Flat Top!

Today Ginger (the same girl that took me to Bird Ridge) and I decided to go climb Flat Top Mountain.  It's one of the "local hikes" and a pretty popular climb for Anchorage.  We ended up with 8 people all hiking up... and also, since it was a beautiful day and the typical trail up gets pretty crowded, Ginger and her dad took us up the back side, which is much less well known and apparently not generally crowded.  It was a great climb and included some minimal rock "scrambling" which was a lot of fun.

This is just a cool picture of a rainbow, you can't see it, but it went all the way over Flat Top on the front side.  Had to share that one first.

A view back towards the "Anchorage Bowl" about half way up the mountain.

I took this picture attempting to show the type of trail etc. we were hiking.  It doesn't really show up that well, but it helps you get the idea.

Boulder!  Fortunately there was a pretty straightfoward trail that went around these...

Made it to the top!  It really isn't a hard hike, some decent uphill, but only took about an hour to get all 8 of us up... That is Peak 2 directly behind me and Peak 3 off in the distance.  (PS - This part of the Chugach Mountains are in the Chugach State Park)

The Anchorage bowl as seen through the haze.  Also, fyi, this picture was taken about 8:45PM, to help give an idea of how late it stays light.  Right now, the sunset time is around 11:30PM.

The shorter peak on the right side of this picture is called Little O'Malley and is also easily accessible from Anchorage.  A lot of people slide down the snow chute on the front left on their way back down... can't wait to try that :)

It was a great hike to get out on a Thursday night after work.  We discussed trying to do Thursday post-work hikes as a typical week, so hopefully that keeps up!