Hiking "The Butte"

Bodenburg Butte, just south of Palmer, is one of those places that all the locals know, and have hiked several times. Except of course me. From the distance it is a cute little bump of a hill, sitting at the feet of some pretty awesome mountains.

Clara wanted to go hiking up the Eklutna Lake trail. It's a pretty easy hike. The trail is accessible to hikers, bikers and ATV's, so it is pretty well traveled. I really didn't want to drive that far though, so I suggested "the Butte". I figured, because of it's cuteness, that it would be a pretty easy hike around to the top. We'd have a nice view of the valley, and head on home.

My first, and biggest mistake really was not knowing exactly where the trailhead was. I figured that if I just drove around "the Butte" it would present itself to me eventually. Well, I found a trailhead, but not the trailhead.

Clara and I started up this really steep trail. I kept thinking, "This should level out soon, and we should be seeing some switchbacks." Needless to say this never happened.

I kept my spirits up. After all, it was a very nice day. A little breezy, maybe kinda dusty, but very nice.

Clara seemed to be pretty dang happy. The steep trail didn't phase her in the least.

I had resigned myself to gutting it out, and just making it to the top. Until we hit the REALLY steep place. To make matters worse, it was rocky and a little gravely. On top of that, once we cleared the trees, that nice breeze turned out to be pretty dang gusty. Needless to say, my fear of heights kicked in a little.

It's not a paralyzing fear of heights that I have. It is just enough to make me whimper to myself, "This is foolish, this is foolish. Why am I here?". I had to really gulp, take a breather, and try to calm down a little. I think that if I hadn't of stopped, I wouldn't have gotten a little stuck. How embarrassing! I had to make a confession to Clara that I needed her to hold my hand for moral support. She was great! I got unstuck and we found a slightly easier way up the rock face.

Up on top we were able to trade photography skills with another couple. That is Pioneer Peak behind us. The view really is a great reward. Of course it would have been nice if it wasn't gusting 40miles an hour! We may have stayed up longer.

Way in the distance you can see Knik Glacier. The dust being kicked up is from the drag races. I'd hate to live around there in the summer! It was pretty loud even from where we were standing.

We walked around the top a little, and lo and behold, found the maintained trail for the real trail! We laughed and laughed at ourselves! Then promptly started down the easy way!

It was still a pretty steep trail in places, but nothing like the way we came up. We laughed and laughed! Ha ha ha! Hm...where is this trail going? Yes that's right! The real trail was taking us nowhere near the fake trailhead! So, about 1 mile down, and .5 miles to go to the end we decided just to see where it went. Who knows how long it was on the way up?! I just know that I would have found the quickest way if we had gone down the way we got up. You know tumbled down, and broken both knees and dislocated a shoulder.

So, we made it to the bottom. Turns out we were on the opposite side of this little hill from where the car was parked. We had about a 2 mile walk ahead of us. But, it was a beautiful day, and we were still laughing.