Trying to squeeze it all in!

[bethhorn]

Hello,

 

I need recommendations please for combo excursions...

 

We want to do the following:

Whale Watching

Glacier Walk (where we're the only ones around -- not busy Mendenhall)

Bear Observation (preferred at a salmon spawning ladder)

White Pass Train

Berring Sea Crab Fishing (Deadliest Catch)

 

Our ports:

Skagway

Juneau

Ketchikan

 

How do we fit all 5 activities in at these 3 ports?

Thank you!!

 

 

[zelker]

You might be able to fit it all in, depending on how long you're in each port and if you're docked or tendering (which can cut into port time).

 

When are you going?  That will dictate if you'll be there during any of the salmon runs, thus having the best chance to see bears and you'd have to pick either Juneau or Ketchikan to do that.

 

There are certainly options to do glacier walks other than on Mendenhall - check out Temsco (in Juneau).  We could see only one other bird in the area where we landed and we were definitely not on top of each other plus they took off shortly after we landed so it was basically just us.  🙂 

 

[martincath]

Yup - more info required! With what little you've given, the following are the solid factors you have no control over:

1. Whalewatching will have to be Juneau (potentially several slots available, depends on your port times which are available to YOU though) - there's no whalewatching tour out of Skagway or Ketchikan
2. Deadliest Catch will have to be Ketchikan as that's the only place their boat lives! Again, their available timeslots vary significantly by day - sometimes just one, others two, start times can be 8am, 9am, 11am, 12noon, 1:15pm etc etc etc! so your exact date and port time is a necessity to figure out which you can do...
3. White pass railroad has to be Skagway as that's where the train lives (and yet again, multiple possible timeslots...)

Assuming it's the right time of year for it, most scheduled bear tours from any of those ports involve flightseeing from Ketchikan - but if you are willing to charter your own plane they'll fly you from anywhere to anywhere (the beauty of floatplanes in AK!), so you could perhaps work a tour in from Juneau or Skagway even if there is no regularly-scheduled tour operating. So if all the available Deadliest Catch slots clash with all the available bear tour slots in Ketchikan, as long as you have enough total time somewhere you can throw money at the problem and customize your own bear tour time (NB: there are limits on total number of people visiting at peak times though, so you need to get this sorted soon before all sell out - if it's 2019 you may already be S.O.L. for Traitor's Cove/Neets Bay on your available dates)

 

Ditto with choppers to land on a glacier - see if there's a scheduled tour that works around your other activities but if not, provided you have some time free then with enough money a chopper charter would be feasible. Given the lack of air traffic control on glaciers, I doubt that even the most popular spots would have multiple choppers attempting to land & take off near each other, so the experience zelker describes should be quite normal. There are even some plane-based glacier landings around if you check.

 

TL;DR - if you want folks on these boards to do your planning for you, you need to provide ALL the relevant data (dates, port times, and budget) or else you're going to have to suck it up and do the legwork yourself 😉

[Coral]

I think you may be confused on Mendenhall Glacier.  You can take a helicopter and hike/trek on the glacier or you can take land transportation and see the glacier and do hiking around it. Most people take a bus out and hike around it but not on it. It can get crowded here.

 

Maybe landing on Mendenhall is more crowded then I think but the pictures I have seen don't seem too crowded.

 

Not sure if you knew of 2 different ways to see it.

 

What month are you going?

Edited April 8, 2019 by Coral