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I land at Wiley Post-Will Rogers Airport after flying for almost 12 hours. It’s a tiny airport with even fewer people. I started in Seattle and after two hops at Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay Airport, I reached my destination where I will celebrate the 4th of July of 2019. This was my 3rd trip to Alaska and the first solo trip that I made on a whim.
My obsession with exploring Alaska started back in 2017 when a bunch of us decided to travel to Alaska in the summer. Even though the visit was quite what anyone does when they go to Alaska, camping in Denali National Park, doing a glacier tour in Whittier, driving to Hatcher Pass, etc, the rugged terrain and sheer volume of amazing mountains and wilderness caught my attention. I live in Seattle, a city surrounded by the majestic Alpine ranges of the North Cascades, the Olympics, and Mount Rainier National Park. Yet, despite this stunning landscape, the untamed beauty of Alaska has a way of drawing me back, making me want to visit again and again.
The next trip in the summer of 2018 led me to Kenai Fjord National Park in the Seward area, where we hiked up near Exit Glacier on a trail called Harding Icefield. The hike was a total of 8 miles out and back with 3k feet of elevation gain. When you are on the trail, it’s like just another trail (except you need to carry a beer spray just in case) but the moment you are on top of the trail you see an icefield miles and miles in distance. It just doesn’t end. That one view makes your hike worth it.
We also had the opportunity to hike on the Matanuska Glacier, located just a 1.5-hour drive northeast of Anchorage. This was my first experience hiking on the glacier. Wearing crampons, and carrying a hiking stick and ice axe, it was a fun experience of traversing on a glacier where we saw a bunch of crevasses that could go beyond 150 feet deep. Imagine taking a wrong step there. The short hike ended with us encountering an ice cave where we could go a bit inside and explore.
In 2019 I wanted to visit Alaska but didn’t know where to go so I opened up the map and looked at how north I could go. So I saw this place Utqiagvik and started reading about it. It used to be called Barrow and has a point called Point Barrow, which is the northernmost point in the US. It is closer to going to the North Pole from there than to Seattle. I got super excited and immediately decided to go there. It was over the long weekend of the 4th of July and somehow my friends were not available so I decided to do it solo. I landed at the Airport and funnily enough my hotel was 10 minute walk from the Airport. Barrow at that time only had 2 hotels, I stayed at the cheaper one. Those 4 days were some of the most memorable as they involved spending time with the local Eskimo community and celebrating the 4th of July in their traditional way. It did not involve lighting fireworks because there was no sunset in that season. I also got to do a polar dip in the Beaufort Sea, visit Point Barrow, see the natural permafrost refrigerator, etc.
In 2020 COVID hit, and I didn’t get a chance to visit Alaska. But I still wanted to.
I had always visited Alaska in summer so I thought it would be cool to visit in winter and maybe see the Northern lights. Luckily I have a friend who is from Wasilla, which is an hour north of Anchorage. He and his to-be wife, both my good friends, were staying in Wasilla at that time therefore I visited and stayed with their family for 10 days. This trip was filled with playing around in deep snow and watching Northern lights while the outside temperature was -23 degrees Celsius.
This trip was followed by another trip to Wasilla next year for their Wedding. I attended the Alaskan wedding which was super fun. One of the guests flew into the wedding via their Sesna place. How cool!
The next two trips were probably two of my most memorable national parks as they were remote and allowed me to explore the extreme and pure Alaskan wilderness.
The first one was Katmai National Park in July 2022. The only way to get there is by taking a seaplane from this small town called King Salmon. The reason it attracts a lot of people who are interested in wildlife is because it has a higher density of Grizzly bears than humans. A cool thing about the bears is that they don’t present any danger to humans as there is enough supply of Salmon migrating upstream. We witnessed an abundance of bears feasting on fresh salmon throughout the day as they fattened up in preparation for their winter hibernation.
This summer I visited another national park called Wrangell St. Elias National Park. Fun fact about this park on average only ~70k people visit it each year vs 600k to Denali National Park. It’s the largest national park in the US but one of the least visited due to its remote location. We visited a town called McCarthy whose population is around 115 people. The exciting part of the trip was a 70-minute plane tour which showed amazing glacier views. We saw at least 13 glaciers up close from the plane. I had never seen glaciers that way and it was mesmerizing. We also visited the historic Kennecott Mines, the 800-mile Trans Alaska gas pipeline, and the beautiful city of Valdez and rode the sled dogs of the famous Iditarod race.
I have been fortunate enough to visit Alaska 7 times in the last 8 years and I can say that if you are in the US and never visited Alaska, you should. If you are not in the US and visit the US in the future, I would recommend spending some time in Alaska. With its pure raw wilderness, rugged mountains, and amazing historical value, it’s a magical place to visit.
Due to the vastness of Alaska, there are so many places I have not got a chance to yet but hopefully that will change in the future. A few of them which I am excited to visit are
Nome
Wales and Little Diomede island where you can see Russia
Gates of the Arctic National Park
Drive on the Dalton highway
Kodiak Island
Alaska State fair to view giant size vegetables
and many more…..
“When you travel in Alaska you are humbled by its size and wildness, awed by its beauty, inspired by its original peoples whose culture is still deeply rooted.” – David Roberts
I visited Alaska this summer and took a helicopter tour with glacier landing which was totally mind-blowing. BTW, the bears in Katmai are brown bears, not grizzly bears.
What would you recommend as the first location and season for a visit to Alaska?