Seward Highway · short arc

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Anchorage

   Anchorage lies where Cook Inlet meets the Chugach mountains, a city of about three hundred thousand people that holds nearly half of Alaska's population and yet ends abruptly at the edge of the forest. Moose wander through the suburbs, and on a clear day, the snowy peaks of the Alaska Range, including Denali far to the north, float on the horizon. The city grew from a railway construction camp in 1915, and was badly damaged by the Good Friday earthquake in 1964, among the most powerful ever recorded.

   Read the complete Anchorage write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Anchorage is where the day begins. Next is Beluga Point.

2. 2. Beluga Point

   Turnagain Arm has the second-highest tides in North America, and Beluga Point is the best seat for watching them work. The Seward Highway runs along the cliffs here, squeezed between the Chugach Mountains and a long, silvery fjord that empties and refills twice a day with a tidal range of about nine metres. At low water you look down onto grey glacial mudflats; a few hours later the sea comes back, sometimes as a tidal bore, a single low wave that runs up the inlet at walking speed. The best views of the bore come an hour or two after low tide in Anchorage, and the locals keep a tide table the way others keep a weather forecast.

   Read the complete Beluga Point write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Beluga Point comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Portage.

3. 3. Portage

   Portage is hardly a place any more, and that is part of what makes it interesting. It lies at the head of Turnagain Arm, about forty miles south of Anchorage, where the Seward Highway runs along the flat, silty edge of the inlet with the Chugach Mountains rising steeply behind. The town was a railroad stop and farming settlement until the Good Friday earthquake of 1964, which struck with a magnitude of 9.2, dropped the land by several metres and let salt water flood the area. The grey drowned forest, bleached trunks of spruce standing in tidal flats, is still visible from the road, and the ghost town has long since been abandoned.

   Read the complete Portage write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 80 km.