Great Winter Adventures from Anchorage for the Family

Here are winter adventures within a 90-minute drive or less from Anchorage. Some are outdoors and take advantage of Alaska’s winter snow cover and frozen ground. Others offer intimate indoor escapes to unexpected sights. All point toward fun activities — and the option to return home in time for dinner.

What do these adventures have in common?

  • An hour’s drive or less from most areas in the city
  • Features the unexpected and/or the educational
  • No strenuous or epic approach needed
  • No unusual hazards
  • Free or reasonable fee
  • Most have restrooms nearby

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Winter Adventures

If you want to mar­vel at the sight of thou­sands of fish school­ing in gigan­tic tanks, take the self-guid­ed tour inside the state fish hatch­ery on the banks of Ship Creek east of down­town. The muse­um-qual­i­ty obser­va­tion deck offers inti­mate views of a com­plex oper­a­tion that pro­duces up to six mil­lion sport fish each year.

When you feel weary of cold sea­son weath­er and yearn for a whiff of sum­mer, you can vis­it Anchorage’s own trop­i­cal green­house almost any day. The Mann Leis­er Memo­r­i­al Green­house in near-east Anchor­age inside Russ­ian Jack Springs Park fea­tures birds, fish and a col­lec­tion of exot­ic plants from around the world.

For an epic sled run that drops near­ly 500 feet in less than a mile, vis­it what some locals call The Luge” off Arc­tic Val­ley Road in the foothills of the Chugach Moun­tains just east of town. Depend­ing upon on snow con­di­tions, it takes intre­pid sled­ders three-to-five exhil­a­rat­ing min­utes to descend a nar­row chute-like trail to the bottom.

Explore the wild ice of Pot­ter Marsh along the Seward High­way in South Anchor­age. After a hard freeze-up, the marsh morphs from bird-nest­ing habi­tat into an intrigu­ing maze, with miles of twisty routes lead­ing to unex­pect­ed rinks. Very pop­u­lar with families.

If you’d like to explore a snow-bound trail sys­tem through a majes­tic rain for­est that gets lit­tle vis­i­ta­tion in win­ter, try out Bird Val­ley in Chugach State Park south of Anchor­age off the Seward High­way. You and the fam­i­ly can stroll, ski, snow­shoe or snow-bike for hours through a serene and almost sur­re­al set­ting of tow­er­ing trees with an occa­sion­al stu­pen­dous view of Pen­guin Peak and Bird Ridge.