Starting out at the Glen Alps trailhead, we walk to the Powerline Pass trail, cross it, and head up toward The Ballfield.  Reaching the top of a ridge, we drop down into The Ballfield itself and begin hiking up it, along the base of a steep, rocky ridge.  We turn around, looking back the way you came, and this is what we see -- Anchorage down below, the steep ridge just starting on the left.

As we hike up along the Ballfield, we look up and to our right, watching the skyline, where the dark sillouette of the rocky ridgeline clashes with the cloud-studded, ever-changing sky...

We look straight ahead, ridgeline on your right, and there it is, the high point on the ridge, a crown of stony pillars, the highest called O'Malley Peak.  The clouds break just a bit, and sunshine illuminates the path upwards - a long, steep couloir full of loose rocks and pebbles, gradually becoming covered with snow towards the top.

The higher we climb, the more the vista below opens up around us - a gorgeous view southward across the sharp rocky ridge, to the clear waters of the Cook Inlet, and the mountains far beyond it...

The higher we climb, the colder it is becoming.  As we pass a point maybe 2/3rds of the way up the long couloir, the ground has become hard, already permanently frozen during the day, hard packed snow gradually increasing in depth and cover - and small, frozen waterfalls cascading from the rock walls to the sides, each tiny river of ice echoing many details you might notice on a huge glacier, like a microcosmic mirror of its gargantuan counterpart.

We go up and up and up, as the snow gets deeper and the slope steeper.  Soon, we find ourselves starting to use our hands for extra traction, reaching into the snow and grasping for fingerholds on the wet rock.  We get to a small flat ledge, and stop - for at our toes is a vertical drop.  Ahead, we can see a couple more rock spires, the furthest being the actual summit.  But, we are out of time - the sun sinks ever further toward the horizon, and the thermometer is already edging downward - time to start home, gingerly stepping along the same precarious path we climbed along, until we are finally home free, far below..