September 29, 2014

Mountain biking at Kincaid Park.

Fall is beautiful in Anchorage. Because the season is so short, it's important to take advantage of as many nice days as possible. Matt had the weekend off, so we headed to Kincaid Park, which lies on the western side of Anchorage, for some mountain bike riding...both Saturday and Sunday. :-) The temperature was about 50 degrees, which was perfect for riding. 


Kincaid Park, along with Hillside Park, which is on the southeast side of Anchorage, has more than 20 miles of single track trails, which have all been developed over the past three years. The Alaska Dispatch News, Alaska's leading newspaper, wrote an article about the singletrack trails that are becoming quite popular among mountain bikers in Anchorage. 


We rode a trail called Bowling Alley and a loop called Toilet Bowl on Saturday and then rode Middle Earth, Mighty Bike and Tower Power on Sunday. Middle Earth is a new 7 mile trail at Kincaid Park that had spectacular views of the Cook Inlet. These routes were obviously named with some intense thought... 


According to the Alaska Dispatch, the International Mountain Biking Association offers a five-level trail rating system ranging from easy (maximum grade of 10 percent and no natural obstacles) to the extremely difficult double black diamond (20 percent grade with unavoidable obstacles and no more than 6 inches wide in places). IMBA officials were in Anchorage in early June to inspect the Kincaid trails. Singletrack Advocates considers all of the Kincaid trails -- except for new one-way sections -- to be intermediate, and the IMBA agreed, classifying the one-way trails as black diamond or expert level.


Most of the trials are one way, which conveniently prevents collisions with other bikers...


We ended up riding about six miles of the singletrack trails on Saturday and rode for about three hours on Sunday...time flies when you're having fun!! 



Just as our ride ended on Saturday, we came across some familiar company...Moose!!!


After our ride on Sunday, we headed to Tastee Feez (my first visit ever) for a snack. For the record, this is the northern most Tastee Freez in the world. 


We had a great time getting outside together and enjoying the weather.


I hope you had a great weekend!