GLACIERS GALORE

7 Nights

Your personalized tour of Southeast Alaska’s glaciers, considered by many the most beautiful coastal scenery in the world, begins in Alaska’s Capital City of Juneau (population approximately 31,000) and concludes two hundred miles south in Ketchikan (population approximately 15,000)

DAY 1: Arrive in Juneau and check in to your bed and breakfast or hotel. This is a free day to explore on your own, depending upon your arrival time

DAY 2: Tracy Arm is a narrow, glacier-carved fjord located about 50 miles south of Juneau. The walls soar over a mile high, and the glacier-fed waters plunge an additional depth of 1,500 feet! The often ice-choked head is fed from both the North Sawyer Glacier and the South Sawyer Glacier. This is a full day tour beginning at 8:00 am and returning at 6:00 pm…You may bring your own lunch or purchase lunch on-board.

DAY 3: Embark on a six hour hiking tour/glacier trek next to the Mendenhall Glacier. This massive glacier is located along the Juneau road system with in the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area. The elevations in most of the recreation area are less than 100 feet above sea level.  Mountains rise abruptly to more than 4,000 feet on both sides of the glacier.  From its source, 12 miles north in the Juneau Icefield, the Mendenhall Glacier flows between Bullard Mountain and McGinnis Mountain to Mendenhall Lake.  The glacier face is approximately 0.5 mile wide near Nugget Falls and is almost 2 miles wide higher up the valley.

DAY 4: Fly to Glacier Bay and check into the Bear Track Inn. The Bear Track Inn features exquisite accommodations, incredible activities, scrumptious meals, true Alaskan ambience and hospitality. Glacier Bay is internationally recognized as the “Gateway to Glacier Bay National Park". Gustavus is surrounded by majestic scenery and pristine wilderness and supports a diversified and extraordinary array of Alaskan wildlife. All meals and transfers included.

DAY 5: Cruise Glacier Bay- Glacier Bay National Park includes 16 tidewater glaciers: 12 actively calve icebergs into the bay. As water undermines the ice fronts, great blocks of ice up to 200 feet high break loose and crash into the water. The Johns Hopkins Glacier calves such volumes of ice that it is seldom possible to approach its ice cliffs closer than about 2 miles. The rate at which these glaciers retreat is known nowhere else on earth. Scientists have documented this rapid retreat, hoping to learn how glacial activity relates to climate changes. Return to Juneau that evening.

DAY 6: Go river rafting down the Mendenhall River. You begin by rafting through numerous ice bits across the lake that is formed below the Mendenhall Glacier, and then down the Mendenhall River. (This is a gentle rafting experience, NOT whitewater). In the afternoon you will take a helicopter excursion to view and land on the Juneau Ice Fields, which feed Juneau’s 30-plus glaciers. While on the ice fields you will thrill to the excitement of riding a dog sled over ice that is thousands of feet thick!

DAY 7: Fly to Ketchikan in the morning, transfer to your hotel for check-in, take the Misty Fjords tour for 2 ½ hours of flight-seeing and landing. Misty Fjords National Monument Tour begins just a short distance outside of Ketchikan. These 2.2 million acres of wilderness and unique landscape, as well as the living things within the Misty Fjords National Monument have been managed by the U.S. Forest Service since 1980. The scenery that you will experience during this tour is literally beyond words. Transportation to/from your tour included.

DAY 8: Check out of your Ketchikan hotel or B&B and head back home.

Prices starting at $2,800.00 per person, based on double occupancy, call for single occupancy rates.