Let’s go back in time for a moment…remember when Lucas and I were in the Bahamas back in March? Well, as unlikely as it sounds, our Alaska dreams were born while on a mooring ball in Hope Town, Abacos.
Nellie had traveled all the way from Tuntituliak, Alaska, taking five flights over two days, to visit us for Spring Break in Hope Town. Paul had traveled all the way from San Diego and had helped us for years on boat projects whenever he was home. It only seemed fair that Lucas and I return the favor and visit them in the winter of 2026.
So the general plan was hatched way back in March and then this summer, we decided to actually make it happen. A few spreadsheets and planning calls later, Lucas and Nellie had booked all of our travel and overnight accommodations. Paul and I were just along for the ride.
We arrived in Anchorage, Alaska on Monday, December 29, landing about an hour before Nellie. Our first responsibility was to get the rental car. As Lucas was booking our arrangements months prior, he researched cars with winter tires and block heaters… Well, he was surprised to learn that the car we rented didn’t come with either. With his 24 chrome tabs open, comparing all the options, he had begun to assume those would be standard issue at every rental car agency in Alaska in the winter – nope. The adventure had already begun. We traversed the snowy streets of Anchorage to the closest restaurant, where we dined on delicious Korean food while waiting for Nellie’s plane to land. Lucas picked Nellie up and she joined us for lunch.
We had big plans for our first afternoon in Alaska and frankly, I was pretty anxious about them – we were to drive 4 hours north to our first accommodation – an Airbnb outside of Denali National Park. It was around 4 p.m. by the time we were ready to start our drive, having stocked up for the week at the big grocery store in Anchorage. As a reminder to the lower 48-ers, there isn’t much daylight in Alaska in December. In Anchorage, the sun rises around 10:30 a.m. and sets around 3:30 p.m. So, we were starting our first long-distance winter drive in Alaska at dusk. Great.
Thankfully, I am married to a wonderful man who is a very skilled and calm winter driver. Lucas skillfully navigated us out of Anchorage and through the mountainous and sometimes snowy roads north. I tried to keep my shit together in the passenger seat while keeping a lookout for moose (we saw three by the road!). Let’s just say it was a long evening and I was very glad to arrive at our destination.
Nellie had found a beautiful house to rent for the week in Healy, Alaska, about 10 miles north of the entrance to Denali National Park. This place was so cozy and the perfect home base for us. Temperatures were forecasted to be in the -20s and -30s all week, the coldest weather I had ever been in, but we were warm and toasty inside, enjoying the heated tile floors throughout the house and 12” thick walls.
I woke up at 5 a.m. Alaska time the next morning, as it was a workday for me. I needed to work in Eastern time to keep up with the rest of my team. The rest of the Alaska crew slept in a bit before venturing out to look for a coffee shop around sunrise, 10:30 a.m. Alaska time. Healy is very much a summer resort town; not a single lodge was open in December. Lucky for the caffeine-seeking members of our party, the Alaska Coffee Bean was open. They returned caffeinated and hung out while I finished my work for the day. Around 1 p.m., we suited up and headed out with our last few hours of daylight to explore the area. We decided to go for a hike near the Denali National Park Winter Visitor Center. It was -25 degrees with clear skies and, importantly, no wind. Surprisingly, given the temperatures, we had a lovely hike, walking for about an hour through a stunning winter wonderland. After our walk, we drove around the park to get a lay of the land.
To say Denali National Park is huge is a complete understatement. There are more than six million acres of park and only one entrance. The only road in the park – Denali Park Road – is 92 miles long, taking visitors deep into the wilderness. A few years ago, a huge rock slide took out sections of the road, closing it at mile 43. In the winter, only the first three miles of the road remain open. As we drove around the three miles of road, we saw one other car.
We left the park around 3 p.m.. It was sunset but we never actually saw the sun that day as it stayed hidden behind all the mountains. Driving anywhere in or near Denali is intense and beautiful. The roads are windy with some snow cover. There are long bridges over steep gorges with bright blue glacial rivers running through. Most of the river was frozen but there was still water flowing in the middle, which seemed crazy in this cold weather. As we approached the river, temperatures dropped another 10 degrees, and we were surrounded by ice fog, a fascinating winter phenomenon.
On our way home, we stopped at the community grocery/hardware store – The Three Bears (aka Tres Osos) for a few extra supplies. This was our kind of store – it had everything! We walked out with two camo balakavas, a bag full of limes for margaritas, grapes that cost $7 per pound (whoops, but they were so good!) and a 5 lbs cardboard box of tortilla chips. There was even fudge from Mackinaw City for sale at the checkout lane. We passed on the fudge, of course, because it wasn’t from an island company – be better Healy, Alaska!
We spent the long Alaska night getting our butts kicked in Scrabble by Paul (Nellie and I still protest “ohh” as a word) and watched various college football games. We were all pretty exhausted from our travels the day before, so we made it a pretty early night.
Let’s talk briefly about the temperatures at night. Overnight, we were seeing temperatures in the -15 range, but as the week progressed, it was forecasted to drop into the -30s. After our second night and our first cold start at -20 degrees, Lucas decided that was about as low as he wanted to test it (Lucas said it was a “16 pip’er”, whatever that means), and he started leaving the car running overnight to keep the engine going. Little did he know that his years of cold-weather testing development cars, while working at Roush and Ford, were preparing him for this trip. Paul, Nellie and I were very thankful that Lucas was on our team and kept our VW going.
The next day was New Year’s Eve and the start of my long weekend. Lucas made us famous Kizer breakfast potatoes to kick off the last day of 2025; we relaxed all day watching some football, playing a few games and just hanging out.
Today was also the start of a 3-day lunar event; the full moon rose on December 31 and didn’t go below the horizon again until January 2. Nellie and I made multiple runs outside to check for Northern Lights, but each time we checked, the beautiful full moon was so bright it was all we could see. I know, a tough problem to have. Paul and Lucas made dinner and drinks, respectively, and we closed out 2025, heading to bed at midnight, Eastern time!
On the first day of the new year, we had an easy morning. Lucas and I made breakfast for the group, bacon to prevent frostbite and more Kizer potatoes. Just after sunrise, so 11 a.m., we put all of our gear on for another winter walk. We drove back out to the Denali entrance and found another trail to explore. Today’s temps were even colder than the previous days, it was -30 in the park. When it is this cold, your eyelashes and beard freeze within minutes of stepping outside.
Paul and Nellie picked out a trail that took us along a ridgeline of a frozen lake. The incline kept us all warm; it is hard work hiking in all of our winter gear. We headed back to the car after about an hour, hiking a total of 1.5 miles through the beautiful landscape. As we walked back to the trailhead, we had our first look at the sun in a few days, we were finally in the right place at the right time to catch it between mountains.
Have I mentioned that it was cold? Despite the temperatures, we were all having a great time. There is so much to explore in this area. We were trying to see as much as we could while staying safe in the “coldest winter in Alaska since 1981.”
One morning earlier in the week, I was sitting at the kitchen counter eating a delicious breakfast sandwich that Lucas had just made, flipping through the tourist brochures left on the counter by our hosts. I flipped to a “Denali Fat Truck Tours” with this crazy looking tank on the front.
“We should do this!” I exclaimed. The rest of the group responded sadly, “Yeah, we saw that ad in the coffee shop, but it is really expensive.” I saw a gleam in Nellie’s eye…she really wanted to do it, and so did I! It didn’t take much convincing to get Paul and Lucas to agree – why the heck am I working so hard all winter if we can’t splurge on a winter tank tour?!
It ended up not being a tank; it was a SHERP, an off-roading vehicle designed in Ukraine. Lucas and Paul were pumped; they had read about these vehicles but had never seen one in the wild. Nellie and I were also pumped; we were going to explore more parts of the area from the comfort of the heated cabin. We signed up for a 4-hour tour on our last full day in Denali – January 2.
We had the coolest day with our guide, Mark. We were strapped into our seats and each given headsets so we could easily communicate throughout the trip. There were two diesel heaters, the same kind we have on Alaya, to keep us warm on the -30-degree day. Mark took us to three very different areas of county land just outside the national park.
First, we headed straight up the mountainside to this huge plateau. The SHERP could do anything and go over everything. The ride was way smoother than expected. We got out after about 30 minutes of climbing to take a look around. We were all on high moose alert, trying to spot something brown on the white mountainside. I used all my dolphin-spotting skills that I’ve honed over the past two years to find the first pair of moose. After we knew what we were looking for, we found 9 other moose for a total of 11. Mark said that’s the most moose he’s ever seen on the mountainside!
Next, we headed to a frozen river, where we SHERP’d all around while Mark showed us some historic abandoned homesteads from the past eight decades. We got out to check out one homestead on foot. The family that built this tiny cabin was last documented on the 1940 census: two adults and two young children. By the 1950 census, they had disappeared, and no one knows what happened to them. Mark had explored much of the land in the summer, looking for clues but found nothing. It was hard to imagine spending a winter in a place like this. Alaska homesteaders are made of different stuff.
Our next stop included glacial sand hills, covered in snow, that are constantly eroding and changing every summer. Mark started telling us a story about the erosion as I stood on this huge rock. The locals like to use the hills as target practice in the summers, shooting at the rocks at the top of the dunes. My boulder had recently been at the top of the steep mound, Mark said he had a lot of lead in it. A few summers ago, in a big rainstorm, the VM-sized boulder fell and is now quickly sinking into the tundra, dropping feet down every year. I guess you never know what you are standing on. Alaska is a wild, ever-changing wilderness.
We loaded up for our last leg, and it was my turn to sit up front. Mark took us to the middle of a frozen lake, which apparently wasn’t frozen a few weeks ago, when the watertight SHERP had partially fallen through on a tour. Cool story, very glad it was frozen today. Mark asked if I wanted to do a donut on the ice…yes, please! No surprise, but a SHERP can do one heck of a donut. The four-hour tour ended with a smooth ride back to SHERP headquarters. While it was expensive, we were all so happy to have done it. Mark was a great tour guide, and we stayed pretty warm while seeing areas of Denali that we would have never seen on our own.
We finished up our time in the Denali area by stopping by the Denali National Park Winter Visitor Center. It had been closed all week for the holiday. Suddenly, we were around more people than we had seen in days; four van loads of tourists were leaving the visitor center as we arrived. The main visitor center is closed for the winter, but they maintain a smaller center with lots of information about Denali’s animals and some merch. Win win.
And just like that, it was Saturday, January 3, and time to head back down the mountain to Anchorage for the next stage of our Alaska adventure.
Our drive down the mountain was much easier, made a little more exciting by a faulty car key (we think it froze overnight). During the drive, we measured the lowest temperature any of us had ever seen, -48 degrees F. About halfway through our drive, we finally got to see the actual Denali Mountain. All week in the park, we had been wondering which peak was Denali. Turns out we drove by her in the dark on the way up and were too far north all week to see her from the park. Better late than never.
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