Valdez from Anchorage: the Richardson Highway, Thompson Pass and Worthington Glacier

Leaving Anchorage before the city wakes up, you point the car toward a town that sits at the head of a fjord, ringed by walls of snow-streaked mountains. The road climbs through Thompson Pass, slips beneath the cliffs of Keystone Canyon and ends where Prince William Sound meets the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. This is the way to Valdez from Anchorage, and the drive is as much a part of the trip as the town.

How do you get to Valdez from Anchorage?

The drive takes 6 to 7 hours by car, and driving is the way to reach Valdez, because the only road access to the town is the Richardson Highway. There is no second route in, so every car trip into town, whether from Anchorage, Fairbanks or the Interior, ends up on the same ribbon of pavement through Thompson Pass and Keystone Canyon.

What decides your trip is how much of the day you want to give to the road. Because the range runs from a long morning to nearly a full day, much depends on how often you stop.

Worthington Glacier sits right beside the highway, and Thompson Pass is the kind of place where a camera comes out before you have decided to stop. A driver who treats the road as a destination will land in town in the evening, happy and a little tired.

The highway itself has history. The Richardson Highway was the first major road built in Alaska, and it still connects Valdez to Fairbanks along a route marked as Alaska Route 4 from Valdez to Delta Junction. Driving it from the Anchorage side means joining that old corridor and following it down toward the water.

Conditions matter here. Valdez is known as the town in Alaska with the highest annual snowfall, and the Weather Channel and NOAA call it the snowiest city in the United States, with over 300 inches a year.

That snow falls on the same road you will be driving, so the state’s Alaska 511 service is worth knowing about. It posts road conditions in categories running from Good and Fair up to Difficult, Very Difficult, Hazardous and Road Closure, and it also carries Waze-reported incidents and closures.

Ways to get to Valdez from Anchorage

By road on the Richardson Highway

You drive for 6 to 7 hours, the highway crosses Thompson Pass and drops through Keystone Canyon, and the town appears at the end with the fjord in front of it. The road is open to anyone with a car, and it works for travelers who want to set their own pace and pull over where the scenery asks.

If you are coming from farther inland, the drive from Tok to Valdez takes approximately 4.5 hours, which gives you a sense of how the Interior and Southcentral Alaska both feed into this one road. Before leaving, look at Alaska 511 for the current road condition, since the pass is where winter weather shows itself first.

Why the train and the ferry do not get you there

The Alaska Railroad runs trains from Anchorage, among them the Coastal Classic to Seward, with GoldStar Service available on that route, and the Hurricane Turn Train, which makes a winter round trip to Hurricane. Neither goes to Valdez, so the rails are a way to see other parts of the state rather than a way to reach this town.

The Alaska Marine Highway System covers 3,500 miles of coastline and serves over 30 communities, from Bellingham, Washington to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Chain.

Coming from Fairbanks or the Interior

The Richardson Highway runs 368 miles and connects Valdez to Fairbanks, so travelers from the Interior use the same road in the other direction. It is marked as Alaska Route 4 from Valdez to Delta Junction and as Alaska Route 2 from Delta Junction to Fairbanks. If you are starting from Tok, the drive is approximately 4.5 hours.

For someone building a longer loop through the state, this is useful to know: Valdez is the southern end of the highway, the place where the road runs out at salt water. It makes a natural turnaround point for a trip that begins in Anchorage or Fairbanks.

Options compared

Put side by side, the options come down to one real choice. The Richardson Highway is the only road into Valdez, so the question is not which vehicle but how you spend the hours. A trip from Anchorage fits in a single long day if you leave early and resist the temptation to stop at every turnout, though a slower pace turns the drive into half the vacation.

The train and ferry networks are impressive in their own right, and they are worth a separate trip, but they take you toward Seward, Hurricane and the Pacific coast communities rather than to Valdez. For this destination, plan around the car and the condition of the road.

Making a day of it

Leave Anchorage early, because the drive takes 6 to 7 hours and you will want daylight at the pass. The best stop on the way is Worthington Glacier, found on the Richardson Highway at milepost 28.7, east of Valdez. It covers 5,774 acres and was listed as a National Natural Landmark in 1968, and it sits close enough to the road that you can see ice from the parking area as you stretch your legs.

Thompson Pass and Keystone Canyon

Thompson Pass is where the snow story of Valdez becomes visible. The town is known as the snowiest city in the United States, and the pass is the high point where the road crosses into that country of deep winters. In the warmer months you see bare rock, meltwater and glacier-carved slopes, while the road itself carries you through terrain that feels very different from the Anchorage bowl.

Below the pass the highway enters Keystone Canyon, a narrow cut in the mountains that leads toward the water. This is the last stretch before the town, and when the canyon opens up, you are close to the head of the fjord on Prince William Sound. Allow time here, because the road invites slow driving and plenty of photographs.

What to do when you arrive

Valdez is the largest port on Prince William Sound, at the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, and it is the northernmost ice-free port in North America year-round. That makes the harbor the natural place to wander after a long drive. Other settlements on the sound include Cordova, Whittier, and the Alaska Native villages of Chenega and Tatitlek, which gives you a sense of how small and spread out the communities around the water are.

Say the name the local way, ‘val-DEEZ’, and you will fit right in. A single day makes the drive worthwhile only if you are heading on, so give yourself at least one night to let the town and the water sink in.

Good to know before you go

Road conditions are the one thing that can reshape the day, so look at Alaska 511 before you set out and again before you cross the pass, where the categories run from Good to Road Closure and No Winter Maintenance. Valdez is the only town at the end of this road, and the snow it receives is part of its character, so build a little slack into your schedule rather than a tight arrival time.