Winter Experience - Potter Marsh

Cattails in the frozen marsh

One place worth a stop in any season is Potter's marsh.

Winter Experience - Turnagain Arm Ice Flow

Here's a quick clip of the tide running out in Turnagain Arm Alaska; it's filled with ice chunks.  This is early December and it hasn't been cold for very long, yet.  The ice pieces are too small to call icebergs but it's still a great show of mother nature's power.

Winter Hiking - Spitting in the Winter (Hiking the Homer Spit)

Ice flow on the east side of the Spit

Stats

Distance:  Up to you                       Difficulty: Easy                              Time:  Up to you

Summary

The Spit is a Homer landmark.  It is exactly what its name says, a spit of land reaching into Kachemak Bay.  In summer, the spit is best know for the fishing charters, shopping, and fish packing.  In the winter, the spit belongs to strollers, photographers, and dog walkers.

Opinion

In winter, this is still one of our favorite hikes.  

Winter Experience - Ice Falls on Turnagain Arm

Ice Falls

Each year, as the cold sets in, the landscape in Alaska shifts from green to white.  One of the most dramatic shits occur when the seeps and small waterfalls freeze.  

Winter Experience - Watching Beautiful Sunrises in Homer Alaska

Sunrise Over the Kachemak Bay

In winter, Homer has some of the best sunrises in the world.  

Hiking - Portage Glacier Trail (all the way to the beach)

Stats

Distance:  4.7 miles                  Difficulty: Strenuous                                Time:  5 hrs

Summary

We chose to try the Portage Glacier Trail on 10 Jul 2013.  The hike goes up a nearly continuous inclined for a 750 ft elevation change, then back down (more gently) the full 750 ft to reach the portage glacier lake.  We found the hike on the National Park Service map (NPS Portage Glacier Trail).  This page is useful, but someone dated, see The Hike section of this post for updated information.

Opinion

This is a fabulous hike!  But we wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is not at least reasonably fit.  The highlights of the hike include

Experience - Viewing Baby Moose

One of the cutest things in Alaska is a baby moose.  But standing very close-by is the most dangerous animal in Alaska; its mom.  Moose moms can weigh-in at as much as 1200 lbs.  Moose in Alaska usually give birth to twins and, at least in Homer, they are usually born from mid-May to early June.  Moose moms have babies every two years.  A few weeks before they give birth, the mother moose chases off her two year old(s); usually by then she only has one calf left.  So in April and May there are often a lot of confused and unhappy teenaged moose running around.

Moose give birth in a place they feel safe.  This used to mean in the middle of a pond or bog, but now that location is often in the middle of someone’s yard, a town park, or even (according to one story) a Walmart parking lot.