Finger Lake - Rainy Pass
Start/Finish
Checkpoint
Dogdrop
This is a tough run with some short stretches of extraordinarily difficult trail. If they didn't blow on through early in the morning, they should try to leave Finger Lake by three or four in the afternoon so they 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.
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.
