Crow Pass Trail

The Crow Pass Trail is a 23 mile segment of the Historic Iditarod Trail. The Iditarod Trail ran from Seward to Nome and was around 1,000 miles long with over 1,400 miles of side trails connecting to towns and villages. This trail was used as a path to transport mail via dogsled to various places. The Historic Iditarod Trail is famous for its use by dog sledding teams that ran life saving vaccine up to Nome from Seward for a diphtheria outbreak.

The Crow pass Trail runs from the town of Girdwood and ends in Eagle River, just down the road from where I live.

My parents and I did the hike in 2 days. While this was my first time hiking the trail, both of my parents have done it before. They even completed this all in one day! It took them 14 hours. This time, we hiked 15 miles the first day and 8 miles the second. We started on the Girdwood side of the trail, but really you can start from either side. The ascent from the Girdwood side up to the pass is 3,300 ft. and the descent back down to the river is 4,300 ft. The first 3 miles of the hike is the ascent and the rest of the hike is a sloping downhill trek.

Along the way we saw two black bears and one brown bear. One of the bears gave us quite a scare as we were hiking. We were less than two miles out from the Eagle River Nature Center, when a black bear jumped out of the bushes and scurried up a tree about 10 yards in front of us. It definitely gave us a shock.

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About 11 miles into the hike you have to cross the Eagle River. When we did it, the water level was higher than usual because it had been fairly hot recently and there was lots of glacier melt off. We almost didn’t attempt the crossing, as the three of us are short. After careful consideration, we crossed the river by holding onto each other’s backpack straps and moving in a rotating circle. My mom refers to it as “the circle of death” 🙂 The water was freezing and came up to my waist. We camped for the night about 15 miles into the journey, just as a thunderstorm appeared.

While my feet were covered in blisters at the end of the hike, I had fun and felt a sense of accomplishment too. This is not a challenging hike for those that are physically fit. Doing it in one day is possible, but it’s a long day.