Cheri in Alaska

Cheri came for yet another visit on your (taxpayer) dime a few weeks ago. Several fun things and one not so fun thing happened. First the fun things. We started out big by climbing Mt. Healy on the first day. 4000 feet of vertical with quite a bit of snow toward the top and it took us about 8 hours. Then she went to work for a few days at an army base up near Fairbanks. After that we set out on a good 2 day backbacking trip in the park. The weather was really nice and we made it out into some big snowy mountains. Then we packed up the car and drove 120 miles out the (gravel) Denali Highway and camped out at Tangle Lakes. The disappointing thing was that I managed to wreck my knee on the Mt. Healy downclimb which led to me having a lot of trouble hiking and we had to cut our planned 4 day backpack into a 2 day. On the bright side though, the Doc says it's just a cartilage issue and not structural, so doesn't need surgery. He gave me a brace to wear which should help prevent a repeat performance.

Does this mean I'm getting old?

Kick-steppin' to the top of Mt. Healy

Was a little windy.

Ready to jump in the river.

We made it up into the headwaters of the river in the background.