North America
Alaska's Inside Passage & Glacier Bay
A coastline with more glaciers than roads. Ice that calves with the sound of a building falling softly, and whales that surface beside the hull.
The Inside Passage is a sheltered sea-road a thousand miles long, stitched between forested islands. Black bears work the tideline, bald eagles sit the spruces like ornaments, and the water is so protected that the ship leaves no wake worth mentioning.
In Glacier Bay National Park — where only a handful of ships may enter each day — we take park rangers aboard and spend a full day among the tidewater glaciers. Margerie Glacier calves house-sized bergs; the sound arrives a beat after the sight, like thunder after lightning.
Ports & places
Where we call
A full permitted day with rangers aboard: Margerie and Lamplugh glaciers, sea otters on the floes, silence enforced by awe.
The only US capital unreachable by road. Helicopter to the icefield or watch humpbacks bubble-net feed in Auke Bay.
Board the White Pass & Yukon railway, climbing 900 metres in 32 kilometres along the stampeders' trail of 1898.
Salmon capital, totem poles at Saxman, and a floatplane over granite walls that fall three thousand feet into the sea.
Onion domes, Tlingit heritage, and sea otters rafting in the harbour — Alaska's most beautiful town, say Alaskans.
In the frame
The light of the place
