Skiing the Montana Creek South Fork Trail

We spent last weekend at a cabin on Benka Lake near Talkeetna. It’s always a great family get-away.

When we were up there this past summer, we hiked a little way out the Montana Creek South Fork trail, which is nearby. It was a family hike, so we didn’t make it very far. But on the map, it looked like if we had gone up that trail about eight miles, we’d get above treeline and would likely get some great views of the Susitna Valley, the Talkeetna mountains and the Alaska Range. I’d seen the trail on a snowmobiles trail map, and I thought it would be a good place to explore on skis. So I made a mental note to check it out at a later date.

I had a four hour window of play time during the kiddo’s nap on Saturday afternoon, and I headed straight for the Montana Creek trail. It turned out to be every bit as cool as I hoped. The trail was narrow and bumpy, but easily skiable on classic skis. Once I got above treeline, which took eight miles, 1500 vertical feet, and an hour and a half, the views were spectacular even with overcast skies. The trail fractured into a tangled mess of snowmachine tracks at this point. I tried to follow the oldest (firmest) tracks as I climbed higher, but it was soft, slow going. So I just toured around the hills for an hour or so before heading back down.

This ski was very similar to Willow Mountain, which makes sense since Willow Mtn is only about 20 miles south along the west edge of the Talkeetnas.

I shared the trail with about 20 snowmobiles. There was a big dump of snow two days before, so I was happy to have them breaking trail for me. You could have some incredible crust skiing up in those hills in the spring if it weren’t for the snowmobile ruts…but if it weren’t for the snowmobile trail, there’d be no easy way of getting up there. It’s well worth that price to explore such a cool area.

Photos…