MTB: Lost Lake Trail, Seward Alaska

First activity of the Alaska trip: mountain biking the Lost Lake Trail, the #1 trail in Alaska on mtbproject.com.

Theme song: The Wishing Well by Walter Martin.

I rented a bike from the Seward Bike Shop:




The shop is run by Ron, who knows everything there is to know about local mountain biking. He didn't have full suspension bikes for rent, but I got a Kona hardtail for about $35/day. I posted the opening hours for the shop on the Google maps entry. You can actually ride to the trail from the shop (4.5 miles one-way), there's an off-road path beside the highway that looks like it goes most of the way.

I took the wheels off and fit the bike into the tiny little compact Toyota Yaris I had rented, which BTW cost almost $100/day with all the fees. Rental cars are really expensive in Alaska.

The trail is fantastic and is now in my top 5 rides of all time. Not super technical, so the climb isn't too hard, although there were probably a couple of places I pushed over a rocky ledge on the way up. It would be really easy to surprise a bear on the trail, especially when moving quickly on a bike, so I wore multiple bells and carried bear spray.

Descent is all downhill, pretty fast, obstacles are mainly rocks and small creek crossings. Lost Lake was completely free of snow on Jun 17, but there was still quite a bit of snow on the Primrose trail at the top. I went that way to check it out, and pushed through snow for a few km, but it wasn't particularly fun. If there's snow on Primrose when you get up there I wouldn't bother going too far.

From the top you can see all the way back to Seward and Resurrection Bay

Approaching Lost Lake

Lost Lake, with quite a bit of snow and ice cover hanging around

Turned right onto the Primrose Trail and almost immediately hit snow.

Great view of more of the lake from the Primrose Trail. Most of the camping spots are on this side in somewhat protected gullies. It's worth coming around this way a bit, to get this view. I kept struggling through snow on the Primrose trail for 4km before turning around again. I wouldn't recommend it, it was hard work and not fun riding.

Spectacular view for the start of the descent