HEADLAMP: Amazing Grace Ridge

Kachemak Bay is a wonderland of whales, rainbows, glaciers, and streams choked with spawning salmon. Thanks to the foresight of legislators who created Kachemak Bay State Park, it’s also a fantastic place to go hiking. Though no roads reach the other side of the bay from Homer, access is easy and affordable on a water taxi. Many yurts and established campsites provide bases from which to explore the high country, including Grace Ridge.

Grace Ridge rises like a whale’s back between Sadie Cove and Tutka Bay. Long and sinuous, the ridgeline climbs steadily to more than 3,100 feet above sea level. Unlike most trails around Halibut Cove, Grace Ridge provides miles of unobstructed views above treeline. There are few places like it on earth, where hikers can ramble through maritime tundra, past fields of blueberries that descend toward tidewater.

Such alpine idylls attract bears as well as people. Black bears flock to Grace Ridge in the fall. When hikers approach, the bears ramble away with fat haunches undulate beneath shimmering black hair. A healthy black bear, fattened on a season of salmon and berries, is an impressive creature to behold, particularly if she’s a sow with two or three rotund cubs trailing behind her.

The delights of Grace Ridge do not end at treeline. Amidst her lower elevation spruce forest, nagoon berries emerge in September, providing what some connoisseurs consider to be the finest berry in Alaska. Nagoon berries are small, red, and grow low to the ground. Particularly robust berries emerge in clumps (as they do in Southeast), while others pop out in three discrete bulbs. Nagoon berries are sweet like a raspberry, with the creaminess of a latte and a slight pungent flavor like the barest trace of a woodstove fire got carried across the bay on morning fog.

Grace Ridge trail is nine miles, and takes anywhere from a half to a full day depending on how fast people want to hike, and how much they wish to gorge themselves on berries. A hut at the southwest end of the trail (at Sadie Cove landing) is a great place to finish the hike and spend the night, but it generally gets booked fairly far in advance. If you wish to hike and spend the night, but didn’t snag the yurt, there is a tranquil campsite sheltered by towering spruce at the east end of the trail, most of the way up Tutka Bay. It is an ideal location for a campsite, since Tutka Bay is the only undeveloped inlet in the state park. Mako’s Water Taxi will drop off hikers at either end, and you can drop camping gear to hike without a heavy load. Do remember to bring a GPS, since fog on the ridge can make route finding difficult in a few places.

Early autumn is an ideal time to hike Grace Ridge, if you can find a weekend where it merely mists instead of pours. Fall colors seem particularly vibrant against trailing mist, bears frolic amidst the blueberries, and hundreds of trailside nagoon berries can make a nine mile hike take a full day.