Early Season Ride up to Hatcher Pass

When I was a child, my family lived in Northern Japan. One of our frequent day trips was to drive to the Towada Mountains, a volcanic range of mountains, one of which had a caldera lake, with an absolutely spectacular gorge carved by the Oirase River which flowed from the lake to the ocean below and to the east. To this day, it's one of my favorite places on earth; perhaps my very favorite, even. I remember traveling up into the mountains near the caldera lake one winter afternoon, and being amazed. The snowplows had done an amazing job of keeping the road clear -- but on either side of the road were vertical walls of snow towering way over our heads. It was an impressive sight, to say the least.

So, when a co-worker told me he had recently tried to drive over Hatcher Pass between Willow and Palmer, Alaska, and had run into walls of snow that sounded like the ones from my childhood in Japan, I decided I needed to take a trip out to Hatcher Pass to see it (again) for myself.



My co-worker had driven up from the Willow side, and maybe the Palmer side was just a little warmer and received a little more sun than the Willow side. Or maybe, I just waited too long to head out to the Pass. Whatever the reason, I didn't find ten-foot-high walls of snow on either side of the road, but it was a great day for a ride, anyway. The weather was beautiful -- warm, sunny, mild winds -- and the trees were just starting to bud, filling the air with the delicious aroma of spring (cottonwoods are a pain in the backside come mid-summer, but they smell wonderful in early May!). Even though the snow wasn't as high on the sides of the road as I expected, there was still too much snow near the summit for either the Pass itself or Archangel Valley to be opened yet...which is not at all unexpected, as the Pass usually doesn't open until around the 4th of July. Nevertheless, if you are visiting Alaska by motorcycle (or even by car), I'd still recommend a trip up to Hatcher Pass, if you find yourself in the Mat-Su Valley. Like the Towada Range in Japan, it's one of my favorite places to spend a sunny summer day.