Kanatak Trail Hike

On September 19 five Crystal Creek Lodge guests took a hike and enjoyed the incredible scenery of the Kanatak Trail in the Becharof National Wildlife Refuge.  The Kanatak Trail rises 1000 ft into a pass within the Alaska Peninsula Mountains to connect the Gulf of Alaska and Bristol Bay.  It has been used for over thousands of years as a passage between the Alutiq culture of Kodiak and the Alaska Peninsula and the Yup’ik culture of Bristol Bay.  The first documented passage in modern history was by Dmitry Bocharov, an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, in 1791, when Alaska was a Russian America possession.  Becharof Lake, on the west side of the trail, bears and Americanized version of his name.  Notice how wide the trail has been beaten over the thousands of years.