Ride GuideAlaska: A Remote WorldTo the end of the road and back, and on to Prince William Sound Grant Parsons
• • • Even by Alaska standards, this part of the trip, which will take us deep into the country’s largest—and probably most obscure—national park, is full of mystery. So far, none of the people we’ve run into has been able to tell us much about what we’ll find on this road, which leads into the southeast corner of the Alaska mainland where few tourists venture. “What the heck,” I figure as I sip an espresso-laced vanilla milkshake with powdered ginger snaps mixed in, somehow expertly prepared and served nicely chilled miles from any obvious source of electricity. “Just go with it.” This turns out to be a good frame of mind for what follows, beginning with the appearance moments later of a kid about 15 years old, who flies up on a motocross bike, wearing a black leather diagonal-zip Brando biker jacket, black leather pants, blue ski goggles and a two-foot machete on his belt. Efforts to engage him in conversation get us nothing more than gruff responses, suggesting that he took more than his style of dress from “The Wild One.” The act falls apart, though, when he discovers that a swarm of bees has infested his bike, requiring him to perform a comical mount-up-and-take-off maneuver that’s more Bugs Bunny than Brando. “Hmmm,” I think, taking another sip of milkshake. “Unusual.” An hour or so later, during which time we see exactly no cars, we roll into the outskirts of McCarthy, Alaska, population about 100 at the height of summer and maybe seven over the winter. If you were looking for the last place on Earth, this just might be it. The town actually sits on the east side of the Kennicott River, while the gravel road ends in a parking lot on the west side. Connecting the two is a footbridge, with a handcart so that the few tourists who make it this far can get their stuff to the other side. All except us, that is. We’re on motorcycles, which means we can just ride across the narrow bridge into town. Really, we ask? Yeah, really. Hah! We motor across slowly, while the glacier-fed river rages below. Then we roll right up McCarthy’s dirt main street (in fact, its only street). We feel like cowboys in the Old West, riding past Ma Johnson’s Hotel, the McCarthy Lodge and the New Golden Saloon.• • • McCarthy is the jumping-off point for those interested in hiking, ice climbing or rafting in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, which surrounds the town on all sides, except for the narrow corridor we followed on the road in. The park covers 13 million acres, which makes it larger than New Hampshire and Vermont combined, and larger than the entire country of Switzerland. It also contains nine of the 16 highest mountains in the U.S. (including 18,008-foot Mt. St. Elias, the second-highest mountain in the country), and 150 glaciers, one of which is larger than Yellowstone National Park. In spite of all that, Wrangell-St. Elias gets a combined total of only 43,000 visitors a year at all of its facilities, including visitor centers that are much closer to civilization than McCarthy. A lot of the park is incredibly remote, but one of its most accessible attractions is Kennecott Mine, an enormous copper mine and mill town that was in operation from 1911 to 1938. Neal, the guy who runs the hotel, points us five miles down the road to the Kennecott site. Most tourists need to pay for a van trip, but again, we’ve got our bikes, so we ride there. The site is incredibly cool, with dozens of huge buildings, all overlooking a vast glacier, standing there just as they were when the mine was abandoned almost 70 years ago. Back then, this town had 300 year-round residents, stores, a hospital and regular train service. It’s hard to imagine today. This is also the spot, though, where the trip takes a decidedly spooky turn. On the road to Kennecott, we see a couple of hand-lettered warning signs. And in two places, we ride over chains buried in the dirt road near a string of private homes. It gets creepier: We see a truck carrying guys in black pants and shirts toting guns, then a few ATVs piloted by more black-shirt dudes with headsets. And I start to get visions that maybe not everyone up here joined the Welcome Wagon. It doesn’t help that when we get to the mine, the place is stone quiet, and the small visitor center is locked and inert. How many National Parks have you been to where there’s no one there to take your money? Bill and I stop to take a few pictures, and while we’re doing that, one by one, the rest of our party heads off in different directions until the silence is obvious. When no one comes back in 20 minutes, I creep myself out further by creating an entire fantasy in which the various gun-toters and get-away-from-it-all types are living their own version of “Apocalypse Now,” with the gravel road to McCarthy playing the part of the river, and me up here looking for Col. Kurtz. I’m starting to weave together a whole conspiracy theory involving everyone from Machete Boy to the hotel clerk. Fortunately, before that gets too far out of hand, we meet up with everybody back in town and get a little education from some of the locals over dinner. It turns out that there has been some tension between the Park Service, which has been placing more restrictions on the area, and families that have lived here for decades. But the reality is a lot less sinister than I thought. Machete Boy, we’re told, is a good kid going through a phase, the rifle guys are hunters and the headset guys are Park Service. The black shirts, apparently, were just a coincidence. McCarthy isn’t scary, they assure us, just eccentric. OK, I can work with that. In fact, as I meet more McCarthyites over the course of the evening, I actually come full circle on the whole experience. It starts to look like the kind of place that embodies everything that’s cool about Alaska: The people aren’t here because they grew up and got stuck here, but because they actually want to be here. By the time dusk arrives at about 11:30 or so, I’ve got a new plan. I call my wife, Charlotte, on the town’s lone satellite pay phone, wake her up and tell her to sell the house and bring our son, Jake, up here so we can open McCarthy’s first-ever slow-cooked barbecue restaurant. Charlotte actually agrees over the phone, forcing me to call my own bluff and back down. It’s a move I know I’ll regret.• • • The next morning, we load up and head back out the same road. We’ve gotten as far as we can get from mainstream America, which makes even Chitina, the small collection of homes at the other end, look like a city. We turn left onto Alaska Route 4, aiming for Valdez, the port town made famous by that oil spill. And the ride there turns into one of the highlights of the trip. One thing we’ve noticed in Alaska is that in spite of the spectacular mountain scenery, most of the roads aren’t all that special. So far, they’ve built the easy roads—the ones that go through the valleys. The tight, twisty backroads of the Rockies and the Appalachians don’t exist yet. But Route 4 comes close as it winds over the Chugach Mountains on the way to Valdez. The highest point is Thompson Pass. It’s only 2,678 feet up, but in Alaska, that puts you well into wide-open arctic tundra that feels like 10,000 feet in Colorado. And it helps that just before you go over the pass, you ride right by Worthington Glacier, glowing an unearthly blue. Down the other side, you descend into Keystone Canyon, where near-constant rain turns the mountain slopes a lush green, punctuated by the misty white of waterfalls. It’s like a small part of New Zealand, moved to the opposite side of the equator.• • • Valdez itself is an industrial town doused in a drizzly rain. Destroyed by a massive earthquake in 1964, it became an oil boomtown in the ’70s with construction of the Alaska pipeline, which ends here, and then an oil cleanup boomtown following the huge Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. As a result, it’s a very utilitarian city set on an incredibly scenic bay, surrounded by mountains. It’s also the place where we’ll board a ferry for the final leg of our trip, back to Anchorage. A cold rain greets us as we ride down to the ferry terminal and wait for all the cars to load before we can board. The loading ramp and decks are wet and slick as snot, but we just coast in, get pointed to the areas too small for cars, and park. We find rings on the deck surface to attach tiedowns and secure the bikes. The ferry ride takes several hours, and the rain continues most of the way, but the scenery is still incredible. The coastline is endlessly complex, full of mist-covered bays and fjords that look like they’ve never even been explored, much less settled. Mountains rise straight up from the water, and we see a few pickup-sized icebergs bobbing around. We pass the time playing cards and telling lies. But I spend a fair amount of the trip staring wistfully over the railing at Alaska. It sure is a special place. Eventually, the ferry terminal of Whittier appears out of the rain and fog. It was originally a trading town and then a World War II military base. Now it looks mostly abandoned, with a cluster of tourist shops, hotels and restaurants catering to the ferry. The wind is whipping the rain sideways as we leave the ferry in search of the Holy Grail of all motorcyclists—lunch. Unfortunately, everyone else on board is thinking the same thing, so the half-dozen or so restaurants next to the terminal are all packed. Using motorcyclist logic, we pick the one with the biggest, deepest puddle—a small lake, really—in front of the door. We figure it’s likely to discourage most other tourists, who probably aren’t wearing Gore-Tex boots. The strategy still doesn’t get us a table inside, but the owner invites us to sit on the covered patio out back. It offers protection from the wind and rain, but not from the 45-degree temperatures. Fortunately, we’re wearing riding gear anyway. It may sound uninviting, but between the great company, the bizarre trip and the incredibly tasty fish and chips, I can think of no place I’d rather be.• • • Sadly, we can only wait so long. There’s just one way out of Whittier, a road that goes through a 2.6-mile-long, one-lane railroad tunnel. Cars and motorcycles can drive through only in one direction at a time, and only at times of day when the trains aren’t using it. In other words, we’ve got a schedule to meet. Anchorage isn’t far—maybe two hours or so on the bike. But having seen some of the remote parts of Alaska, its biggest city now seems like far too ordinary a place for me. Worse, there’s an airport there, with a plane that will take us back to the regular world. It’s cold, rainy and a bit dismal out here on the back patio of this fish-and-chips hut. And the longer I sit here, toasty in my Aerostich, the less I want to leave.—Grant Parsons© 2005, American Motorcyclist Association |
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