CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
On the way it passes Seward, back through Moose Pass, back through Portage and back through Beluga Point. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 81 km this is Seward Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Moose Pass is a small cluster of cabins, a general store and a roadhouse beside a turquoise lake, and the speed limit through it is low for good reason. The village lies on the Kenai Peninsula in south-central Alaska, about forty kilometres north of Seward on the Seward Highway, and perhaps two hundred people live here. Trail Lake, in front of the village, is fed by glacial meltwater, and the water has the milky blue-green colour of ground rock, which makes the whole valley glow. Mountains still holding patches of snow rise on both sides, and spruce forest covers the lower slopes.
Read the complete Moose Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Moose Pass is where the day begins. Next is Seward.
Alaska's Seward Highway earns its reputation from beginning to end, and Seward is where it runs out of road. The town sits at the head of Resurrection Bay, a fjord on the Kenai Peninsula ringed by steep, snow-streaked mountains, and it has a working harbour full of fishing boats, tour vessels and the occasional cruise ship. It was founded in 1903 as the ocean terminus for a railroad to the interior, and it is also mile zero of the Iditarod Trail, the dog-sledding route to Nome. The 1964 Good Friday earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded in North America, destroyed much of the waterfront here, and the town has rebuilt itself since.
Read the complete Seward write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seward comes up about 46 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Moose Pass.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Moose Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 92 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Moose Pass. Next is back through 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Portage, about halfway. Next is back through 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beluga Point sits at 201 km, late in the day. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 254 km.
Moose Pass → Seward is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seward → back through Moose Pass is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Moose Pass → back through Portage is 81 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Portage → back through Beluga Point is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beluga Point → Anchorage is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.