Kachemak State Park

Across the bay from Homer is Kachemak State Park which is over 400,000 acres of wild mountains, glaciers and forests. The only way to access this park is by boat.

We booked a water taxi to take us from the Homer Spit across to a gravel bar in the park known as the Glacier Spit. The taxi would then pick us up at a different place – the saddle trailhead, a protected cove, later in the day.

The journey across the bay was fine, a little bit lumpy, but not a problem and the captain dropped us on the beach using without getting our feet wet using his landing craft door.

Almost immediately on landing we saw a black bear cub but it ran into the woods before we could get a picture. Where there are cubs there is an adult but fortunately we were going the other way. Throughout the walk we saw an enormous amount of bear poo – there must be a lot of bears around – but didn’t see any.

We soon came to the trailhead and started walking through a thick forest which gave way to less dense forest as we walked down the glacial valley. It takes around 200 years for an established forest to grow – so the state of regrowth gives you an idea of the retreat of the glacier.

The first port of call on the hike was the glacial lake at the front of the Grewingk glacier. This had a few icebergs floating in it but the glacier was still at least a couple of miles away.

From here we walked up a really overgrown trail which climbed over 600m in  2 miles up a really slippery slope. There were times we had to use the branches from trees at the side of the path to haul ourselves upwards. The view from the top, once we’d entered the alpine zone was worth it though.

After reaching the top we were running a bit late for our water taxi so had to bomb it downhill to the pickup point. The journey back wasn’t as smooth as the trip out and we were airborne for a lot of it.