Girdwood and Turnagain Arm

The road decides the day

Everything about hauling to Girdwood is the Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm: two lanes cut into the mountain, tide on one side, avalanche paths crossing the road at several points. Alaska DOT&PF runs an avalanche program on this stretch and closes the highway for control work or after a slide, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for most of a day. In summer the constraint is traffic and construction; in winter it is closures and black ice off the Arm. We check 511 and the Chugach avalanche center the morning of a Girdwood run, and if the road is a question we call you before we leave, not from the closure.

What Girdwood needs

Girdwood is a rainforest valley with a lot of water moving through it. Drainage rock and washed sewer rock get ordered here more than anywhere else we go, for French drains, foundation drains and the ditches that keep a driveway from becoming a creek in September. Driveway top course wears fast under the rain and the steep grades, so D-1 at six inches rather than four is our standard recommendation for anything on a slope. Lodges, rental cabins and the new construction up the valley take fill and base by the full load, often two or three trucks on one run, because a truck that has driven to Girdwood should arrive full.

Snow in Girdwood

Girdwood is the snowiest inhabited corner of the Municipality, and the piles at the lodges, the day-use lots and the condo complexes outgrow their corners by New Year. Snow hauling here is a scheduled, full-day job with a loader and two or three trucks, because the disposal site is not around the corner. We talk through where the snow goes before we quote, and we haul early in the season while the piles are snow and the highway is quieter. The snow hauling page has the pricing logic.

Site access in the valley

• Crow Creek Road and the upper valley driveways are steep, often unpaved and often soft in the shoulder seasons. A loaded truck needs a firm run and somewhere to turn.
• Overhead: the valley has a lot of trees over a lot of driveways. Fourteen feet of clearance, or the load goes at the road.
• Timing: summer weekends on the Seward Highway are slow. Weekday deliveries are cheaper for you and better for us.
• Rain: a Girdwood driveway in a wet week will not carry a loaded truck. We would rather wait three days than leave ruts you pay to fix.

Material for Girdwood

Loads come from the south Anchorage pits, Klatt and Sand Lake side, which are the shortest run onto the highway. Washed rock, D-1 and pit run are all stocked there; specialty landscape rock we can pick up on the way if you have ordered it. The pit ticket comes with the load, and for a lodge or a commercial job we can email it the same day for your records.