Alaska Dream Trip

Lots of experienced Alaskans here to offer suggestions, but maybe look at Denali NP.

Easy to access and fits your description.

Or Wrangell-St. Elias out of McCarthy?

I typically find specific trip recommendations the most useful when they are accompanied by a trip report so you can evaluate the conditions, terrain, vegetation, etc. I really don’t travel in the interior much because I’m a sort of coastal AK guy, but this Anaktuvuk Pass to Nolan trip looked pretty cool, and seems to fit your bill. Note that they used packrafts to float some sections. Spruce Boy did not provide a map, but I’ve re-created it in Google Earth if you are curious.

Anaktuvuk to Nolan

Skurka’s Chickaloon to Cantwell (leg 6 of his mega-loop) also looks like what you’re after. I followed his place name references and made a Google Earth route for that one too.

Chickaloon to Cantwell

Luc’s Alaska Wilderness Classic trip report basically reverses Skurka’s Chickaloon to Cantwell route (sort of), and can give you more insights into that area of the Talkeetna Mountains. Luc provides a map at the end of the post.

2020 Alaska Wilderness Classic

If you’re going overland anywhere in Alaska, you’ll be bushwhacking. There aren’t really long trails. And tussocks come with tundra walking. Perhaps a float trip would better suit you. We have lots of wild rivers.

Thanks for the replies! The links are super helpful. I’ve seen some of them, but not others so this is going to give me hours of virtual exploring. Philip – your videos are always stunning and I appreciate that you share them with everyone! I love the idea of packrafting, but being total newbies in that arena concerns me a bit. I’d want to get a lot of hours on the water before committing to an AK river. I will look further into it, however!

Carrying a packraft is always a trade-off. You are instantly adding 10 pounds of stuff to your kit with one. Every mile hike you have to carry that extra weight, so you take a packraft because on net it is a benefit (floating a river is easier than hiking), or the trip would simply be infeasible without one (some of my coastal travel would be impossible if I couldn’t paddle between islands). So it really requires a long hard think in order to arrive at a conclusion that the raft is the right strategy. Plus on-water can be an extremely dangerous way to travel.

The obvious answer is Denali due to the low cost of access (rental car or train or bus or hitchhike from ANC or FAI), bus access to your particular starting point within the park, and how well-managed the wildlife is there (grizzly bears aren’t rewarded by scoring human food, so you have to follow best practices, but can be less nervous than in less controlled settings).

There aren’t backcountry trails, so you’re doing relatively few miles a day (you always are, off-trail, in Alaska), but the wildlife and scenery are fabulous.

And 4 vertical miles of mountain is spectacular if you get lucky and see “the mountain” – it is, by one definition, the highest mountain on Earth.  The chances of it being cloud free for a bit increase later in the Fall. 

So I’d put Denali NP up for consideration for 4-7 days of your trip.  After that, I’d head elsewhere to see other eco-systems/terrain/critters.

I live on the Kenai Peninsula and there’s a ton of stuff to do here – trout, salmon and halibut fishing; hiking on established trails (80 miles from Hope to Seward along the Resurrection Trail), the OTHER (than Boundary Waters) national wilderness canoe-trails system,

white-water rafting/fishing; world-class sea kayaking; day cruises (otters, whales, eagles, goats, sheep, puffins); fly-in cabins; hunting in the Fall.

If you want to hunt caribou, Adak is a cool and weird place to do it – 1000 miles out the Aleutian chain.

I’ve written up one of our trips out there:

GGG-Alaska-2018 – Backpacking Light

Argh!  Stupid BPL text entry won’t let me cut&paste a URL.  Google “David Thomas BPL Adak Caribou” and it will pop up.

The trick, cost-wise, is the use of frequent-flyer miles to get out there and back, but if you actually have 3 weeks, a week on Adak would be a totally different experience / ecosystem / activities than Mainland Alaska.

A week each in Denali, the Kenai, and Adak would be a crazy-varied survey of the largest state but with enough time in each place to learn your way around and a relax a bit.

Warning: once I’d gotten to all 50 states, I was going back to Alaska the most often and then moved up, so there’s that risk.

This is super helpful!! More research about to happen for sure :)

I’ll check the links and read up. Adak sounds super cool. And I’d love to get some fishing in at the back end of the trip.

I do worry about it being a one-way trip. I avoided Montana for decades for that reason and have now been back 4 times in 5 years and can’t get it out of my head. I’ve done the same with Alaska and I’m sure the result will be similar!