Northern Exposure: Fairbanks Days 1 & 2

I'm going to try and do some quick posts about my trip to Alaska.  Yesterday morning I arrived in Anchorage.  My flight got in at around 12:45 AM local time.

Anchorage, AK framed by the Chugach Range, 12:45 AM 

It was definitely weird to go to sleep on a plane at dusk and wake up a few hours later at dusk, but I really didn't think that much of it.  I shacked up in a hotel by the airport for the night, and went to sleep.  The next day I grabbed my rental car and headed north.  I had the option to fly directly into Fairbanks on a few flights totaling 14 hours of sitting in a plane, or flying five hours directly to Anchorage and driving seven hours to Fairbanks through Denali National Park.  Obviously, I took the latter in high hopes of being able to see the highest mountain in North America.  Unfortunately my plans were foiled by the weather.

Denali South Viewpoint. There should be a huge mountain there. 

Denali North Viewpoint.  Again, insert mountain here.

Not quite dejected (the scenery was still pretty amazing, I drove a bit into the National Park proper and stopped by the visitor's center.  There were some pretty amazing mountains there.

Hanging glacial valley much?

 One of my favorite parts of being up here is how low tree line elevation is.  I did some Google recon on it last night and the tree line elevation in the Chugach mountain is around 2500 ft.  Compare that with approximately 11000 ft in Colorado and 9000 ft in Montana.  This is primarily due to how far north Alaska is.  There aren't many trees that can grow up here anyway, and those that can grow can only grow at the lower elevations.  It makes the mountains here, although they are for the most part much lower than mountain in Colorado, look much more impressive.  Denali itself has approximately 17822 ft above tree line.   There is no mountain in the entire Lower 48 that is even as high as Denali's above tree line elevation.

So much space above tree line.

And again.

After passing through Denali, I proceeded north along Highway 3.  There were some road works where the road was completely gone.  I drove through seven consecutive miles of dirt roads on the highway.  Only in Alaska...

This is a highway.

On my second day here, I went to work, and went for a little bike ride afterwards.  I had posted up on the Alaska forum on MTBR and some guy PM'ed me and offered to let me use his Pivot Mach 4 and to show me around some trails while I was here.  Obviously I accepted.  We rode the Esther Dome Singletrack today.  It was pretty much exactly like the Allegrippis Trails at Raystown Lake, but a lot shorter.  I had a great time, and I'm looking forward to the Fairbanks Cycling Club Tuesday Night MTB Ride tomorrow.  It will be about 3 hrs of riding from 7 - 10 PM with no lights.

Sweet singletrack on a sweet bike.

Birch trees a-plenty.

That's all for now.  I have to go to bed even though it's still light out.