Alaska: Made-to-Order

I was in heavy traffic when it overpowered me, much like one feels the sniffle of a cold taking hold. My mind wandered and eyes focused on a different reality. Semi-trucks were huge icebergs, and my car was a kayak gliding between them.

The next day, the symptoms worsened. I zipped into the passing lane and soon imagined my car was a bush plane flying through the rugged mountains of the Alaska Range.

Such persistent fantasies have only one cure: A visit to a travel agent for a healthy prescription of Alaska adventuring.

A five-day treatment of Alaska adventuring provides basic protection to inoculate your clients against the rat-race pressures of everyday life. But severe and reoccurring cases require more than just a group tour. These require climbing into a kayak and gliding across the foam-flecked face of the Gulf of Alaska; grabbing hold of a rod to do battle with a thrashing, 500-pound salmon shark; or rafting through churning waves of whitewater rapids so loud as to drown out all other sounds.

As travel agents, you are critical gatekeepers to these lands of recreational plenty. Made-to-order adventure tours are easy to assemble. Your job is to take your client’s interests and show them the path to a newfound freedom they have never experienced a thrill of life they have never felt before. Wow ’em once and you have an Alaska client, and profits, for life.

In this feature, we introduce you to adventures near Valdez and Palmer-Wasilla two can’t-miss regions for thrill-seekers. Allow this to spark additional research on your part to discover the myriad other regions that offer Alaska adventures.

Valdez: Mother Nature’s Playground

Accessible by air, boat or automobile, Valdez is a Southcentral Alaska city that residents affectionately refer to as “Mother Nature’s Playground,” a title it is proud to promote.
“There’s so much adventure travel available to both visitors and residents,” said Sharon Crisp, executive director of the Valdez Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Once you experience it, you’re hooked.”

Just outside Valdez, the massive expanse of Worthington Glacier invites an up-close-and-personal adventure. Clients should explore the lower face of the glacier with a full-day guided trek with crampons and walking axes. They don’t need previous experience to try ice repelling into the glacier’s expansive crevasses and can eat lunch on the glacier, or for more fun, hike into the remote areas of Thompson Pass. Its alpine areas and gurgling streams do not disappoint.

The Keystone Canyon Adventure takes you along a rough, bushwhacked trail cut in 1899 as an alternative to the Valdez Glacier Route for the gold seekers heading to Interior Alaska. In 1919, the trail became the Richardson Highway, Alaska’s first highway. The history lesson ends here, and the fun begins. Keystone Rafting Adventures offers a rough-and-tumble whitewater thrill ride down the Class III whitewater Lowe River. Clients wind their way along the base of precipitous gray rock cliffs, and into the wispy baptism of Bridal Veil Falls. This whitewater tour is the trademark adventure float in this area. Don’t miss it.

The Call of the Sound

I began my adventure with a daylong kayak trip to Columbia Glacier with owner Kenny Blum of Pangaea Adventures. His Alaska-based travel company specializes in sea kayaking, backpacking and multi-sport adventures. He offers a variety of guided, comfort-rated tours from a camping, shipbound or wilderness lodge base.
On my trip, Blum and his staff gave us a comprehensive introduction to sea kayaking on the Valdez boat dock. Soon after, he piloted the water taxi on a two-hour boat ride to the icy “berg belt” of Columbia Glacier.

Glacier ice is noisy, talkative and dangerous. It hisses, moans, pops and crackles. The refreshing chill and air purity is a spur, a tonic for the senses. Then the paddling began, one stroke after another, gliding across blue-gray water that sang a melody of delight against the kayak hull. Sea birds flew from the ice floes, and seals watched wearily with disinterest. I nodded to the seals for permission to pass.

I stopped paddling for perhaps minutes and just floated with the tide. Towering sculpted icebergs surrounded my kayak in a bittersweet vista. No two visits here are ever the same.

We paddled closer to Columbia. There, icebergs are as tall as houses, and exhibit a reflective blue that has no equal among nature’s most beautiful birds and flowers. But there’s danger too.

“Be careful not to get too close,” said Blum. “An iceberg can flip over and swamp or crush a kayaker without warning.”

We spent the remainder of the morning riding the incoming tide, peering into the dripping tunnels of cavernous sea caves. For a time, we listened to the reverberating bass of calving ice complement nature’s micro-symphonies of wind, waves and birds.

After several hours of kayaking, we hiked up an exposed glacial moraine for lunch. We were careful where we sat, as a few plants were just now beginning to grow in the gravel outwash. We paddled for a few more miles in the afternoon, exploring forested shorelines, listening to bears in the brush and dipping our hands into natural underwater springs bubbling up from the ocean’s bottom, frothing like a Jacuzzi out of control.

On the ride back in, Blum eased the boat close to shore, and the racket began. A herd of several hundred sea lions began bellowing in unison, heads up and necks extended, which made for the perfect photo op. Closer to Valdez, we cruised by the huge storage tanks of Alyeska Pipeline Terminal, the terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, or so I was later told. I was fast asleep on the boat’s back seat. On any made-to-order Alaska adventure, naps are authorized whenever you can grab one.

Alaska Jaws

Few things in life can compare to watching a massive shark fin approach within 20 feet. Goose bumps on my arm tightened in anticipation. My entire body tensed as tight as a coiled spring, ready to set the hook as the five-pound salmon bait disappeared in a swirl of fin and tail.

I experienced it once, and had to indulge again.

“Shark fishing is not easy,” said owner and guide Otto Kulm of Pacific Mountain Guides in Valdez. His company offers big-game excursions for these 300- to 500-pound cousins of the great white shark. “It’s a tag-team sport, as few anglers have the endurance or muscle to fight it out in a battle lasting from 30 minutes to an hour or more.”
Of the 12 sharks we hooked, only three made it to the boat that day. Sharks roll through the wire cable, twist and cut lines regularly. Most get off because the angler is often too fatigued to hold up the rod tip any longer.

Shark is some of the tastiest meat around and worth taking home. During the summer months, the Gulf of Alaska is home to thousands of salmon sharks, so there is no shortage of action, only adventure anglers.

Many anglers not up to power-fishing adventures would be delighted to catch salmon the size we were using for shark bait, and Kulm doesn’t disappoint. He also offers freshwater kayak trips down Alaska streams about half as wide as a city sidewalk, and knee deep.

During one outing I was on, I dodged sweepers and paddled down overgrown, brushy chutes, which resembled more of a trip down a brush-filled Amazon jungle than Alaska. The kayaking seemed more fun than the fishing until I saw the fish. Remote pools held teeming concentrations of salmon and char, and not another angler in sight.

After half a day of catch-and-release fishing for more fish than I can count, we paddled into a whitewater river, navigated some rapids and ended up at our car as twilight settled over Valdez.

Glenn Highway Country

From Worthington Glacier and Keystone Canyon, clients should drive north on the Richardson Highway, and turn left on the Glenn Highway.

Tell them to stop by the park at Matanuska Glacier for unguided hikes on what is arguably one of Alaska’s most scenic, road-accessible glaciers. The trails are easy, the road is good and it’s the ideal place to spend a day exploring the beauty of this valley, especially in the fall colors of mid September. MICA Guides operates various guided tours here, and is one of the most reputable adventure-tour operators in the area.

After ice trekking, clients can experience the power of the glacier meltwater. Stop at Mile 96, Nova Alaska River Guides, for what I feel is one of Alaska’s best whitewater day excursions, the Lion Head Run.

The river is the resulting meltwater of Matanuska Glacier, and cascades along the base of a mountain that resembles a lion’s head. The tour is a wild ride full of geological wonders that astound as well as titillate. Nova provides all whitewater clothing and safety equipment. Just bring a sense of adventure, and be sure to take a turn at the oars on the last few miles of river.

One of Alaska’s can’t-miss roadhouses is Sheep Mountain Lodge, located at Mile 113 of the Glenn Highway. Owners Zack and Anjanette Steer are quintessential Alaska hosts, and their grilled Copper River sockeye salmon is some of the best I have had in Alaska.

Horticultural displays and miles of mountain cross-country skiing, recreation, snowmobiling, flightseeing and alpine hiking can have you intentionally “lost in paradise” for several days.

Going to the Dogs

Upon leaving Wasilla, send clients to the Iditarod Headquarters for an introduction to dog mushing and sled dogs. In the summer months, Raymie Reddington has dog teams that pull a four-wheeled off-road vehicle rather than a dog sled. Hold on to the sides, as eight to 10 of these dogs have the power to zip you around the wooded course trail in under two minutes.

For a more detailed look at Iditarod mushing, clients can travel a few miles farther north on the Parks Highway, to Martin Buser’s Happy Trail Kennels in Big Lake.

Buser is a four-time Iditarod champion and celebrity athlete among Alaska mushers. His extensive Iditarod experience provides a captivating presentation where he blends in ample humor and complements the tour with a hands-on holding of puppies. I rate this two-hour, $35 tour one of the best dog-mushing adventures you’ll find in Southcentral Alaska.

Heed this warning, and pass it on. Super-concentrated doses of Alaska adventure can be a life-changing experience for you and your clients. A never-ending, ear-to-ear grin or selling of home and business and moving to Alaska are possible consequences of these made-to-order tours.