Eklutna Lake & Eagles

 We spent St. Patrick's Day geocaching in the Eklutna Lake area. It was a perfect winter day... No wind, temperatures in the upper 20's and clear blue skies.
The road up to the lake travels along a canyon carved out by the river. It's a long drop to the bottom, but the view is fantastic! Most people don't realize it's here, so here's a Google Map link to where you park to see it.

 This is one of three dams that has been built. I don't remember if it was built for power generation or flood control, but its long been abandoned.

 This is the view looking to the north across the Knik Arm. Our house is out there somewhere....

 This is looking across to the mountains of the Alaska Range in the distance.

 Looking across the frozen Eklutna Lake to the mountains of the Chugach Range.

 We found a total of 6 caches today, bringing our total caches found up to 806. Five of them were along the shores of Eklutna Lake.

 There was quite a few people enjoying the area today. Families were cross country skiing on the lake and riding snow machines. Elkutna Lake is also popular in the summer.

 Here you can see the remains of the second dam. A little further downstream is the third and current dam, an earthen & concrete dam. Eklutna Lake is impounded to allow water to flow down a tunnel to a power generation station. The Municipality of Anchorage also gets their drinking water from the lake.

 At some point some animal walked across this open area. It's weight compressed the snow and then the wind blew away the surrounding snow, leaving this little elevated track.

 Alaska in the winter can be stunning.

 On our way home we spotted this magnificent eagle in a tree. With any of the pictures you can click on them to see a bigger version.

 I only managed to grab a couple of shots before he took to the air. I had the camera on landscape mode and was just about to switch to action when he spread his wings. If I had been a little faster I could've gotten some amazing photos...

A little further down was an immature bald eagle. They don't get their distinctive white heads and tail fathers until they are three years old.