Alaska Mountain Biking

Day 1:  this picture pretty much sums it up but I'll write some more just in case you're interested in some details. 

This being my last hitch up in Alaska for the year I thought it would be cool to do something fun (as opposed to just work) at the end.  Plus it's a shame to spend so much time up there and only ever see the ugly parts.  So this time, I extended my tickets by 4 days with the hope of checking out some of the awesome mountain biking in the area.  One of my coworkers is an avid rider and a true bike nerd.  He offered to tour me around and loan me a bike, so it was an easy decision.  This is what we woke up to on day one.

Fortunately, the sun came out in the afternoon and it warmed up a good bit, melting a lot of the snow, but also turning the trails into a muddy mess.  We rode some really great trails at Kincaid, one of the local parks in Anchorage.  The trails actually reminded me a lot of Reagan - tight and twisty with short steep hills.  The main differences being the ocean, mountains up to 6000', seeing two moose, and my buddy riding with a can of bear mace clipped to his camelback!

  Since my buddy is a real bike nerd he actually has two fat-tire bikes, sometimes called snow bikes.  So while trail conditions weren't great I had a lot of fun since it was my first time riding one of these monsters.  They're actually not as slow and boring as they look.  They do crawl up and over anything and have incredible traction since the tires are almost 4" wide and are run with very low psi.

I know you guys are used to the fall colors, but for me they're kind of cool to see again.

Lots of beautiful golden birch trees.

Riding the bluff above the tidal flats.

The next day was colder, which was good because that allowed us to ride regular mountain bikes on the frozen trails.  We rode up at another local park called Hillside along a nice 3 hour trail that, not surprisingly, rode up and back down a big hillside.

My buddy leading the way.

A nice lake along the ride that apparently is normally a field.  Anchorage recorded one of their rainiest Septembers ever this year, following one of their driest summers...

After the ride at Hillside we went to the Midnight Sun Brewery.  These are bins of spent barley (I think, Keith??).  The beer was excellent.

Fall colors.

Friday it rained all day and we didn't ride.  I climbed at the indoor gym and went out with a climbing friend for some beers afterward.  So, while I didn't get to ride some of the epic trails I'd read about (too snowy in the mountains), I did manage two days of local (and new-to-me) riding and lots of good beer.

Cool volcanic craters near Juneau, I believe.

The seemingly endless coastal mountains between Anchorage and Seattle.

It's a little hard to see in this picture but this river changes from glacial blue to sea blue as it empties into the Pacific Ocean.  Super cool.

Don't ask me why this picture is down here, it just is.  This is a Biathlon shooting range at Kincaid Park.  XC skiing and Biathlon are a big deal in Anchorage.  All the trails are groomed and lit up at night in the winter apparently.