Mt Marathon

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

To quote Lia, a native Alaskan, “While in Seward, take a short walk from downtown and check out Mt. Marathon. There's a crazy race there every 4th of July that at least one of your crazy Alaskan friends has done twice. Pretty spectacular views of Prince William Sound, too, and, heck, one CAN be up and down in about an hour, trust me, or see for yourself.”

And she does mean crazy race:

• 3.1 miles (round trip)
  
• 3,000 vertical feet
  
• Winners take 30-35 mins to go up and 10-15 to come down.
  

We took a more sedate 2 hours up which let us celebrate small triumphs like passing the treeline

Smelling the wildflowers
Finding our hotel in town below
And finally, savoring the summit
And sunset on the mountains
At the bottom of the trail we saw this sign
Which might have been helpful had we seen it on the way up as we had to run between two black bears on the descent!

In the spirit of Robert Service and my crazy Alaskan friends, we started this hike at 8:30pm and finished just at midnight with the sun still shining bright!

So what did we do with the bulk of our day? Cruised around Kenai Fjords National Park. And took in the sights of glaciers crashing into the sea

Kayakers paddling enjoying the fjords
And a bit of charismatic megafauna. The resident orca pod swam under our boat
And we saw a breaching humpback!