From a lookout on the South Fork Rim Trail in Anchorage, Justin Dipaola-Allen traced the craggy ridgeline, pointing out each peak one by one.
“Okay, so right here we’re looking at Rusty Point, and we’re looking at Wolverine Peak,” he said, squinting at the mountains. “And then behind it is Tikishla, and behind that would be the Tanaina.”
Monday through Friday, Dipaola-Allen is superintendent of Chugach State Park, overseeing nearly a half-million rugged acres of land around Anchorage, including these peaks. A self-described “weekend warrior,” he spends the rest of his free time hiking and running in the park. His goal is to top out on every single one of its peaks — all 120 of them.
“Most of all, it’s just incredibly fun,” Dipaola-Allen said. “It’s kind of a fun game to play where you get to put all these different skills to use and then plan it all out and see if it actually works out. And when it does, it’s very satisfying.”
His interest in Anchorage-area peakbagging dates back more than a decade to one of his first jobs in Alaska state parks, as a trail crew leader in Denali.
“So whenever we’d come into town to go to Costco or whatever, to like, resupply, I’d hike up a peak,” he said.
From there, he kept going. Now, he’s summited 86.
Along the way, he’s worked nearly every job in the parks system — from volunteer winter caretaker to natural resource technician to park specialist — before becoming Chugach State Park superintendent in March.
He keeps track of the mountains he’s summited in an Excel sheet, a roster that has taken him to all corners of the park he now oversees. Included in the Chugach 120, according to a list maintained by the Mountaineering Club of Alaska, are familiar peaks like Wolverine or the ever-popular Flattop. But many of the summits are off the beaten path, like Esbay Peak in Bird Creek Valley. Getting up to that summit, Dipaola-Allen said, was a day-long saga of bushwhacking and river crossings. Then, of course, he had to turn around and get back down.
“It's getting dark, we're heading back from Esbay, very tired, all scratched up, and you can just hear, like one wolf start to howl, like in the distance,” he said. “And then, on the other side of the valley, another wolf is howling. And then we just listened to the wolves howling as we hiked back, and it was a very magical experience.”
Dipaola-Allen is the first to admit that hiking all of Chugach’s 120 peaks is a lofty goal, and he’s not certain he’ll ever complete it. After all, in the past 30 years, only 14 people have accomplished the feat, according to the Mountaineering Club of Alaska.
But for Dipaola-Allen, bagging every single peak is not what matters most.
“The goal is great, but it's more of like a journey of self discovery and like, what I'm actually capable of,” he said. “And sometimes you get to the top, sometimes you don't, but you always learn a little bit more about yourself and about the world that you're in, and this park and the connections.”
His peakbagging experiences also inform his work as superintendent. He estimates that he spends around 500 hours a year in the park, giving him a unique, on-the-ground perspective on projects like this summer’s trail work in the Williwaw Lakes area.
“Whereas somebody who maybe doesn't have those experiences, they would need to take the 10-mile hike to Williwaw to even understand the situation,” he said. “I've been there a dozen times on different runs, so it's just a cool feature that it's like, yeah, I understand that.”
Peakbagging also makes him want to keep the park as accessible as possible.
“I think the park has something for everyone, and so my perspective kind of shows me I need to preserve these experiences for everybody,” he said.
The 34 peaks still on Dipaola-Allen’s to-climb list include Baleful Peak, nicknamed the “final exam” of the Chugach 120. He’s planning to get out there as soon as conditions allow, but in the meantime, he’ll be here, spending time in the park and getting other people out to see it, too.
