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The Chugach State Park trail that leads to Hidden Lake—and also has a branch that goes to Ship Lake Pass, The Wedge, and The Ramp—has always had some muddy sections, which can be particularly bad during the “shoulder seasons” with their freeze-thaw cycles, and in summer after extended rainfalls. But never have they been as awful as this year.

On late summer and early autumn hikes in search of blueberries, Jan Myers and I (and our dogs) had to negotiate huge boot-sucking mud holes that are the worst I’ve ever seen along this route, and among the worst I’ve observed anywhere in the Front Range in my 40 years of hiking there.

This summer’s unusually heavy rainfall is partly to blame. But so is our state government’s disgraceful, and frankly baffling, unwillingness to provide sufficient funding and staff to adequately maintain popular trails (and other facilities) in one of our nation’s premier state parks. It’s been said many times by many people, but is worth repeating: if located elsewhere in the United States, Anchorage’s half-million-acre “backyard wilderness” would likely be a national park, it is that marvelous a place of wildlands and waters and recreational opportunities.

One longtime wet and muddy section of the Hidden Lake Trail has been largely fixed by a hardened and side-boarded gravel trail that passes through boggy meadows just beyond the bridge that crosses the South Fork Campbell Creek (slightly more than two miles from the Glen Alps trailhead), though even parts of that have become flooded at times by this summer’s deluge.

The first bad stretch of muddy trail begins as it approaches and then enters a hemlock grove, less than a quarter mile from the bridge. Much of that section has been churned into a muddy mess, but two spots in particular have become mud bogs, as people understandably try to walk around the quagmires, which only expands them. 

Anticipating mucky conditions, I wore knee-high rubber boots on my first late-summer hike up the trail. I figured I would simply stomp right through the mud holes rather than walk their edges. But the mud had become so soupy and so deep that it nearly went over the tops of those knee-high boots.

On a September outing, I gingerly took a step into the middle of a trail bog to see how deep it might be, and the mud’s grip nearly pulled off my boot.

You can bet I stayed near the margins of the mud-holed sections from that point on.

The second place that’s a huge and growing mess is where the trail passes through a wetland meadow, on the far side of a dry, rocky bench. This spot too is located before the trail reaches Hidden Creek and splits to the two main destinations.

In some ways this second spot is worse than the hemlock mud holes, because there’s no stand of trees to limit the spread.  The most recent time I hiked here, the main trail had become a creek channel filled with flowing water and surrounded by thick mud. Not surprisingly, hikers and hill runners had created a maze of secondary paths, where they tried to circumvent the mud bog, which only serves to further damage the meadow.

It seems that much of the problem could be fixed with boardwalk, to bridge the muddiest sections.

After my most recent tromp through the mud, I contacted Chugach Superintendent Ben Corwin and a couple of non-profit groups that have helped with other Front Range trail projects in recent years.

Judy Caminer of the Chugach Park Fund replied by email, “Bill, we are on the same wavelength. I walked the area last week . . . We will certainly be adding it to a list of potential work. But we cannot say at this point when we might be able to take it on . . . Parts of this trail may need boardwalk or stairs.”

Corwin followed up to say, “I echo Judy’s response. Thanks for the message and pictures. All this rain has exacerbated an ongoing issue in that area. It has been added to my radar to address in the future.”

All of that’s encouraging, but in fact this is a long-standing problem. If I remember correctly, several years ago there was a plan to reroute the trail in places, to avoid the existing mud holes and prevent new ones. Efforts to put in a new and more sustainable route were begun, but ended before much work was done. I don’t know why.

The bigger problem is our state government’s continued refusal to properly fund and staff Chugach and several other gems of the Alaska State Parks system, not to mention its many other recreational areas and facilities. As the Anchorage Daily News recently reported, things are only getting worse: since the start of the pandemic, greatly increased numbers of people are recreating in Chugach and other parks, yet there’s been no comparable boost of the money and personnel that Alaska’s world-class system of state parks needs—and deserves—to properly accommodate those visitors.

As the Chugach Park Fund’s Judy Caminer told the ADN, “It truly is a puzzle, given the amount of money Alaska has in revenues . . . that more emphasis is not placed on funding state park needs.”

It also makes no sense, given the push to promote and invest in Alaska’s tourism industry. Why not invest in our remarkable system of state parks, which are among the most accessible—and marvelous—wilderness and wildlife-rich areas in Alaska?

As I’ve written before, the failure to properly maintain popular trails at Chugach and other state parks is both symptomatic and symbolic of a long-running and unacceptable disgrace, the disrespect and lack of care shown to our state parks system, which has for too long been overlooked and ignored.

It’s long past time that we Alaskans, the state’s tourism industry, and our elected and appointed officials give our state parks the respect and attention they deserve. One great place to start would be the many trails (and too few trailheads) that provide access into and through the “backyard wilderness” that so gloriously adjoins Alaska’s urban center and, according to park officials, attracts an estimated 1.5 million visitors every year.

Anchorage nature writer and wildlands/wildlife advocate Bill Sherwonit is a widely published essayist and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Alaska’s Accessible Wilderness: A Traveler’s Guide to Alaska’s State Parks” and “Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska’s Wildlife.” Readers wishing to send comments or questions directly to Bill may do so at akgriz@hotmail.com.

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