How I roll.: Hiking Flattop Mountain in Alaska

Welcome to Flattop Mountain---

Why yes, you are in fact as close to this mountain as you can get to by car. You must hike over a hill and then up, up, and away before you can reach the top. Are you ready?? Good, lets go.

To begin, we are going to start by walking up the stairs you see in front of you. Next we will walk straight up a pretty big hill, crossing some snow, lots of mud, and pretty cold wind.

Yep, that's me. We were looking for a geocache.

If you look closely you can see the parking lot. Now remember we are ONLY 1/10th of the way there.

Overlooking Anchorage.
You can see Denali (Mt. McKinley from over 300 miles away!!

After crossing this "little hill" you begin to hike around another pretty small (in comparison) hill. While hiking around you are beginning to get closer and closer to the edge and lots of wilderness around you.

A little snow. With blood.

Looking out into cook inlet.

This was really cool to watch. As we hiked the tide came in and went out. This was when it was out so it was really muddy and murky looking.

Thinking we're getting close!

We've finally reached the 2/3 mark and I know we're all pretty tired. But come on, this is ALASKA; a once in a lifetime opportunity to see views like this and to say that you have hiked this. So let's "suck it up cupcake" and make it to the top. Also, I should add that the first 2/3 of the hike are the easiest. (You're just NOW telling me this????) As we sit from this point looking up this is what awaits us----

Straight up rock climbing.
"I'm totally not prepared for this!!"

We had a little fun on the way to the top. 3 crazy friends slid down the snow slopes you see. Take a look here and here. 2 of the 3 made it down safely, unfortunately one made it halfway down, got turned around backwards, hit a rock and then rolled the rest of the way down. He broke his wrist and had a nasty, nasty bruise and gash on his back and was pretty shaken up by the time we got back down to the parking lot.