By Roy Pace (RSPace)
On August 8, I was able to go on an amazing hike along Potter Ridge with alaskatim, glenn.fish, Ladybug Kids, rb127126, and Shrike841. A few weeks prior, I had heard murmurs that a hike was being planned and that I should get myself on the invite list. For those unfamiliar with Potter Ridge, it is roughly L-shaped and consists of Caballo Blanco, Ruby Peak (aka McHugh Peak-West), McHugh Peak, Houdini Hill, and Grandview Peak.
We met at the agreed-upon early hour of 08:00 at Storck Park and soon enough started up the trailhead on Potter Heights Dr. The beginning of the trail was a bit tricky with head-high grass, which eventually transitioned to trees, including the occasional wall of alders. Our first cache was one of Ladybug Kids’ placements. He gave us a mini history lesson on the placement and trail, which really helped in understanding some of the Chugach Park access and landowner conflicts in the area.
We came to our next cache, owned by akgh519, just as the landscape was transitioning to a more alpine terrain. This would have been an uneventful find except for the presence of a huge bull moose. Fortunately, he did nothing more than give us the side-eye before slowly ambling off. Caballo Blanco really dominated the landscape by now and we could see just how much higher we needed to climb.
Summiting Caballo Blanco brought us the reward of another cache, however, dense cloud cover had moved in during our ascent and spoiled our view from the top. Crossing the ridge to the base of Ruby in the fog was an ethereal experience, especially seeing the guys ahead of me fade in and out of view, yet hearing them well. I’m truly glad I was with this group because a fall would have… well, let’s not think of that.
alaskatim broke away from the group as we neared the base of Ruby for a few other caches, however, I am sure it was because he was tired of providing the adult supervision. Before you get nervous, though, we still all managed to finish the hike intact!
Ascending Ruby was challenging, enough so that I began to question my wisdom in proceeding ahead rather than breaking away with Tim. We did start seeing some breaks in the clouds, though that mainly reinforced how much higher we had to go. We finally made it despite burning legs and chests. The clouds continued to thin and we started seeing glimpses of Turnagain Arm to the south.
If you guessed the next part of the story involved yet more climbing in the fog, then you are correct! McHugh Peak is a majestic 4,300 foot elevation and we were already tired. Yet, we know that cachers persevere so we eventually made it! By now the sun had almost completely burned off the clouds, treating us to sweeping views of Turnagain Arm, McHugh valley, North and South Suicide Peaks, and our exit, Houdini Hill. Getting to find a FrostG1anT cache at the McHugh summit was simply the bonus.
Having reached our goal of the McHugh summit, we were now faced with the difficult choice of taking a short detour across the ridge to the east and pick up a couple more caches, or start our trek down. You can guess our choice: hint, it was more caches! If by some random chance you thought we might have headed home you should probably turn in your official geocaching card. Really.
By now, it was time to head back and we started our decent along Houdini Hill. As with life, there were still some ups and downs to go, but I felt an overall sense of satisfaction whenever I happened to glance back and see where we had been. I won’t lie, getting back to the cars was something of a relief because, wow, I was tired! Too tired and sore to partake in the after-action taco feast. Next time!
Lastly, a huge shout-out to Ladybug Kids, who checked out the trailhead two times in as many days: I guarantee he got soaked plowing through the wet foliage the first night. He also helped us with understanding the route and endpoints, so the hike was much smoother due to his efforts.
Total trip stats: 9.25 miles, 4420′ total elevation gain, 12 hour total time. Starting point was Potter Heights Dr and ending at Honey Bear Dr. Because I know you also are wondering: 15 caches were found that day