everything up to head back home.

Here is Nick on our way out of where we camped. He thinks he's so cool with his bear spray in one hand and gun in the other hand.

This is a picture of the bank we camped out on. I took this picture when we were walking back to the trail head on the second day. Lake Eklutna is a total of 7 miles long, we walked all the way from the beginning of the lake to the end, where we camped. Of course we ended up backtracking and making side trips on the way there and back so we hiked about 20 miles roundtrip.

The inside of our wonderful (2 person) backpacking tent. As you can see, we hadn't gotten organized yet. Basically, when we found the place we wanted to camp at, we set it up really quick and threw everything in there to prevent it from getting wetter then it already was. Once I got in there, I was able to organize it all and give us more room to sleep.

Here is our stove; we were cooking our dinner and making hot tea to keep us warm. We boiled water and then stuck it in our air tight/freeze dried packages.. I had spaghetti with meat sauce and Nick had beef stew. Then for breakfast the next morning we split chicken and rice. The food tasted very good, the same as if we were to make it at home. We were pleasantly surprised.

Here's a picture of Nick. It was so cold you could see his breath, although he was wearing shorts? He was outside of the tent making us some dinner.

Here is a picture of me in the tent (obviously). haahaa!

There are several creeks and streams (small and large) throughout the trail. I think this is the largest one we saw , it was called Bold Creek and there was a bridge that went over it for us to continue on to the rest of the trail. In the next picture you can see how it ran into Eklutna Lake.