Finger Lake to Rainy Pass Trail Description

Finger Lake is Mile 108 from Willow.  Here’s a shot that I took of the area this summer when I was flying the Cub out from Anchorage. (I followed the Iditarod trail from Anchorage to McGrath)

From Iditarod.com

Finger Lake to Rainy Pass

by Donald Bowers, Jr.

Quick Overview

This is a tough run with some short stretches of extraordinarily difficult trail. If you didn’t blow on through early in the morning, you should try to leave Finger Lake by three or four in the afternoon so you can have some daylight left for the worst parts. (It can be done in the dark, but it isn’t recommended unless you know what you’re doing.) Figure three to five hours for the run. You might consider latching your drag up and out of the way before you leave the checkpoint; plan on using your brake only. There are often all kinds of things poking up out of the trail.

After leaving Finger Lake, the trail climbs steeply over a ridge to Red Lake, runs along it for a mile or two, swings up a ravine, and then follows a series of climbing wooded shelves interspersed with open swamps. About ten miles from Finger Lake, the trail drops down a series of wooded benches toward Happy River, then onto the river itself via the dreaded Happy River steps. Then it’s down the river to its mouth, up the Skwentna River for a few hundred yards, and back up a steep ravine to the plateau on the south side of the Happy. The trail will cross Shirley Lake, then Long Lake (11 miles from Rainy Pass Lodge) and then run along the steeply sloping mountainside above the south side of the Happy River valley to the checkpoint. There are two nasty stretches of sidehill trail in the last eight miles.

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