Alaska Holiday Guide: Inside Passage, Denali, Cruise or Land Tour and When to Go

Ketchikan is usually the first port north from Vancouver or Seattle, a fishing town on the edge of the rainforest and one of the wettest places in the USA. Walk the old boardwalk of Creek Street, built on stilts over the salmon stream, and see the region’s finest collection of carved totem poles. From here floatplanes fly over the cliffs and lakes of Misty Fjords.

Juneau, the state capital, can’t be reached by road from the rest of Alaska. Twenty minutes from town is the Mendenhall Glacier, with easy trails to a waterfall beside the ice; a tramway climbs straight up from the harbour; and whale-watching boats find humpbacks in the channels most summer days. Helicopters fly to the icefield above for glacier walks and dog sledding on the snow.

Skagway was the gateway to the Klondike gold rush of 1897 and 1898, and its wooden false-fronted main street is now a national historical park. Its great attraction is the narrow-gauge White Pass railway, which climbs from sea level to the Canadian border past waterfalls, gorges and old trestle bridges.

Glacier Bay National Park is the highlight of many Alaska cruises: a 100 km arm of the sea with tidewater glaciers at its head, part of a vast UNESCO World Heritage Site shared with Canada. Ships spend most of a day inside, often stopping in front of the Margerie Glacier to watch ice crash into the sea, and park rangers come aboard to explain the landscape. The number of ships allowed in is limited, so not every itinerary includes it: check before you book.

Tracy Arm, south of Juneau, is a narrow, steep-walled fjord leading to the twin Sawyer glaciers. Floating ice sometimes stops larger ships short of the end, in which case they often sail neighbouring Endicott Arm to the Dawes Glacier instead. Smaller ships and day boats from Juneau get closest.

On one-way cruises across the Gulf of Alaska, ships also visit Hubbard Glacier, one of the largest tidewater glaciers in North America, or College Fjord in Prince William Sound, lined with glaciers.

Anchorage is home to around 40% of Alaskans and is the start or end point of most land tours. It’s not a pretty city, but the wilderness starts at its edge: moose wander the suburbs, the coastal trail along Cook Inlet looks across to the mountains, and the trails of Chugach State Park start minutes from town.

Spend a day at the Anchorage Museum and the Alaska Native Heritage Center for the state’s history and its Native cultures. Floatplanes leave from Lake Hood for bear viewing and glacier flights.

South of the city the Seward Highway follows Turnagain Arm, where beluga whales sometimes feed, to Girdwood and the Portage valley, with a wildlife conservation centre caring for orphaned bears, moose and musk oxen. A single-lane tunnel, shared with the railway, leads through the mountain to Whittier on Prince William Sound.

Seward, about 2.5 hours’ drive or 4.5 hours by train from Anchorage, is the base for Kenai Fjords National Park. Day cruises sail out past cliffs and islands to tidewater glaciers, with sea otters, Steller sea lions, puffins, humpback whales and often orcas on the way. From the road you can also walk up to Exit Glacier, and the SeaLife Center in town is an excellent marine research aquarium.

Homer, at the end of the road on Kachemak Bay, is an artists’ and fishing town with a long spit full of boats. It’s known for halibut fishing and is the best place to take a bear-viewing flight across Cook Inlet to the coast of Lake Clark or Katmai national parks, where brown bears dig for clams and catch salmon on the shore from about June to August.

Denali, at 6,190 m (20,310 ft), is the highest mountain in North America, and the national park around it covers six million acres of tundra, taiga and glaciers. It’s one of the best places in the world to see wildlife from the road: grizzly bears, moose, caribou, Dall sheep and, with luck, wolves. The mountain makes its own weather and is hidden by cloud on more days than not, so count it as a bonus.

The park road: a single 92-mile road runs into the park. Private cars may only drive the first 15 miles; beyond that you travel on park buses, with drivers who stop for wildlife. A landslide at Pretty Rocks closed the road at mile 43 from 2021. A bridge over the slide was completed in September 2026, and the park expects buses to run to the far end of the road again from the 2027 season, with bookings opening on 1 December 2026.

Talkeetna is a small, quirky frontier town where three rivers meet, about two hours north of Anchorage. On a clear day it has one of the best views of Denali, and it’s the base for the mountain’s climbing expeditions.

Its flightseeing trips are one of the great experiences in Alaska: small planes fly around Denali’s summit and many land on a glacier high in the Alaska Range, so you can step out onto the snow among the peaks. Flights can also be taken from the park entrance. They depend entirely on the weather, so allow a spare day.

The Alaska Railroad is the easiest and most scenic way to travel between Anchorage, the Kenai and Denali, and many cruisetours use it. In summer, from mid-May to mid-September, two main trains run daily:

The Coastal Classic runs south from Anchorage along Turnagain Arm and through the mountains to Seward, in about 4.5 hours, past glaciers and valleys no road reaches.

The Denali Star runs north from Anchorage to Talkeetna, Denali (about 8 hours) and on to Fairbanks, through forest and along river valleys with views of the Alaska Range.

Glass-domed carriages give the best views. The Glacier Discovery train runs to Whittier and to a whistle stop below Spencer Glacier, and from Talkeetna the Hurricane Turn is one of the last flag-stop trains in America, stopping for anyone who waves it down.

For a cruise: most Alaska cruises start in Vancouver or Seattle, both about 10 hours’ direct flight from London. Fly out a day or two early; a stay in Vancouver, or a journey through the Canadian Rockies first, makes a good start.

For Anchorage: there are no direct flights from the UK. Most people connect in Seattle (about 3.5 hours on to Anchorage) or another US hub. In summer there is also a seasonal non-stop flight to Anchorage from Frankfurt.

One-way trips: Gulf of Alaska cruises run between Vancouver and Seward or Whittier, near Anchorage, so you can fly into one and home from the other, with Denali before or after.

Time difference: Alaska is 9 hours behind the UK, so most people arrive tired: plan an easy first day.