Eleven Miles of Winter: The Coastal Trail Changes Its Personality

The Tony Knowles Coastal Trail runs eleven miles from downtown Anchorage to Kincaid Park along the edge of Cook Inlet, and it is the city's front porch in every season. In November, it changes character: the asphalt disappears under packed snow, the cyclists give way to skiers and fat-tire bikes, and the trail becomes a groomed Nordic corridor through birch forest and along the bluffs above the inlet.

The winter trail has its own etiquette, posted and enforced mostly by custom. Groomed ski tracks are for skiers; walkers and runners keep to the side to preserve the corduroy. Dogs are welcome on leash. And the trail's most important rule concerns its largest residents: moose use the packed trail as a winter highway of their own, and a moose on the path has the right of way — always, without exception, at whatever distance it chooses. Turning around is not defeat; it is the correct local move.

What the winter trail offers in exchange is unmatched. On clear days the view across the inlet takes in Mount Susitna — the Sleeping Lady — and on the clearest days, Denali itself stands on the northern horizon. The sunset, which arrives in the late afternoon all winter, lights the inlet ice in colors that stop commuters on their skis. Earthquake Park, along the trail's midsection, tells the story of the 1964 earthquake in the sculpted, slumped earth itself.

The trail is maintained as part of a municipal trail system that grooms hundreds of kilometers of Nordic routes across the city — one of the quiet marvels of Anchorage life, funded publicly and used by everyone from Olympic hopefuls to grandparents on classic skis. Trail condition reports are posted by the municipality and the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage through the season.

If you are new to the city, the Coastal Trail in winter is the fastest education available: dress warmer than you think, yield to moose, and go at sunset. Anchorage will explain itself.