Meet your van shuttle in Anchorage and get ready for the long, super scenic drive to McCarthy. With a few breaks at scenic spots, you’ll be arriving with the rest of the trip participants around 5pm. Your guides will meet you there, and show you to the rustic bunkrooms of their historic Motherlode Powerhouse HQ building. After dinner, they’ll run you through an evening orientation and group pack before letting you hit the hay.
You need to have excellent fitness levels to participate in this adventure. You will be covering 3-10 miles (4.8 – 16 km) a day with up to 2500 ft (760 m) of elevation gain/loss, all the while carrying your gear along with a portion of the group gear (total pack weights vary daily but usually come in at 20-30 lbs/ 9-13.5 kg). Your guides recommend starting physical training in preparation for this trip 1-2 months in advance. This trip is great for very fit hikers or backpackers with at least three +2-day trips under their belts. That said, the more experience you have, the better prepared you will be for the “Alaska factor” and the better you’ll retain the course material.
We’ve done a 5-day Intro to Mountaineering and 5-day backpacking on the Upper Goat Trail with SEAG. The guides were very experienced, super-friendly, and very motivating. We learned a lot about mountaineering skills on the first trip – an ideal introduction to mountaineering! We now feel ready to hit the mountains on our own! The guides did a great job at identifying our strengths and weaknesses and working on them with us, expanding our comfort zones in the mountains by a lot every single day of the trip.