Anchorage Daily News

What began as a pleasant hike to Rabbit Lake in the Chugach Mountains above Anchorage on Tuesday turned into an ordeal for three men who discovered how quickly the spring sun can turn firm, snowy trails to near-impassable mush.

After wallowing for hours and soaking themselves in the process, Joe Sinclair, Ben Bacher and Will Curtis decided to call 911 and ask for rescue, Bacher said. Helo 1 from Alaska State Troopers eventually plucked them from near the 2,500-foot level on the southeast side of McHugh Peak at around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.

A somewhat embarrassed Bacher said later in the day that the three made a big mistake at the end of an easy, 4.5-mile jaunt up the Rabbit Creek Trail to the lake below North Suicide Peak. There, he said, they split with two friends who turned and headed back down that trail to their car.

"It was really mellow going up the Rabbit Lake side,'' Bachker said. "No post-holing at all."

Suckered by initially easy travel on snow that had frozen overnight into pavement, Bacher said, he, Sinclair and Curtis "made a spur of the moment decision to go down the McHugh (Creek) side, and none of us were really prepared for that. But I'd been on the McHugh trail before, and that's why I was willing to try."

When snow is absent, it is easy enough to loop around the west end of Rabbit Lake, pick up the McHugh Creek Trail, and follow it to the McHugh Creek picnic area on the Seward Highway just south of Potter Marsh along Turnagain Arm.

It's another story, though, when the McHugh Creek drainage is buried beneath several feet of winter snow.

"Things got a little bit crazy,'' Bacher said.

The three, 22-year-old hikers had trouble finding the McHugh trail and the sun-warmed snow became increasingly difficult to cross.

"We couldn't stay on top of it,'' Bacher said. "There wasn't any firm trail to be had.''

The trio went from "no post-holing at all'' to post-holing knee-deep, thigh-deep and even crotch-deep.

"It was miserable,'' Bacher said, and the farther the men dropped into the McHugh Creek valley, the worse it got.

"Once we got into the alders, it was anyone's guess as to where the trail was,'' he said.

Worse yet, snow that had been blown off mountain ridges by winter winds had all accumulated in those alders. The men tried to walk on top of alder branches to keep from sinking into the snow, but it didn't work.

They wallowed and wallowed some more, and then Bacher found water.

"When it got really soft, I punched through to a creek,'' he said. His feet were soaked.

"I had frostbite before,'' he added. "So I knew what was going to happen next.''

Either the three, all of whom grew up in Southcentral Alaska and have some experience in back-country travel, were going to have to find a speedy way out, or Bacher was going to suffer some serious frostbite as afternoon turned to evening and the 40-degree temperatures of the day started edging down toward 20 degrees.

"That's when we decided to call it a night,'' he said.

At just after 10 p.m., the men got on a cell phone and called 911. Eight calls back and forth ensued. Luckily, Bacher said, he'd thrown a global positioning system receiver in his backpack. He was able to consult it and give troopers exact coordinates for his position.

Still the rescue took time. Helo 1 was down on the Kenai Peninsula looking for a snowmobiler reported lost near Caribou Lake, said Scott Horacek of the volunteer Alaska Mountain Rescue Group. Horacek was onboard the helicopter as a spotter.

Trooper dispatchers told Bacher's group they would have to wait for the helicopter to be diverted from the Kenai search.

By then, Bacher said, "we were just sitting there trying to stay warm. It was 1:30 in the morning by the time they got to us. It was pitch black.''

Bacher had his running shoes off as he tried to warm his feet. Horacek said the shoes had frozen solid. He had to split them open in order to put them back on Bacher's feet for the ride out in the helicopter. Bacher was promptly delivered to an Anchorage hospital where his feet were rapidly rewarmed. It was a painful process, he said, but it saved him from frostbite.

He was up and walking on Wednesday, and wishing he'd made a different decision at Rabbit Lake.

The two friends who went back down the still-firm Rabbit Creek Trail to the parking lot on Canyon Road didn't have any problems. Much of the Rabbit Creek route is wind-scoured, packed to ice by heavy, winter foot traffic, or out of the sun so it remains frozen.

"They ran, and they made it back in an hour and a half,'' Bacher said, and didn't even have to think about a rescue.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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