Alaska is a cruise staple, but you won’t fully appreciate its magnificence unless you board a small expedition ship for an intimate encounter with its outsized landscapes and wildlife. There are times on an expedition cruise in Alaska when I feel I’ve fallen off the map. Even in departure port Seward south of Anchorage, my slender grey PONANT ship Le Soléal is docked in an indented bay on a coast of squiggled convolutions in which to get lost.
As I gaze across the still water, Seward at my back, I can’t see a single sign of human interference. Serried rows of snowy peaks rise. The shoreline is ragged with a mohawk of spruce trees that shimmer in the pale northern light.
In late afternoon we cast off on our 16-day itinerary. Sailing out is already a fine introduction to Alaska’s raw beauty. Cliffs rise, and then we’re beyond the inlet into open sea. Looking back from the deck, I’m treated to a mind- boggling panorama of snowy mountains. Little do I know I’m too impressed too soon, because Alaska has many grander landscapes in which huge white mountains and supersized glaciers collide on a coastline studded with islands. Just about every cruise line sails in Alaska, a bread-and-butter staple of North America’s summer season. If you really want to appreciate Alaska’s vast splendour, though, you ought to sail expedition-style to avoid overcrowded ports and immerse yourself in tranquillity and spectacular scenery.
Much of Alaska is nature undisturbed: no airports, no road links, not a telegraph wire in sight. Unless you parachute in like Bear Grylls, there’s no other way to get here. Even if you aren’t Bear Grylls, though, you’ll feel like an adventurer on an expedition ship as you spot bears, or kayak between rocks on which sea lion slump.
Le Soléal carries just 264 guests, with two dining venues, two lounge-bars, a small spa and a swimming pool. Pleasant as the ship is, however, the focus is always on the destination, and the ship’s deck is a moving grandstand onto wildlife. I pace up and down with my binoculars like a brigadier general, eyeing up armies of kittiwakes and cormorants, surfacing killer whales, and sea lions close enough that I can smell their fishy breaths. The ship can get so close to shore that occasionally I spot an ambling bear. Being free of the constraints of a big ship’s tight schedule is a big plus. One evening we halt for an hour, afloat in the ocean, as a pod of humpback whales surfaces to play.
Where the Wild Things Are
We’re frequently out on Zodiac excursions led by PONANT’s naturalists, who follow up back onboard with lectures on wildlife and the local environment. The Zodiacs take us even more deeply into Alaska’s indented coastline for encounters with grinning sea otters, and bald eagles so numerous they dot giant pine trees like Christmas decorations. Seals are hard to resist. They loll on rocks, whiskers twitching, flashing fishy grins and waving their flippers.
I appreciate the small things in Alaska: yellow flowers, dragonflies with iridescent wings. The scenery provides an epic contrast of scale but is just as beautiful, like a glimpse of heaven, assuming heaven is snow-covered.
South of Seward, College Fjord unleashes eight glaciers on three sides of Le Soléal. Further down the coastline next day, Icy Bay is overlooked by America’s second-highest mountain (Mount Saint Elias) at the crumbling edge of one of the continent’s largest glaciers. There aren’t many places in the world where you can get so close to huge glaciers like this. Our Zodiacs zigzag between chunks of ice that glisten a startling blue.
Next day we’re nudging into Elfin Cove, a tiny settlement of 40 people accessible only by seaplane or boat. Even our small ship can’t dock, so we take Zodiacs to the wharf. Elevated boardwalks link the wooden houses of this self-reliant community on a beautiful bay surrounded by root-tangled forest that pops with wild berries and bald eagles. Red-breasted hummingbirds flit in summery gardens. On a large ship, I’d be elbowing my way through big ports such as Juneau or Ketchikan, and be distracted from the landscapes by waterslides and musical shows. There’s a time and place for that kind of cruise, but Alaska isn’t it. Amid this scenery I want an intimate encounter with Alaska’s remote wilderness, and Le Soléal gets me there, sailing closer to the coast and anchoring in uninhabited bays.
When Adventure Meets Comfort
This wild experience does not mean I have to forgo Egyptian thread count, rain showers, raspberry tarts or martinis, however. French company PONANT specialises in remote polar cruising, but its ships have chic design and fine dining, and Le Soléal feels like an upmarket boutique hotel afloat.
I expected grand scenery in Alaska, but as we glide onwards it’s better than I imagined. What I didn’t expect, however, was how interesting Alaska’s history would be. The Alaskan Native Heritage Center in Anchorage was my introduction to the state’s indigenous history. Laid over this is the fascinating tale of early European exploration and settler heritage.
Sitka, founded in 1799 as New Archangel, was the capital of Russian Alaska. The town is dominated by an onion-domed cathedral and scattered with old Russian fortifications and wooden buildings that look as if they’ve been teleported from Siberia. Shops cash in on the heritage with pseudo-Russian goods such as Fabergé-like enamels and nesting dolls painted with portraits of presidents Obama and Trump.
Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867 for US$7.2 million. Big mistake: gold was discovered shortly afterwards. Gold-rush miners mostly arrived in Skagway at the northern end of the Inside Passage, from which they headed into a million square miles of empty Canada to seek their fortune in the Klondike goldfields.
We’d stopped at Skagway a few days previously. This is our only big-name port, in which our little ship was dwarfed by towering megaships tied up at the quay. Some passengers set off to ride the old steam train to Whitehorse.
I walk into town, which retains its historical atmosphere. Wooden sidewalks flanked by saloons and store fronts are straight out of a Wild West movie, although they hide upmarket shops selling First Nations jewellery, art and musk-ox sweaters. Skagway is touristy but atmospheric, and its interesting history is well explained on information boards and in small museums. I join a tour with a National Park Service ranger to visit its most historical buildings.
The Inside Scoop
Our last few days see us sailing south along the legendary Inside Passage, a waterway that meanders down southern Alaska’s panhandle between islands and coastline. Glaciers disappear and are replaced by dark green pine trees and distant mountain ranges. At Prince Rupert we enter Canadian waters, our final destination Vancouver in our sights. The Inside Passage becomes steadily less dramatic but remains beautiful, and still feels utterly remote. It seems improbable that, in this wilderness, I’m tucking into Mushroom Velouté, Beef Rossini with Onion Confit and another glass of Californian red, but that’s the pleasure of an Alaskan cruise with PONANT. Wilderness adventure is wonderful, but it’s even better if the trappings of civilisation come along for the ride.
The Bear Essentials
Want to see wild bears? You’ve come to the right place. Alaska is home to three types of bears: brown, black and polar. Alaska’s rugged terrain, forests and mountains offers ample territory for bears to roam. They can be viewed by boat, but you can also take bear viewing tours from places like Anchorage and Kodiak.
Want Ice With That?
Endicott Arm on the southern coast of Alaska has spectacular views of virgin wilderness. The main attraction is the Dawes Glacier, whose vast, bluish back snakes down the mountain’s flank. Weather permitting, you can observe how icebergs are formed by getting a closer look at the white cliff where glacier meets water.
Photographs: PONANT, Brian Johnston, Visit the USA.
