Biking in the Shadow of Giants

Three days on Alaska’s Denali Highway

Our sag wagon where folks slept and ate when not biking.

Two weeks before the solstice in Alaska, the days are virtually unending. We took advantage of the sun-filled days to bike across the Denali highway from Paxson to Cantwell, a 135-mile gravel-and-rock road that passed some of the most spectacular mountain vistas I have seen in Alaska. I drove the sag wagon — our sprinter van and the car with the bicycle rack, offering a rest and cooked meals along the route for all.

​On a Thursday afternoon, we drove five hours from Anchorage to get to the Denali Highway, determined to get some road time in before sunset. The four set off on the road at 8 p.m., pedaling uphill on the rock-strewn dirt road. I passed them driving as the landscape changed from a scrub forest to broad, open tundra then waited on a hilltop until they caught up with me 12 miles ahead.

The four cyclists at the river that flows from the Maclaran Glacier.

​We slept next to a river the first night. Brown hills still dotted with snow surrounded us. The next day we continued west and to the north of us, the sparklinng white tops of…