Seward Highway: Anchorage to Seward

Scenic road chapters

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 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Girdwood.

3. 3. Girdwood

   Girdwood is a ski town tucked into a valley of rainforest, and it seems an odd thing to find in Alaska until you see how much snow the Chugach Mountains collect. The town lies at the head of a green valley a few miles from the sea, with glaciers hanging from the peaks above and a hotel and chairlift complex, Alyeska, at the top of the road. Its streets wind between spruce and hemlock, and the air smells of rain, resin and cold water.

   Read the complete Girdwood write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   about 62 km into the recorded legs you reach Girdwood. Next is Turnagain Pass.

4. 4. Turnagain Pass

   Turnagain Pass is a low, wide opening in the Kenai Mountains, only about 1,000 feet above the sea, but it feels like the top of the world, since the peaks on either side hold snow most of the year. The Seward Highway crosses it between Girdwood and the Kenai Peninsula, running through open subalpine meadows, willow thickets and stands of mountain hemlock, and the air has a clean, cold, mossy smell. In winter the pass is a great white bowl, thick with snow, where skiers and snowmobilers gather, and in summer it is green and quiet.

   Read the complete Turnagain Pass write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Turnagain Pass, about halfway at 300 m. Next is Kenai Lake, mostly downhill.

5. 5. Kenai Lake

   Kenai Lake is the colour of a glacier-fed swimming pool, and it takes a moment to believe it. The water is a pale, milky turquoise, tinted by finely ground rock called glacial flour that streams in from the glaciers high in the Kenai Mountains, and on a sunny day it glows. The lake is long and narrow, around twenty-four miles, curling between steep, snow-capped ridges, with spruce and birch forest along the shore and the sound of water moving everywhere.

   Read the complete Kenai Lake write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Kenai Lake sits at 266 km, late in the day. Next is Seward.

6. 6. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 242 km.