Anchorage Daily News

What is good news for die-hard snowmachine riders still roaring around at Turnagain Pass might not be such good news for bikers and other summer lovers in our corner of Alaska.

Reinforced by a colder-than-normal April punctuated a big snowstorm, winter is retreating far more slowly than what Anchorage residents have become accustomed to in recent years.

"Everything is about two weeks late this year," Rich Shaw of RTR Bicycles in Anchorage said.

The word on riding most trails now?

Don't. You'll just rut the mud.

Down in the lowlands, Kincaid Park trails appear to be drying out fairly quickly, said Margaret Timmerman of the city parks department. But Hillside Park trails are wet, and there is still snow on Chugach State Park trails.

Mud, goo and mush are, in fact, the general rule everywhere except for trails hardened with gravel.

"We have gotten spoiled in the last decade or so,'' said Larry Rundquist, a hydrologist with the Alaska Pacific River Forecast Center.

He was reminded of this when he tried to go for a hike on the ridge above Arctic Valley last week.

"I should have brought my skis," he said. "Man there's a lot of snow up there."

At Turnagain -- which has remained open to those snowmachines well past the normal May 1 closing date for the Chugach National Forest -- there was more than 10 feet of snow still on the ground last week. Turnagain is a notoriously snowy place, but the snow at mid-May this year is four feet deeper than at the same time last year.

Just below Turnagain to the south, enough snow has melted to force the closure of the Johnson Pass Trail to snowmobiles, but it's going to be a long time before the popular destination is ready to welcome the mountain bikers and hikers of summer.

Most years, that popular trail doesn't go snow free until early June. This year, who knows?

Shaw was riding there a few weeks ago, but that was on a fat-tired snow bike. Now, he said, the snow is too soft for snow biking and way too deep for a regular mountain bike.

Before anyone can ride, that snow has to melt and the trails must dry out.

Rundquist thinks it could be a while between melt out and dry out this year.

"It's looking grim for the rest of this month at least," he said.

Anchorage municipal mountain bike trails traditionally have been closed to riding until June 1. Were that restriction still in place, the city might be considering keeping them closed until mid-June.

But in large part because spring has arrived so much earlier in the past decade, the city has abandoned the June 1 closure.

"We have de-emphasized the traditional June 1 date since trail conditions can vary year-to-year,'' said Monique Anderson, Anchorage parks superintendent. "Instead, our intent is to put the responsibility on trail users to know when they are causing damage and to relocate to an appropriate trail."

Part of the problem, Rundquist said, is that temperatures haven't stayed well above freezing for extended stretches.

"It will be wet for a while,'' Rundquist said. "There's still a lot of snow up high.

But there is hope.

Where winter winds blew away the snow, spring is coming at a faster pace, Shaw said. He found near-dry trails for mountain biking in the Palmer area and east toward Chickaloon last week.

On a four-wheeler trail along King River, he said, there was actually dust instead of mud.

"It's so windy out there," Shaw said. "All winter, snow doesn't have a chance to accumulate."

Much of the southern edge of the Talkeetna Mountain range could be dry enough for hiking, mountain biking and four-wheeling by the end of the month.

And this being Alaska, there is always the chance some strange weather event could alter all predictions. A couple of weeks of warm weather and strong winds could dry things about as fast as that end-of-April storm buried the area in snow.

But don't get your hopes up. Here's the June outlook from the weather service's Climate Prediction Center:

"Sea surface temperatures along the western coast of North America are below normal and are expected to favor below-normal air temperatures along coastal areas from the Alaska Panhandle to Southern California."

The report does note "above-normal temperatures are expected in portions of northern and central Alaska."

But that's unlikely to help Anchorage much, given the city sits just inland from a oceanic river of cold water flowing steadily up the Southeast Alaska coast and then around the Gulf of Alaska.

Find outdoors editor Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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