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In Alaska, your feet are especially useful because hikes and walks can transport you to places of inspiring beauty, often with very little company (except for the occasional moose or eagle).
Every town's visitor center has maps, handouts, and trail guidebooks. For strolls around small towns' historic downtown areas, you can frequently find a free walking-tour brochure. Information can enhance beach walks, too; you can usually find out where the tide pools are at public-land visitor centers or bookstores in coastal communities. The information below gives you a head start to your information-gathering excursion by outlining several great walks and hikes.
 | Bring good walking or hiking shoes to Alaska. You also need layers of warm clothing, good rain gear, snacks, and water. For beach walks or tide-pool explorations, shin-high rubber boots enhance the experience. You can find a pair for around $15 in any coastal town. While you're in Alaska, wear them everywhere you go and people will think you're a local. |
Glen Alps: Stepping from city to mountain
The Glen Alps Trailhead in Chugach State Park, 2,000 feet above Anchorage, is a magical portal between two worlds. On one side, Anchorage spreads out below you like a toy city. From the park, you can see how isolated the city really is — a mere splash of civilization on a much larger background of wild land.
You can hike anywhere and in any style you like by choosing one of several trails through the mountains for hikes of up to a few days. Enjoy the other world — the total freedom beyond the city's edge.
Tony Knowles Coastal Trail: Exploring urban wilds
This coastal trail is the best of many paved multiuse trails that network through Anchorage. It starts downtown. Wander down to Elderberry Park, pass through a tunnel, and you'll find yourself face-to-face with the ocean and mudflat bird habitat. From there, the trail continues along the shore and in the wooded bluffs above the water for ten miles to Kincaid Park, the city's crown jewel of forest trails for cross-country skiing and mountain biking. On the more wooded half of the trail, it's common to see moose and eagles, and occasionally you can spot beluga whales in the nearby Knik Arm from the downtown portion of the trail.
Bird Ridge Trail: A spectacular cardiac test
About 25 miles south of Anchorage, this Chugach State Park Trail rises straight up a 3,500-foot mountain in just 2-1/2 miles, with mind-expanding views all the way. If you don't have the energy to make it to the top, you won't go home feeling disappointed: From near the start, you can see far along Turnagain Arm and into the series of mountains and valleys in the Chugach Range. If you have energy left, the ridge continues even higher and farther into the heart of the mountains.
Granite Tors Trail: Nature-carved monuments
This challenging hike rises to a strange destination called The Plain of Monuments, where big granite monoliths stand up like abstract statues. The 15-mile looping route is in Chena River State Recreation Area, outside of Fairbanks. The trail slowly rises from the partly burned boreal forest to damp tundra, the site of the tors, naturally occurring towers of rock, standing at random spots upon the plateau without a sense of scale to orient their size. They were formed when softer material eroded from around granite that had oozed up from below.
Denali National Park: Finding your measure in the backcountry
Denali National Park has few formal trails, but you can explore without a trail, setting out on your own on tundra or on a gravel river plain. Without trees to get in the way, you can walk anywhere you choose, keeping your common sense handy to remember your way back and to avoid dangerous situations. One of the best starting points is the Toklat River, reachable on the park's shuttle-bus system. If you don't see wildlife on your hike, you'll likely see animals on the bus ride.
Outer Point Trail: Walking to whale waters
This trail, which leads from the North Douglas Highway near Juneau, is an easy walk of just 1-1/3 miles. A boardwalk trail leads through mossy rainforest, over sunny wetlands, and out to a rocky beach overlooking islet-dotted Stephens Passage. Whales frequent these waters. At low tide, you can explore the tide pools before following the loop trail back through woods so pretty you have to remind yourself you're not in a botanical garden, but just a small slice of a huge forest.
The Streets of Juneau: Finding the charm of old Alaska
Start at the capitol building at Fourth and Main and walk uphill. You don't need a plan; every street is lined with charming, moss-roofed houses. You do need strong legs, however, as the streets climb insanely, sometimes quitting and becoming stairs, up to the ridge that is Seventh Street. Explore in any direction from Seventh Street: down the stairs that descend far below to Gold Creek, down Goldbelt Street to the Governor's Mansion on Calhoun Avenue; or uphill toward the mountains along Seventh. You're just steps away from a hike into the rain forest that looms over the city.
Barrow's Arctic Ocean Beach: Standing at the World's Edge
You won't ever mistake for Waikiki the beach of pea-sized gravel where the land ends and the Arctic Ocean begins near Barrow, but it has its own desolate beauty. You're truly at the end of the world, and it feels and looks like it. Huge whale bones left over from Eskimo hunts lie on the beach in several places. In the winter, the beach is a strange place — the frozen sea piles up into miniature mountain ranges. At those times, however, get local advice before walking far to avoid polar bears or dangerously cold weather.
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