AK For The Weekend 9

Phase 1

Thinking we had it handled, we invited our homies Josh Conroy and Wiley Kaupas along for the journey. Both said yes immediately. Correction: Wiley kind of invited himself on the mission, but we love him and he was my roommate for years in college and later my roommate during countless race weekends after, so naturally he gets the invite to wherever I am going (Wiley, if you’re reading this don’t abuse this privilege). With the crew assembled, we all booked flights and decided to make it happen for real. Drew on film duty, Josh shooting photos, Wiley forced to bring his camera, myself... well I guess I was playing shotty 35mm photo taker, and all of us as riders.

Not going to lie, I kind of conned my friends into a half-baked midnight idea I had romanticized to them about a great adventure to ride in the final frontier. However, now committed, I booked a room at a hotel in Anchorage for our first night since we were all getting in just after midnight. Did I mention we were all flying from different places? Drew was flying from Seattle and landed first, Wiley from Utah or somewhere he was shooting, Josh from Denver, and myself from San Francisco. Logically since we were landing on the 18th of August, I booked a room for the 18th. We all made it safely with bikes in tow, and soon realized we needed to get from the airport to our hotel downtown. Stepping out into the rainy darkness and looking around for a shuttle or taxi, we noticed our adventure beginning slightly earlier than we had hoped... Luckily we found a city bus that went downtown, hopped on it, and proceeded to ride our first blue lit bus straight to downtown.

I opened the door to the TV playing, someone’s stuff all over the place, and a half drunk handle of jose cuervo (these are the kind of details you don’t forget) on the desk.. I don’t think we were supposed to be in this room.

Arriving at the hotel with a sense of accomplishment having checked off our first couple tasks on the list, I went to the counter and grabbed our keys. We piled into the elevator, 4 dudes with bike bags, and headed to our room. Tried the key, but it didn’t work... checked the door to make sure it matched the number on the key, then tried it a couple more times. All of a sudden we hear, “there’s someone in here”... apparently there was already someone staying in that room. I went back to the front desk and told them, then they gave us another key. Back in the elevator, 4 dudes with bike bags, up to our new room we went. I slipped the key in the little key card slot and boom, it worked! I opened the door to the TV playing, someone’s stuff all over the place, and a half drunk handle of jose cuervo (these are the kind of details you don’t forget) on the desk.. I don’t think we were supposed to be in this room.

Back to the front desk for a third time, but this time I had had a slight epiphany.. I realized that when I booked the room, I just looked at the date that we landed and booked a hotel for that night; however, I sort of forgot that we landed after midnight so the hotel room was actually booked for the following night... Thankfully, the woman at the front desk was super nice and found us a room said to be vacant, but this room was a suite with only one king size bed. Tonight’s accommodations just got a little tight.

Up the elevator to the top floor, 4 dudes with bike bags, we arrived at our room optimistically timid, knowing if history repeats itself then we’re heading straight back to that front desk. I cautiously said a little prayer and opened the door. No lights were on, a good sign. Nobody in the living room area of the suite, good. Turned the lights on, no screaming or anyone yelling at us to get out of the room, perfect. We inspected every inch of the room to make sure there wasn’t a catch, to our surprise, everything looked kind of normal. Aside from four dudes all sleeping in one king sized bed. That was not on the menu I had originally cooked up.

Getting absolutely garbage sleep, we woke early the next morning to walk our tired shells of selves to the train station for phase 2 of what was to be “AK for the weekend”.

Phase 2

About a mile walk, 4 dudes with bike bags, we made our way to the Anchorage train station. A nice art deco era establishment bustling with tourists searching for “adventure”. This particular train winds its way down the Kenai peninsula, through Girdwood, then straight south into the backcountry before coming to a halt in Seward. For us, we were to hop off at that first stop in Girdwood then b-line it to Alyeska resort to ride. But there was another small detail I didn’t really iron out before getting to this part... the resort was about 3 miles from the “train station”. Also, the “train station” turned out to be a glorified bus stop with no platform and a gravel parking lot to the east cut out of the surrounding woods, and a large marsh landscape leading out to the Turnagain Arm of the sound on the west. Without coming to a stop, the attendant on the train told us to hop off and tossed our bike bags down to us as the train continued to roll at a walking pace.

Now standing in the zone that should have a train platform, watching the train we had just been on fade away into the gray mist, we looked towards that lonesome gravel lot to see a little bus with its lights on. We walked over, 4 dudes with bike bags, and asked where this bus was heading. Greeted by a woman named Dorthy, she snapped back, “Where are y’all heading?” What seemed like all at once, we responded, “Alyeska Ski Resort” Dorthy said hop in, and hop in we did.

Looking back, Dorthy could’ve taken us anywhere and we would’ve believed we were heading to Alyeska, but I guess that’s just one of the risks you have to take when on a trip of this sort.

Phase 3

On a bus heading towards what we suspected was Alyeska Resort, Dorthy began questioning what we had in our bags. We told her we were here to ride bikes and that our bikes were in these bags. She quickly replied, “You came all the way here to ride bikes around Girdwood? But why...?” Well you know, Dorthy, looking back on it we did seem kind of crazy, or atleast delusional. Why would 4 dudes with bike bags travel 3,000 plus miles to a sleepy ski town in the summer? Simply put, I watched “Kranked 7” years ago and remembered seeing Mike Hopkins and James Doerfling ripping this wild landscape at a resort in Alaska. Then I went online to find out if this resort still had a bike park and decided I wanted to go. So Dorthy, to answer your question; we were in Girdwood to ride bikes because we heard it was good here.

Our sweet transporter dropped us off at the condo I had booked for the weekend, a 20-30 year old 3 story building and a medium sized parking lot with about 3 cars inhabiting said space. Just by rolling through town you could tell it was the off season and not many shops or restaurants were open. We were about 5 hours early for our check-in time, but we went into our condo anyway. True to fashion for this trip, our accommodations weren’t quite ready. However, we wanted to ride, so we built our bikes and left a note saying that we got in early and were just out riding, but don’t mind the bags.

Phase 4

At this point we were absolutely frothing to get up the towering mountain and slide our way down in the rain. Did I mention it hadn’t stopped raining since we got into Anchorage about 10 hours prior? Apparently this region was in a drought up until the week we had arrived. Note to self: August is monsoon season you idiot.

Those first laps were the best laps I had that entire year. Not knowing where we were going, blindly choosing trails like we were ordering off a menu written in cyrillic. We rode just about every trail on the lower mountain and each of us had more than a handful of “moments” where we thought the ship was going down. After a couple of runs, we started to see other riders filling out the trails and lift queue. Most on downhill bikes and actually ripping, one kid even had one of Dakotah Norton’s old worlds bikes from his days on Devinci. This was a huge surprise to us, because honestly we had heard nothing about this bike park outside of the Kranked 7 segment and didn’t know it was even operating until we did some research.

About halfway through the day, we decided it would be a good idea to bring out the cameras to start filming what would be the riding segment of our trip. The bike park was sick and for sure worth the mellow 3,000 mile trip. From San Francisco it was a 4 and a half hour flight, 10 minute bus ride, 1 mile walk, 45 minute train ride, then another 10 minute bus ride; a total of about 6 hours of travel plus airport time, so maybe 9 hours.

With it being Alaska in August, the light stayed pretty good until around 10pm. Us, being washed up mountain bikers on vacation at this point, turned in around 7pm and went to dinner at this restaurant on the other side of town, which we also took the bus to. Pro tip, the bus is free to ride and Dorthy is the MVP. Now that I think of it, everyone we met was super nice and helpful. They also probably thought we were idiots but that’s ok.

The next day, with more sleep and some sense of stability in our lives, the four of us ripped laps in the morning; grinning ear-to-ear with a slight glimmer of our youth becoming present in our eyes. I don’t know when the last time the four of us had ridden together, but I do know that this feeling of elation, glee, and pure joy is what a bike trip is all about. Much of this day was spent on the upper mountain in the more tundra-like terrain where that Kranked 7 segment was filmed. The remnants of the features Mike Hopkins and James Doerfling rode were still there and some were still rideable. It was like riding on a different planet up there. Glacier run-off flowed down the mountain side as trails carved into the shale wound their way along the ridges, eventually becoming ribbons of single track cut into the tundra shrubs before dropping into the lower mountain woods. And if you looked up from your front tire, you’d see the Turnagain Arm of the sound thousands of feet below surrounded by mountains for as far as the eye could see. Truly breathtaking landscape.

After riding and filming all day, we got cleaned up and hit the restaurant closest to our condo called “Jack Sprat”. Reminiscing on the day and the wild ride we had getting to this point, it’s safe to say we had a great time riding here; although, it did leave us feeling like we needed a bit more... We had only scratched the surface of this region.

Phase 5

The following day we got up and packed our things. Strolled down to the local ski/bike shop called “Powder Hound” and asked if it would be possible to stash our bikes and bags there for the day so we could take the tram up the mountain and hike around. They were incredibly nice and let us store our gear there as we wandered around the resort a bit more before catching our train back to Anchorage, then onto our flights to our respective homes. 4 dudes with bike bags.

In the end, we learned that it isn’t that difficult to go out and explore a new zone if you really want to. What seemed like a pipe-dream ended up being a little more attainable than we had originally thought, but moreso, most people in the world are nice and want to help. Trusting your instincts, being honest, and asking questions took us a lot further than we had imagined.

Shout out to everyone who helped us along the way in this journey. First of all, thank you to Drew Boxold, Josh Conroy, and Wiley Kaupas for being down to get outside our comfort zones a little. Thanks to the people at Alyeska Resort for operating the bike park and keeping the scene going strong up there. Thanks to Dorthy and Girdwood’s bus system for getting us around, seriously that was huge. Thank you to “The Bake Shop” for being open in the summer and serving great breakfast. Lastly, thank you to “The Powder Hound Ski and Bike Shop” for being super accommodating and letting us store our gear for the day.

Filmed By Drew Boxold and Wiley Kaupas 

Photos by Josh Conroy

Words by Tanner Stephens