Rush to the Knik

There is several glaciers around Anchorage which can be access by fatbike over the winter. The key word is "winter". This is the first year since we arrived to Alaska when we have real winter, which opened up all these possibilities to pedal to and on the glaciers. My crush is on two of the staples around here, Knik and Spencer glaciers. I still have to find a time to go to Spencer, but I went to Knik week ago and it was pretty sweet.

We started our adventure just of the Old Glenn Highway at Jim Creek parking lot. The weather was perfect between 10 to 25 F despite my initial worry when i saw the temperature in my car -4F when we were crossing Knik bridge which is about mile away from the parking lot. Anyhow, the plan was take it easy to the glacier and hammer on the way back with some necessary photo time spent at the face of glacier.

The trail was in the perfect condition, hard packed and wind swept so we were flying about 14 miles per hour. Oh, the distance to the glacier from Jim Creek is about 21 miles. There is couple parts where you are biking on the glare ice and i can tell you that you better have studded tires or you will pay with some bruises as i did. I wiped out about four times, but luckily no injury. So we made it to the glacier in about hour and fifty minutes as the last 7 miles were through the snow drifts which slow you down to crawl.

I don't even need to mention this but the glacier is just spectacular. Blue ice, ice caves, frozen icebergs in the lake and sunshine were the highlights of the day. We took little loop around the lake and headed back by different rout which was more eastward located to connect back to the original path 5 miles down the road. At this point we were flying 15-16 miles per hour and  about 7 miles from the finish i was getting pretty tired, but still had some legs to do extra little 5 mile loop by the parking lot to check out the playground for the local off-roaders.

It is a great way to go see a glacier, if the condition are solid, its pretty smooth riding despite the longer distance. Also it helps that the total elevation gain is under 800 feet so pretty much flat course as it is mostly on the riverbed.