Once of Talkeetna, now of Las Vegas, outdoor adventure blogger Hannah Ramage found more excitement than she wanted over the weekend.
After raving about the beauty of Denali National Park in early winter last year, she got to experience real adventure in the Talkeetna Mountains in early winter of this year. Denali was nice.
"... I had the feeling of being very privileged to see the park on my own terms, being the first to pave the way through the fresh snow, stopping to go on short hikes, where I felt like it, investigating tracks in the snow and standing in awe, staring in silence," Ramage wrote in late October 2012.
And how were the Talkeetnas about 150 miles to the south just a wee bit more than a year later? Not so nice.
In the Talkeetnas, Ramage, 28, and friend Kari Mauldin, an Anchorage nurse of the same age, first got to engage in that dreaded Alaska mountain sport of wallowing, and after that proved exhausting, they were rescued by an Alaska State Trooper helicopter.
This is what happens when you are on the trail in Alaska in November and more than 3 feet of snow falls in about 24 hours. Three feet is waist deep on many people.
National Weather Service meteorologists in Anchorage were so impressed with how the snow changed the topography of the Hatcher Pass area they posted before and after shots on their Facebook page.
The big dump is pretty in the pictures. A generically ugly alder thicket disappears into a mountain of lovely winter white. Sadly, this is not so pretty if you are traveling the trail.
Ramage and Mauldin, according to Alaska State Troopers, were apparently trying to hike to the Mountaineering Club of Alaska Mint Hut about nine miles from the Hatcher Pass Road near the end of the state's Gold Mint Trail. They left Saturday. Not long afterwards, it started snowing heavily.
A mile short of the hut, according to troopers, the duo decided they weren't going to make it because of all the snow and turned back for their car. They didn't make it to the car, either. Troopers reported they got within three miles before deciding to camp.
Wallowing waist deep through snow in the Alaska mountains is an exhausting experience. When Ramage and Mauldin failed to contact friends Sunday night, troopers were notified the two were missing.
With the weather improving, troopers launched a helicopter on Monday. It quickly found the two women, picked them up and delivered them to the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center near the southwestern base of the Talkeetnas. The women are reportedly doing fine now.
And Ramage will have one heck of an adventure to write about this time.
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com