Alaska tips, and a glorious dog story

Alaska is just huge. I knew it was the biggest state, but we sailed up along the southeast edge of it for a week and barely touched the interior. If you got further into the state you could find places wilder than any left in what Alaskans call “the lower 48.” 

Alaska sits between the world’s second-largest country, Canada, and its largest, Russia, which as Sarah Palin was fond of saying you can see from Alaska. (There is a point in the Bering Strait where this is technically true.) Together, they take up most of the northern reaches of the globe. Of all the territories and provinces in Canada, only Nunavut is larger than Alaska, at more than 2 million square kilometres.

I learned a lot about Alaska on the ship, thanks to our on-board naturalist and storyteller. There are a lot of things to do on cruise ships and learning is one of them. Choosing your own adventure is one of the pleasures of cruising. For example, I used the fitness center and yoga class, and there’s a show after dinner every evening, family-friendly although there weren’t too many kids on our ship. We made several of the shows, things like “Hits of Broadway,” where some very hardworking singers and dancers did a medley of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Les Mis, and some of the recent musicals based on hit songs. I thought the talent level was very high—and hey, it’s all included.

Juneau, our next port of call, is the state capital of Alaska. But like other cities in the southeast, it has no road access. To get there, you have to sail or fly (or in winter take a dogsled or snowmobile, I suppose). There is a highway through town itself and our excursion took us on a bus down this, where we watched for birds perched on the light poles in rows. In Juneau, when we spotted a bird, it was a bald eagle.

We started out on a whale watching boat. It offered snacks like salmonberry jam and smoked salmon, and the tour organizers offer you money back if you don’t see whales. But we did!

Humpback whale

Flame, 55 years old, identifiable by her fluke

The excursion continued to the Mendenhall Glacier, which calves icebergs into Mendenhall Lake. They let people actually go ice climbing on the glacier, which I was surprised about and wasn't sure I fancied. But we were there for an hour and had time to hike to Nugget Falls and view the glacier from there.

Mendenhall Glacier

Nugget Falls

Would I go on this excursion again? Absolutely. Whale watching is a must-do if you’re calling at Juneau. Even though whales are wildlife, the boat crews know where to go so they pretty much do guarantee seeing some. I never expect to see the number of whales up close that we saw ten years ago, in Provincetown, but this was pretty special too. And again, the good weather meant clear views of the beautiful sea and land, even when we weren’t spotting whales.

After lunch I took the “tram car,” which is kind of a cable car that goes to the treeline of Mt. Roberts. It’s very convenient to passengers because it goes from the cruise ship dock. It also costs $34 for an all day pass! Now, I like how it’s run (another corporation of local people, with a Native crafts shop at the top), but there’s no reason you should give them that much money. At the top, there’s a notice saying it’s $10 one way, presumably for hikers taking the tram car down. Well, personally I’d rather take it up and then hike the 2 1/2 miles back down to town. So at the bottom, ask to pay $10 and hike back down. Should you get to the top and not feel like hiking down, pay another $10—you’ll still be ahead.

View from alpine loop trail

Oh, and pack your trekking poles. I forgot my stick and couldn’t do the steep hike without it. Fortunately there was a half-mile alpine loop I did instead. 

From the top of the tram car

I also saw a red squirrel up there. As with the Sitka black-tailed deer spotted on the side of the road, I don’t have pictures.

Skagway, our last port of call, has the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park, a branch of which we’d visited in Seattle.

We walked past the false-fronted historic buildings and got a bus tour to the “Klondike Summit.” We briefly crossed into Canada but did not even reach customs, and U.S. immigration didn’t look at our passports on the way back. Had we been backpackers hiking in from the Chilkoot Trail rather than well-heeled cruise passengers…

Northern B.C.

The views were fantastic, but nothing was going to top the wildlife. And the second part of our excursion was about sled dogs. Now, I thought it was interesting to hear from a real-life musher (she’s been doing it for 19 years but didn’t look old enough) and meet the huskies.

Dogsled demonstration

But would I book this excursion again? No. Very little of the sled dog session was an actual demonstration, and because it wasn’t on snow, it didn’t seem very real to me. I thought the bus tour was all right, but the views of the pass would have been just as spectacular from the White Pass & Yukon railroad, and it would be a cooler and more historical way to travel. If, like me, you like trains, spring for a railroad tour—or just book another hike, which you can also do in the area.

Hubbard Glacier with icebergs in foreground

The next morning we sailed into Disenchantment Bay. Celia, the on-board naturalist, was on hand talking about the mighty Hubbard Glacier and the icebergs we were seeing all around us. The crew said it hadn’t been clear enough to see the mountains around the glacier since June; even members of staff were running out to take pictures.

Icebergs (the tips thereof!)

Glacier "calving" an iceberg

We saw the whole face of the glacier, six and half miles wide, from the legal limit of one mile out. It’s not always possible for the ship to sail that close and turn around, so you can see the whole thing without ever leaving your spot (deck 4 in our case). Celia said the icebergs we saw falling from the glacier were from as high as 300 feet.

After a while you need to just stop taking pictures and enjoy the view. But pack your camera for Alaska—and be sure it’s charged for this part of the trip!

What else would I pack? Binoculars, if you have them. We made do with looking through T’s telescopic lens (when she had her camera), plus being lent binoculars a couple of times by nice people. But there are times when, from the equivalent of an 11-story building, even a whale will look pretty far away. And you’re more likely to see bears from a distance than as close as we got! You won’t want to pay what they charge for binoculars on a cruise ship, believe me.

And a couple of towels!

A swimsuit. We always have ours and I was glad to have a couple of opportunities to use the hot tub.

It might seem unlikely that you would use a swimsuit on an Alaska cruise, but I always say throw it in. It weighs next to nothing and it’s better to have it and not need it (which I don’t say of many items anymore!)

If I were going on a cruise again, I would definitely take some “chic” clothes to wear on what used to be called formal night. We weren’t going to buy and carry such things just for this, in the middle of our backpacking years, but I really enjoyed the dress-up option the one other time we cruised. It's nice on a ship because you can unpack in your stateroom once, hang up your clothes or put them in drawers, and yet visit different destinations throughout the cruise. And, you don’t even have to carry your own luggage on and off the ship. So I don’t think in general you should pack as light as we did. As it was, I had my trusty jewelry--my African elephant necklace that I wore up (and down) Kilimanjaro.

Layers. I’ve gotten a little bit obsessive about this, but I don’t plan ever to buy a winter coat again. Keeping warm is more efficient with layers anyway, and you probably already have everything you need. In Alaska we hiked in T-shirts, but I would definitely take along a shirt made of wool or some technical material, for hiking when it’s cool or wet. We needed rain jackets and pants for wet or windy weather, and I was glad I had a fleece, for warmth in between shirt and jacket. I wore a sweatshirt sometimes around the ship, a cap with a visor when it was sunny or rainy, and a warm hat and gloves when it was cold. I never pulled on my down jacket until the day we spent hours on deck looking at the Hubbard Glacier, but it sure kept me warm then. It’s also the lightest, most packable item of winter clothing imaginable. 

I was also glad I had sunglasses. You might not have the sunshine that we did in Alaska, but at sunset in Juneau before we sailed away, we were having beers up on deck, sunning ourselves on lounge chairs! No wonder the glaciers are melting.

The last night after dinner, I went to one more talk by the storyteller. He shared an anecdote of Alaska that I (and you may) have read in much more detail elsewhere, but I want to close with this, because I think it is the greatest man-and-animal heroic story of all time.

Most of the advances of modern civilization have come with major drawbacks. That’s not true of the discovery of vaccinations. Vaccinations have freed generations of children from diseases that used to kill them. Less than a hundred years ago, however, things most of us were vaccinated against in childhood regularly caused death, and this was the case in January 1925 in Nome, northwest Alaska.

Diphtheria was starting to kill people and Nome’s one doctor had only some antitoxin that had expired. There hadn’t been time to ship more out before the port of Seward (where our ship would finally dock) closed for the winter. An epidemic would be devastating; the influenza epidemic of a few years earlier had killed 50% of the Native population of the area, as Alaskan Natives lacked any resistance to diseases like flu and diphtheria.

The solution was a dogsled relay, whereby 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs transported some antitoxin found in Anchorage all the way across the Alaskan interior to Nome on the west coast. They traveled 674 miles in five and a half days, within the time frame before the serum would expire. The musher and lead dog who actually pulled into Nome became famous, but it could not have been done without all the other men, many of whom were Athabascan Natives, and their teams. Sled dogs, who love nothing more than to run, laid down their lives on "the great race of mercy." And mushers suffered severe frostbite, one of them while feeling around in the snow for the cylinder containing the antitoxin, which had fallen in poor visibility. 

togo and seppala
PHOTO BY GEORGE RINHART/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Leonhard Seppala’s leg of the relay, the number of diphtheria cases in Nome was 27 and rising. There was enough serum to treat 30 people, so Seppala’s team set off on the longest and most hazardous leg, through a storm across the open ice of the Norton Sound. Togo, the lead dog, led the team in a straight line through the dark. With a gale force wind chill, the temperature was estimated at -85 degrees Fahrenheit (-65 C).

Not a single vial was broken when Gunnar Kassen’s team brought the serum into Nome, and the town was saved. It is Balto, Kassen’s lead sled dog, who is immortalized in statues, but when he and the other dogs became part of a sideshow they were rescued by a fundraising campaign by the children of Cleveland, Ohio, and spent their last days at the Cleveland Zoo. My grandmother, who would have turned 100 this week, was a little girl in Cleveland in 1925. I wonder if she was among those putting their pennies in the collection? It's certainly the kind of story she would have liked.

T. with husky puppy

Only years after the serum run to Nome was it remembered that two thirds of the distance was covered by Alaskan Native mushers.

With the advent of air travel and the snowmobile, dogsledding almost died out in Alaska. It was revived in the 1970s with the Iditarod, a race from Anchorage to Nome. Iditarod is an Ingalik word meaning “distant place.” Although the Iditarod does not follow the same route as the historic trail, it has revived mushing and honors the history of sled dogs. None were more glorious than the teams that saved thousands of lives in Nome, when there was no other way to get there.