I drove the 60-mile McCarthy Road on August 1 and 3, 2013, and found the road to be in excellent condition for an unpaved road (A-). We rented an SUV from one of the major car rental agencies at the Fairbanks airport and just drove it on the road without any concern for contract issues; that appeared to be the standard operating procedure for visitors using that road. With barely 16000 miles on the vehicle, the tires were in excellent shape. The road was relatively smooth and generally wide enough for 2 vehicles to easily pass each other. Dust control surfacing had been applied. There was no evidence of railroad spikes, and the State of Alaska clearly has invested millions to improve the road, with lots of new culverts and lots of road maintenance equipment parked along the way.

A reasonable overall speed might be 35mph, but on the return trip, having become used to the road, I found myself reaching 45mph on certain stretches.

The vehicle did get some dust on it, but part of that was due to unpaved portions of otherwise paved highways that were under construction this summer. We used an excellent self-service touchless carwash in Delta Junction to wash the car to demonstrate that we are responsible rental car users. In this condition, even a Smart Car would have done just fine on the road.

I would expect purists about rental car contracts to have turned back upon reaching lengthy unpaved portions of the construction zone on Alaska Route 3 north of Denali Park. However, their efforts to reach Anchorage entirely via pavement on Alaska Routes 4 and 1 would also have been thwarted, due to unpaved portions in construction zones on that routing.