Quad Ride In Alaska

There is no doubt that Alaska is an outdoorsman’s paradise, and you definitely have to take full advantage of the summer for quad riding or other non-winter activities. There are infinite miles of trails to ride, and your riding is only limited by how much gas and food you brought. Every major road has quad trails alongside it so traveling from area to area is no problem at all.

A good winch or another person riding a quad with a winch is a must in many areas, especially when the spring thaw happens making bottomless mud pits everywhere. This is a great time to ride though because the mosquitoes aren’t out, and everyone is still busy still trying to get a few last rides in on their snowmachines. If you are trail riding this time of year you will get stuck period so it’s just a question of how stuck will you be?

Jessica and I decided to do some more exploring along the Little Susitna River in the Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Valley to find some hidden fishing spots before salmon season. The popular places are always elbow to elbow and neither of us enjoy combat fishing and that made a good excuse to go explore new trails. Kimber must ride with Jessica, so I followed them on the other quad.

Both quads have winches, skid plates, and CV cover plates so they are setup well for offroad riding. We found a few trails that went to the river that were easy to ride so we found some more challenging trails. The snow had just melted off those trails and there was standing water in the ruts, so they were extremely muddy and soft. We wore old clothes, so it didn’t matter how dirty we got so we decided to have some mud-bogging fun. These trails didn’t disappoint us, and I got stuck not long after we started down the trail. I tried four-wheel drive with the differential lockers without any luck, so Jessica had to winch me out. Once I was free, we took off again and Jessica got stuck about five feet later and had to be winched out too.

Many people would not want to go through all that hassle just to see where trails like that go to, but oftentimes they lead to some of the best kept fishing and other scenic spots as the bad areas make a lot of people give up and turn around. We are fine with that as it keeps the crowds down and you can find some really great hidden areas. We don’t even try to keep our quads (or vehicles) clean here as they’ll be just as dirty in an hour so it’s a moot point. Just chisel the big chunks of mud off and keep going.

We had tons of fun, and this was our first ride off the main trails since the snow had just melted making them impassable only a few days beforehand. Fortunately, this was the first of many adventures to come as we can just hop on the quads and go, which is another great thing about living in Alaska.