A Saturday hike: Frogs, umbrellas and psychotherapy

The Grandmother Tree stands tall and wide beside the Dan Moller Trail. The tree's size and location make it a logical rest stop for hikers on their way to the Dan Moller Cabin or the ridges beyond on the backbone of Douglas Island.

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Geraldine Straty has lost count of the number of times she has hiked the Dan Moller Trail in the past 25 years. However, hiking new trails isn't the reason Straty and eight others left the comforts of home on a rainy day recently to lace up books, load up packs and join up with the Juneau Parks and Recreation Saturday hike.

"I hike mainly for exercise and for group companionship," Straty said.

The Grandmother Tree is an old companion to those, like Straty, who have hiked this trail many times. Another of the regular Saturday hikers said the tree's name came about because it is big, old and a survivor.

Survivor also could be used to describe these Saturday hikes. Organized hikes in Juneau have more than half a century of history. In the 1950s, the federal urban renewal program started Wednesday hikes for women and Saturday hikes for families, said Kristi West of the city Parks and Recreation Department. She coordinates the current hikes as part of her duties as Zach Gordon Youth Center manager.

The early hikes were led by paid leaders. By the 1980s, volunteers replaced paid leaders, men joined the hiking group, and Parks and Recreation took over sponsorship of the Wednesday and Saturday hikes.

Art Kolter started going on the Saturday hikes a dozen years ago to learn about local trails, and found more.

"It's not just a hiking group," he said. "It's a salon, a forum for ideas."

The ideas and topics discussed during the hikes depend on who has joined a particular walk. Regular Saturday hiker Bob Armstrong said, "We've had quite an array of different expertise on these hikes."

Armstrong, who is a retired state biologist and has written extensively on birds and natural life in Southeast, served as an expert himself during the break under the Grandmother Tree. This time the topic was frogs.

Frogs? Sure. Not too unusual in a "salon." While eating a snack, the other hikers learned that the wood frog and spotted frog are natural to Southeast, but the Pacific tree frog and red legged frog were introduced here.

After the break, hikers put packs back on the their backs, reopened their umbrellas and continued hiking single file up the Dan Moller Trail.

Umbrellas? Sure. These serious Juneau hikers who go out year-round on Saturday regardless of the weather may not see like the umbrella sort.

"I thought only wimps used umbrellas, then I discovered they work," said Mary Willson, another Saturday hiking regular.

"You don't have to wear your rain gear," she said. "You're not as hot. You get a breeze. And you're not wet. It solves the problem. Image can go by the boards as long as you're out there comfortable and doing things."

Straty admits the hardy hikers get some funny looks when new hikers see the umbrellas.

"We tell them it works," she said. "Pretty soon we realize they have umbrellas also."

The nearly 3-mile-long Dan Moller Trail takes hikers from the typical spruce and hemlock rain forest down low, through blueberry, devils club and wildflowers in season, past Juneau's first ski areas to the alpine transition zone at the cabin.

Much of the trail is through muskeg meadows, but wide wooden planks keep hikers' feet dry. Although planks make for easy walking in dry weather, they can be slippery when wet. For better traction, experienced hikers used small attachable grippers for their boots. Sort of like small crampons.

"Bogs are the highlights of this trail," Armstrong said. "Particularly in the summer, the bog plants and different things you can see are always interesting to look at."

One of those interesting sights was spiders.

"This is the first place I discovered crab spiders in Juneau," Armstrong said.

Those spiders, which get their name because they open their fore legs like a crab, take on the color of the flower where they sit. As a result, insects can't detect them.

"When insects come to feed on the nectar or gather up pollen, the crab spider grabs them," Armstrong said.

Mark up the short talk about spiders as another example of the hiking salon.

"Juneau Trails," published by the Alaska Natural History Association in 2003, lists 31 different national forest and state park trails in the Juneau area. Going out every Saturday and Wednesday means it doesn't take too long to cover those and many unlisted hikes.

The hike leader selects that week's trail just a few days before the trip to accommodate for the weather. To find out the hiking destination, call the recorded Parks and Rec message at 586-0428.

"We picked Dan Moller because it if was pouring down rain (the cabin) would be a dry spot," trip leader Brenda Johnson said. "If it was nice we could have gone up to the ridge and gotten a nice view."

Because of the rain, this hike ended with lunch at the cabin located near the edge of timberline at about 1,800 feet. The 16-by-20-foot cabin was built in 1936 as a Civilian Conservation Corps project and reconstructed in 1983. Dan Moller was responsible for building the original trail in 1936.

After lunch in the cabin, the group headed back down. Like many on the hike, Armstrong said he keeps going for a combination of reasons.

"The exercise. The friends. One really good reason is it gets you out when you wouldn't normally go out," he said.

Straty finds indoor exercise machines "a little boring" and prefers sharing the outdoors with friends.

"It's really too nice not to be out," she said.

The hikes are free and open to all. West said Juneau visitors also take advantage of the hikes.

"I get e-mails every week during the summer from people who will be on the ferry and want to know where the hike is," West said.

Kolter has kept going on the hikes in part because "this group is very welcoming." He also said there's another good reason for hiking.

"It's probably as effective as psychotherapy, and a lot cheaper," he said.