A Real Game of Fugitive ;)

Friday August 22nd, 2014 

Okay.. So not a real game of "fugitive" per say... More like a game of "keep away"...

Mt. Cecil has been on my list of mountains to hike while I am here in Cooper Landing since before I got here. When we got into town however, we found out that there is construction going on up the road you have to drive to get to the trail head and that they have blocked it off this summer allowing no one up there... There's always a way though, right!? :) Maybe not..

Jesse and I began the treck of sneaking up this road at 7pm on Friday night. Some friends of Jesse's were caught once but many of our other friends have done it with no problem. We were told that if you are caught by a construction worker driving though that they would put you in their truck and chew you out while they drove you back down the road.

We got on the road and no more than 5 minutes into it, heard a truck coming.. So I followed Jesse, sprinting back down the road till the hill side became low enough for us to run up. Lets just say it's been a long time since I sprinted so fast up a vertical hill. Oh wait.. No. I had never done that before! The truck definitely saw us and as I got almost the the top I heard a dog barking from the truck. I seriously pictured a huge german sheppard on my butt... Which I'm sure is where I found the extra energy to sprint even faster to the top and finally out of sight. Instead of getting back on the road we trailed right next to it on the hillside just in case another truck came. Which one did! We then crossed the road and began heading straight for the trail head through the woods. 

When we got to the power line trail we could look down on the road where we found two more trucks with three guys standing right there! So we bush wacked some more and more... Jesse and I are not for turning back on a trail no matter how hard it gets generally.. However it had taken us an hour to go one mile and we weren't even to the trail yet which was a few miles straight up hill in itself. Though we're stubborn; we're not stupid. And realistically speaking we weren't going to be able to make it up and down before dark. We ended up turning around and heading back down the hill.. 

Instead of taking the road we went straight down which is how we came upon this cool view of Jesse's cabin at ARC.

Since we didn't end up making it the top and were done around 9 we decided to go fishing. 

On our way there we came across this beautiful sunset. 

We fished for an hour or so and called it a night :)

HINDSIGHT: 

The next day I called the Alaska State Troopers to find out if there was any way to get a shuttle to the trail head. I can understand the construction workers not wanting hikers on the road for safety reasons but at least run a shuttle system getting people to the trail. Isn't the state all about making money anyway..? ;) Well to my surprise when I called I was told that it is illegal for the construction workers to put people in their trucks and drive them down the road and that to his knowledge it is completely legal for us to hike up the road as long as we bypass the construction and don't touch anything we pass. If only we would have known that 24 hours earlier...