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| Dappled Light in a Temperate Rainforest |
Stats
Distance: 5.5 miles (round trip)
Difficulty: Easy
Time: Full-day
Summary
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| Blueberries |
The winner creek trail is
one of the best kept trails we’ve ever found in Alaska. It’s also one of the prettiest
for those of
us who appreciate boreal rainforests.
The trail goes through tall trees, dappled light, tiny wildflowers, and
blueberry and salmon berry bushes.
Winner Creek Trail
starts just behind the Alyeska lodge and heads up into the lower mountains.
The trail ends after 3 miles at the Iditarod NHT and also accesses the
Upper Winner Creek Trail (see the trail
map), so the distance here is a bit misleading since
you may choose to take a variety of branches for varying
hike lengths.
Opinion
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| Winner Creek Trail |
Winner Creek Trail is beautifully designed,
beautifully maintained, and just plain beautiful to walk. For most of the
trail (about 2 miles) the trail is either graded gravel or well maintained
boardwalk. The last three-quarters of a
mile are no longer graded, but are still easy to walk with minimal
tripping/slipping hazards.
The boreal rainforest is beautiful throughout the
summer with dappled light, mossy ground, a variety of wildflowers and
berries. It is also a popular trail, so
you will see other people throughout the hike.
Trail Advice
Sweat resistant mosquito repellent is a must.
The bugs were out in force.
Suitability
This trail is suitable for adults and children.
The trail is wide and well maintained.
After the first quarter-mile the trail is open to
mountain bikers. The trail intersects
with other trails and roads throughout, so the mountain bikers take a different
route to access the trail. Frankly, were
I a biker, I wouldn’t enjoy it until the boardwalks end at about the 2 mile
point. The mountain bikers we met were
courteous and didn’t hurt our experience.
Trailhead
The trailhead is just behind the Alyeska Lodge.
Find legal parking, go through the lodge and straight out the back door.
There is a groomed gravel path and the trailhead is about 40 ft from the
lodge on the left. Just follow the signs.
The Hike
This trail is one of many behind the Alyeska
Lodge. The maps for these trails can be found on the Girdwood
Summer Trailmap website. We chose
this trail because the desk clerk recommended it when we asked about a good
hike.
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| Bridge over fallen log |
Early in the hike you come to a beautiful
small stream. The trail officially crosses on a very nice bridge,
but it was clear that many people chose to cross on a fallen log just a
few feet off the trail. It is also
clearly a favorite selfie and family photo point.
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| Deep into the woods |
After crossing the stream, the trail enters deep
into a spruce rainforest. The path is a
steady, but mostly gentle, climb through the boreal rainforest. The
whole area is lush with ferns, moss, lichen, and wildflowers. Every few
feet we ran across another tree stump, forest glen, or other photo worthy
view. The light is filtered and dappled
throughout, since the forest is too thick to let the light through unimpeded.
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| Boardwalk |
The trail is beautifully made and is elevated
across significant areas of bog. It turns what would have been a truly
muddy slog into a delightful experience.
The raised boardwalks make easy hiking, but would be inconvenient for
mountain bikers.
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| Wildflowers |
After about 2 miles the trail comes to a T where it
meets Winner Creek. The Winner Creek
Trail takes the left fork and follows the creek, which runs down a deep
ravine. At this point the trail starts
to head downhill. As you get to the low
point of the trail, it splits again. The
right hand trail goes to a wide bridge that is used by snow machines to cross
the creek in the winter. In summer of
2016, the bridge was in very bad shape.
Although the understructure looked sound, the thick planks that formed
the top were deeply scored by snow machines and many were broken through. We did cross the bridge by carefully walking
along the supports, but did not consider the bridge to be truly safe.
The Winner Creek Trail takes the left fork, which
quickly comes to a truly scenic bridge.
The bridge crosses the Winner Creek where it forms a small waterfall and
rapids. The water there is glacier blue
and very beautiful. This was our
favorite spot on the entire beautiful trail. |
| Hand Tram in Motion |
Across the bridge, the trail once again climbed for
perhaps a quarter mile to a gorge crossed by hand tram that carries you over a
deep and very beautiful ravine. This is where the Winner Creek Trail
ends. There is more trail on the other
side of the gorge, but it is part of a different trail system (see the Girdwood
Summer Trailmap). There
were several groups crossing in both directions. The trail map at the hand tram suggested
there was a parking area near the other side of the gorge, but we didn’t check
it out. Frankly, I wouldn’t take that
route to the hand tram. The Winner Creek
Trail was too beautiful to miss through the use of a short cut.
If you are in the Girdwood area and have the time,
I strongly recommend this hike.
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