New bush
plane wilderness land-sea tours link backcountry lodge stays to Alaska
Cruise West small-ship cruises
Cruise West has added three Alaska backcountry lodges to its inventory
of wilderness accommodations for the 2002 season. All three are
accessible only by bush plane, and all are available as a component of
land-sea packages that connect with small-ship cruises on Prince William
Sound, the Inside Passage or the Bering Sea.
Jeff Krida, Cruise West president and COO, said the newest additions to
the company's wilderness lodge choices are part of an ongoing program
that duplicates on land the same kind of up-close wilderness adventure
that travelers experience during an Alaska small-ship cruise.
"The whole purpose of our small-ship itineraries is to take
people outside main-traveled cruise routes and show them truly fabulous
places that are otherwise inaccessible," Krida said. "The
equivalent experience on land is a bush plane flight to a wilderness
lodge located outside Alaska's heavily traveled
Anchorage-Denali-Fairbanks tourist corridor."
He said that with the addition of three more lodges to its 2002
backcountry program, Cruise West now holds blocked space at nine
different lodges or camps in many parts of the Alaskan wilderness.
The three new lodges are:
- Winterlake Lodge west of Denali Park, one of
the official checkpoints for Alaska's annual Iditarod Sled Dog Race;
- Chelatna Lake Lodge in the Alaska Range
southwest of Mt. McKinley;
- Redoubt Bay Lodge at the entrance to Lake
Clark Pass in the Chigmit Mountains of the Aleutian Range, a 50
minute floatplane flight from Anchorage
Each of these backcountry facilities accommodates only a few guests
at a time, Krida said. Their accommodations are similar in that each
has a main central lodge with just three or four outlying guest
cabins that have views of a lake and surrounding mountains. Cabins
have private facilities.
All of Cruise West's wilderness packages feature two-night lodge
stays. Lodge activities range from guided nature and
wildlife-viewing hikes to berry picking, canoeing and river rafting.
Wildlife varies from lodge to lodge but commonly includes black and
brown bear, moose, beaver, Dall sheep, Arctic loons and bald eagles.
Redoubt Bay Lodge is near brown bear salmon streams in the Chigmit
Mountains. Winterlake Lodge is on the migratory route of wild swans.
Also new for 2002 are two facilities used for a new Expedition to
the Arctic tour that will be introduced next year: Coldfoot Camp in
the Brooks Range north of the Arctic Circle, and the Arctic Caribou
Inn, former construction worker quarters at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's
North Slope.
Stays at four other lodges featured in the company's cruise-tour
programs in past years will continue to be offered in 2002:
- North Face Lodge and Kantishna Roadhouse
near the end of the 95-mile-long road from the main highway into
Denali Park;
- Denali Wilderness Lodge in the Alaska Range
east of Denali Park, accessible only by bush plane;
- Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, a luxury facility
south of the Alaska Range with a spectacular view of Mt. McKinley.
For 2002, Cruise West backcountry packages, which range from 13 to
19 nights duration, will link lodge stays to several of the
company's Alaska small-ship cruises:
- 4-night cruises on Prince William Sound,
- 5-night "days aboard, nights
ashore" cruises between Ketchikan and Juneau,
- 7-night Inside Passage cruises between
Seattle and Juneau,
- 10-night Inside Passage-plus-Gulf of Alaska
cruises between Vancouver and Prince William Sound (on Cruise West's
new flagship Spirit of Oceanus),
- 14-night Spirit of Oceanus cruises (new for
2002) from Prince William Sound around the Alaska Peninsula and
across the Bering Sea to Arctic waters and then to Nome.
Krida said his company's increased emphasis on
cruise-plus-backcountry lodge itineraries has been driven by
customer requests and booking response.
"The idea started with suggestions on our guest comment
surveys," he said. "A significant number of our
guests said they would like to duplicate on land the kind of
wilderness experience that they had shared as part of a small group
of people in the back reaches of Misty Fjords National Monument, or
in the midst of icebergs in LeConte Glacier fjord.
So in 2000 we introduced a new itinerary that combines a Prince
William Sound cruise with a stay at Northface Lodge in Denali
National Park. This package takes clients far beyond the limits of
the wildlife-viewing excursions out of Denali Station on the main
highway. It has been one of our strongest sellers from the very
first year, and each year since then we have introduced similar
cruise-plus-lodge packages to other parts of Alaska."
He said that 16 pages of the company's 2002 Alaska Experience
brochure are devoted to cruise-tour itineraries that feature a
wilderness lodge stay. These packages are available in 14 different
itineraries with a total of 156 departures from mid-May through
early-September. Prices begin at $3,619.
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