Flottop Mountain

At last, Katherine and I, along with half of Anchorage (which is 1/4 of Alaska), climbed the most hiked mountain in Alaska, Flattop Mountain. The last 200 yards were solid rock and nearly vertical. One of the many things I loved about being a child was that I never over thought things. I climbed trees and danced on limbs high above the ground blissfully unaware of fear. Ten years later, 50 feet from the top of Flottop, fear crept in. Normally, this is called rock climbing and people don helmets and harnesses. Pausing momentarily, I gathered my will, dismissed my mind and ascended as nimbly and safely as possible. From the summit, we stood with almost 30 other people watching a paraglider jerk his chute into the wind and leap off the edge. What a thrilling way to descend. As we watched, a fellow climber told us that in the early spring, people ascend Flattop to slide the 3,000 feet down on a chute of hardened snow. Unfortunately, there was neither a paraglider nor an icy slide available. We had to go down the way we came up.