Tag: chugach-mountains

Tok to Anchorage – Part 3 of 3

September 14, 2025

As I continue my drive beyond Eureka Roadhouse I will start to see more mountains partially obscured by clouds at their peaks. I strongly suspect they have snow, and possibly glaciers, on them, and in some cases I could barely make out the presence of something in the clouds. My original plan would have had me traversing this section of road 2 or 3 more times, so I was hoping I would get another “bite at the apple” and come back, hopefully armed with maps which might help explain what I was seeing. That did not work out, as I would only pass this way one more time, and it would be heavily overcast and snowing in places! I will explain in more detail what I get to that point.

So let me show you the rest of the pictures I took today:

There was significant cloud cover over the peak shown above, and I could see quite a bit of snow at the base of the clouds, so I believe there is a substantial mountaintop hiding behind those clouds.

That is a different snow-covered mountain than I showed you in the previous post, and the icefield at the base continued a considerable distance. You will see it at the bottom of most of the following pictures.

I was now past the snow-covered “hidden mountains” and was getting into another part of the day’s trip. I was keeping an eye on my GPS unit and realized I still had two hours of driving to get to Anchorage and check in at my Airbnb. The road had gotten narrower and I was in more traffic. Not knowing what was ahead of me I decided it was probably best to stop taking pictures for the day and just focus on driving.

There were of course more mountains along the way, although the road did open up again later, and I passed through at least two medium sized towns. As I approached Anchorage the highway went to 4-lanes, and in some places 6-lanes, so evidently there is enough traffic to warrant that. Getting to downtown Anchorage was easy and it is a very well laid out city.

I regret that I couldn’t retrace my route and show you more, and perhaps better, photos, but I did the best I could. I saw lots of things on my first full day in the state, and believe me – there is lots more to come. I started this as a 4-part post but decided to cut it down to three. I am trying to break down my posts into manageable pieces and not overwhelm people with too much at a time.

Tok to Anchorage – Part 2 of 3

September 14, 2025

As I travel between Tok upstate and Anchorage near the water, the road would take me on a long open stretch between Glennallen and Palmer. A little short of halfway the road rises to an elevation of about 3,000′ (Tok and Glennallen are at around 1,500′). There was a constant string of mountains to the south and I started to see snow on some of them, and the telltale cloud cover which seems to occur if there is snow or a glacier at high elevation.

Some of the mountains shown above have a solid coating of snow. And before I had a chance to stop and get to a place to take those photos, I could tell that the clouds on the right hand side were obscuring an even taller peak covered in snow. I believe that tallest mountain is either Mount Witherspoon (12,012 feet elevation) or Mount Marcus Baker (13,176 feet elevation). And each of the peaks in the photo, snow covered or not, are separate mountains in that “small” area. When I got to Anchorage I asked if there was a map showing the locations of all the glaciers along the coast and was shocked to learn that there are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and there are no maps to make identification easy.

Here are a few shots I took with the digital camera and a zoom lens.

And back to my smartphone for the rest of this group as I continue driving towards Anchorage.

That mountain ahead of me had rain falling from the clouds above it. The next ones are what I call the “brown mountains” which appeared to be shorter and without snow on them.

With clouds behind them, that group appeared to be closer to the highway I was on, and were very likely obscuring the view of other mountains behind them. There are lots of mountains between the highway and the coast.

Once I got past Eureka Roadhouse the mountains would start to play hide and seek (in Part 3).