Catchup - Anchorage to Tok

Yesterday evening we were in Tok, but if you will remember, internet was pretty new to Tok, so I didn't even attempt to post to this blog. Yesterday was probably the most spectacular drive so far, both because of the scenery and because it was neither smoky nor foggy, and there was quite a bit of sun.

We drove back north a bit from Anchorage, then at Palmer turned east on the Glenn Highway. Our plan was to drive to Glenallen and continue to Tok on the Tok Cut-off, Hwy 1 all the way (Alaska highways have names and numbers. Most people use the name rather than the number). The road entered the Matanuska Valley, a deep narrow valley with steep, rugged mountains on both sides - The Talkeetna Mountains on the left and the Chugach Mountains on the right. The Chugach are by far the most impressive, snow- and glacier-clad.


This is the Matanuska River with the Chugach Mountains beyond.

The Matanuska Glacier comes to within a mile or so of the road. There is a private road that will take you right up to the edge of the glacier. We drove down a dirt road to the campground where you could pay to drive to the glacier, but they wanted $15 per person, or $30 for the privilege. I think that was a little steep to drive 2 miles on a bad road, get out, look at the muddy terminus of the glacier, say "Yep, that's a glacier alright," and drive back to the highway. Besides, we probably got a better view from the highway.

Another picture of the Matanuska River and Chugach Mountains. When we got to the upper end of the valley, we came out onto a high plateau of muskeg bogs, tundra, stands of stunted black spruce and hundreds of small ponds. Driving towards Glenallen the road went directly towards a big volcanic peak just emerging from of the clouds, which we found out was Mt. Drum in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. It is over 12,000 ft, and as the clouds cleared further we spotted Mt. Sanford at over 16,000 feet. We never had a good enough view of either to make a photo worthwhile. We had lunch at Glenallen while we pondered whether to drive directly to Tok or to alter our plans and drive north to Delta Junction and then southeast to Tok, essentially two sides of a roughly equilateral triangle, rather than just one. Our guidebook said that the route to Delta Junction, the Richardson Highway, through the Alaska Range crossed one of the most spectacular passes in Alaska, so we opted for that. As a result, we also followed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, so we are able to claim parallelling it for its entire distance except for the bit from Valdez to Glenallen and from Atigun Pass to Prudoe bay.

This is the approach to the pass on the Richardson Highway. It's hard to see, but there is a glacier coming down at that low point, and you can see a bit of the highway in the center right of the photo. I'm not going to post any more photos from yesterday because it takes forever to download them, but take my word for it - the Richardson Highway is well worth traveling, although I think the morning's drive through the Matanuska Valley was far more spectacular.

At Delta Junction we found the marker for the official end of the Alaska Highway, which we had missed on our trip up. The drive to Tok had been very smoky a couple of weeks ago, but yesterday the smoke was gone and we found that the Alaska Range dominated the southern horizon all the way to Tok, and indeed most of the drive today to Whitehorse.