I’m guessing that a trip to Alaska is on your life list. It’s one of the few places left on earth where you can go deep into the wilderness and wander among bear, caribou, moose, Dall sheep, and other animals in their mostly untouched natural habitat. As we enter the temperate summer travel season, now is the ideal time to head north and get a glimpse of the many wonders my home state has to offer.

I’ve lived and worked in the Land of the Midnight Sun for more than three decades and love to introduce both new and experienced travelers to its beauty and history. Despite some common misconceptions, getting off the beaten path and exploring Alaska’s backcountry is relatively easy and it’ll take you where the geology is breathtaking and varied, the cultural history is fascinating, and the opportunities for adventure are limitless. Here are a few of my favorite trip ideas, with a few tips on getting the most out of your experience.

1. Marvel at mountains and mining history in the country’s largest national park. One of my favorite Alaska drives is heading east out of Palmer on the Glenn Highway to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve. As you travel alongside the Matanuska River and the Chugach Mountains, stop at the Matanuska Glacier State Recreation Site for a great overview of the glacier and a short hike to stretch your legs. The further east you travel, the more the mountains of Wrangell-St. Elias will emerge from the horizon, so you’ll want your camera fully charged before you start this drive!

The highway stops in Glennallen and you have to turn. Head south towards Valdez and start looking for the signs to McCarthy, the “party town” (think whiskey and women) for miners who worked at the Kennecott Copper Mine until it shut down in 1938. For almost 60 years it sat idle until the National Park Service began restoring and interpreting the mine in the late 1990s. Before you turn off for McCarthy, stop at the Park Service visitor center for an introduction to both the cultures and natural wonders of America’s largest national park; Wrangell-St. Elias is six times the size of Yellowstone!

Both the mine itself and McCarthy are must-see destinations for anyone visiting the park. I took my mom here a few years ago on one of her many trips to Alaska, and we stayed at the Kennecott Glacier Lodge where we enjoyed sharing our meals with visitors from around the world in their family-style dining room. For those who don’t want to stay by the mine, the McCarthy Lodge and the Ma Johnson Hotel offer food and lodging on McCarthy’s rustic main street. Regardless of where you stay, be sure to give yourself enough time to explore the mining history, walk on a glacier, and enjoy a “flightseeing” adventure with one of the local air taxi services.

2. Take an unforgettable boat tour of Glacier Bay. Another of my mom’s favorite national park lodges is Glacier Bay Lodge—the only accommodations available inside Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve. Built during the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service in the 1960s, Glacier Bay Lodge is one of Alaska’s undiscovered gems. You’ll need to get yourself to the small town of Gustavus by either state ferry or airplane and the lodge will pick you up for the 11-mile drive to the park. The majesty of Glacier Bay is unveiled every day from the deck of the lodge’s day boat—the must-do trip for every visitor. You spend all day exploring the park’s tidewater glaciers and keeping your eyes peeled for sea otters, sea lions, puffins, mountain goats, humpback and orca whales, and, if you are lucky, a brown bear feeding along the coastline.

3. Get up-close with Alaska’s coastal brown bears. If you want to spend time up close and personal with brown bears, I can’t recommend enough taking a trip to either Katmai or Lake Clark National Park & Preserve. Flying to Katmai from Homer to spend a day with one of that city’s seasoned bear guides involves a float plane ride over Cook Inlet. Mom went with me on an early summer trip before the salmon started running and we watched brown bears in coastal tidal flats feeding on grass (which made me think of cows). You land in the ocean, wade ashore (they provide the hip-waders), and spend the day watching all kinds of bear behavior (warning: this is also mating season!). Later in the summer, you’ll land on small lakes near salmon streams and spend the day watching bears fish and eat—and eat, and eat! If you have more time and want to spend several days watching bears, try one of the lodges at Silver Salmon Creek in Lake Clark National Park & Preserve.

4. Go wild, with a guide. I mention hiring a guide to see brown bears. Don’t be shy about hiring someone to show you the sights, sounds, and smells of Alaska (yes, rotting fish is pretty smelly!). Guides know where the best wildlife viewing is, they know the most efficient way to get there, and from a safety perspective, there’s nothing like traveling in Alaska with someone who’s been there before. This is especially true if you want even more of a wilderness experience in one of Alaska’s more remote parks, like Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, the park system’s premier wilderness park. Here you can run rivers, hike along alpine ridges, and even do some climbing. If backcountry travel is on your bucket list, there are several companies that provide guided trips to Gates. Be sure to take plenty of mosquito repellant and don’t be surprised if the sun never goes away!

Planning your trip to Alaska can be a daunting task. Here are a couple more resources, whether you’re looking for a backcountry experience or seeking out lodges and day trips. Either way, a trip to the Last Frontier will provide you with a lifetime of memories.

If you liked this story, you might also like

• Alaska: Reflections from a Guest in the Wilderness (August 23, 2012)
• Friday Photos: Happy Anniversary ANILCA (December 14, 2012)
• Getting Close to Katmai’s Bears in the Hopes of Protecting Them (July 31, 2012)

I get a real sense of accomplishment when the Park Service takes action on an issue we’ve been pushing for years. In early April, the agency renewed temporary regulations to keep hunters from killing black bear cubs and sows with cubs with spotlights at their den sites in Gates of the Arctic and Denali National Preserves.  And new temporary regulations were adopted to disallow using bait to hunt brown bears at Denali, Wrangell-St. Elias, and Yukon-Charley National Preserves in Alaska. This is great news for bears in our northernmost national preserves.

For those less familiar with bear hunting, “spotlighting” is a controversial practice that involves crawling into a bear’s den while it is hibernating, waking it by shining a light in its eyes, and shooting it. That is hardly sportsmanlike, and it’s not “hunting.” That’s killing.

Why, do you ask, does the Park Service have to take this action to renew its bans on these practices each year? Because Alaska allows spotlighting, baiting, and other objectionable hunting methods throughout the state. The Alaska Board of Game makes the rules for managing wildlife, and its main goal is to ensure that there are more than enough animals for human consumption—quite a different approach to managing wildlife populations than the Park Service takes. In order to ensure there is plenty of moose and caribou for hunters to kill, the state has a very active Intensive Management program aimed at reducing populations of wolves and bears. To increase the number of wolves and bears hunters are permitted to kill, the Alaska Board of Game has increasingly liberalized hunting methods to include baiting and spotlighting.

This treatment of bears—which serve an important ecological role at the top of the food chain—is in stark contrast to how Congress directs the Park Service to manage wildlife. The Park Service must specifically maintain natural and healthy populations, in Alaska and throughout the nation, and Park Service management policies make it explicitly clear that manipulating any wildlife population (like wolves and bears) to benefit a hunted species (like moose or caribou) is not allowed. Period. No exceptions.

From the perspective of the state of Alaska, this is simply a state’s rights issue. Officials here have argued long and hard that the Park Service has no authority to reject these hunting rules adopted by the Board of Game. NPCA and the Park Service have a very different opinion. The Park Service has all the authority in the world to reject state hunting rules that conflict with Park Service regulations and management objectives. It has been successfully tested in states all across the country.

As I’ve said before, the issue is not if sport hunting is allowed on national preserve lands—it is. The issue is how you hunt.

Now that the Park Service has again exercised its right to push back on the Board of Game’s hunting regulations, we are highly supportive of taking the all-important next step of making the Park Service position a permanent regulation so the agency doesn’t have to renew these rules every year. We’re hoping that’ll happen this spring—and based on our past advocacy on this issue, we know we have thousands of NPCA supporters around the country behind us as we urge the Park Service to do the right thing to protect these important and iconic animals.

If you liked this story, you might also like

• NPS Should Not Be Forced to Support Alaska’s War on Bears (February 1, 2012)
• Getting Close to Katmai’s Bears in the Hopes of Protecting Them (July 31, 2012)
• Death of Alpha Wolf Sparks Renewed Concern over Hunting near Yellowstone (December 27, 2012)

Earlier this month, more than 100 million acres of public land in Alaska shared one common anniversary: On December 2, Lake Clark, Kenai Fjords, and other parks and preserves established through the Alaskan National Interest Land Conservation Act, or ANILCA, turned 32 years old. This federal legislation created ten different national parks and expanded three others in America’s largest, wildest state, including:

• Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve
• Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
• Cape Krusenstern National Monument
• Denali National Park
• Gates Of The Arctic National Park and Preserve
• Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve
• Katmai National Park and Preserve
• Kenai Fjords National Park
• Kobuk Valley National Park
• Lake Clark National Park and Preserve
• Noatak National Preserve
• Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve
• Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve

Although ANILCA was controversial when it passed–protesters burned President Carter in effigy and some residents engaged in acts of civil disobedience–this law is now recognized as one of the most significant land conservation measures in America’s history and an enormous contributor to Alaska’s tourist economy.

Here are just a few images of the vast natural wonders protected by ANILCA. Put on an extra sweater and enjoy!

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

You can read about it and dream about going, but nothing compares with actually seeing it in person. Alaska, our 49^th state, is an extraordinary place. This 582,000-square-mile parcel of land is sometimes referred to as “Seward’s folly,” after Secretary of State William Seward, who orchestrated its purchase in 1867 despite ridicule from his contemporaries. Now, after spending three weeks in Alaska last June, I can appreciate Seward’s vision.

Contrary to the criticism leveled by Seward’s critics, Alaska is not a wasteland. It’s a wonderland containing some of our most wild remaining landscapes, including Denali National Park, which lies along the roadway that runs between Anchorage and Fairbanks, the two most populous cities in the state.

Rather than renting a car for the trip, we traveled to Denali on the train, a slow, enjoyable trip of four hours. You can cover the same distance in half the time by car, but for a first-time visitor, the train provides a good introduction to the landscape and history, shared by guides who spot bears, moose, tundra swans, and other wildlife for the benefit of the passengers. The train stops just outside the park, where shuttles carry passengers to nearby hotels. Getting around the area is easy enough, thanks to the hotel shuttles and the fleet of buses that take visitors on tours into the park.

I knew there was only one road that went into the park, and I certainly knew that beyond mile 15 the only way to get into the park was aboard a Bluebird bus (similar to a school bus but with overhead storage capacity and seat belts). But I did not realize how vast the park is (equal in size to New Hampshire) or that with very few exceptions there are no trails crossing the landscape.

Denali, for all intents and purposes, is a wilderness park. Conservationist Charles Sheldon, known as the “Father of Denali,” helped establish the park as a wildlife sanctuary to protect the Dall sheep that roam the mountain range. Sheldon spent years studying different species of American mountain sheep, and eventually followed his passion to Alaska where he spent several summers exploring the lands at the base of Mt. McKinley. His passion to preserve the Dall sheep drove him to advocate for the establishment of the park, finally succeeding in 1917.

Visiting Denali was an eye-opening experience, especially since the journey coincided almost exactly with the summer solstice when there is no clear division between day and night. The nearly continuous light—it would get somewhat twilight-like at 2 a.m.—debunked assumptions we make in the lower 48 about the separation of night and day and how that affects animal behavior, including our own. Bears, moose, willow ptarmigans, and other animals and birds can be out at any time looking for food, taking a dip in a lake, wandering across the tundra.

I quickly realized that I was a guest in this wilderness. The creatures I had the good luck to see—grizzly bear sows with cubs, moose with calves, a lynx, herds of Dall sheep, and caribou—were roaming freely on their home turf. This point was underscored, when in a rare moment I left the Bluebird bus and walked across the trail-less landscape, exposed to the heat of the sun, and then several minutes later, a cold rain laced with hail. Denali is just one of 15 national park units in Alaska, each one extraordinary in its own right. How fortunate for us that Secretary Seward had the foresight to convince the United States to buy the land; and how incredible that the will and determination of one man set aside such an extraordinary park.

Inspired to make your own trip to Denali? Learn more about the adventure of riding into the park by reading NPCA Alaska Program Manager Joan Frankevich’s story “Over the Years, Denali Road Continues to Provide Superb Wildlife Viewing” (PDF, 439 KB, page 3). Book your own train ride through the Alaskan landscape at the Alaska Railroad Corporation. Or take a trip with your browser and check out our recent slideshow with stunning photos of Denali.

If you liked this story, you might also like:

• Getting Close to Katmai’s Bears in the Hopes of Protecting Them (July 31, 2012)
• New NPS Video: Spend Three Minutes in the Wilderness (April 11, 2012)
• Friday Photo: A Cool Swim at Katmai (June 1, 2012)

I recently captured the true essence of seeing brown bears up very close and personal in the wild with my camera at Katmai National Park and Preserve. Joined by three colleagues and our passionate guide and partner in bear conservation, Dave Bachrach from AK Adventures, we departed from the coastal town of Homer via float plane, soaring over volcanoes, massive glaciers, and lush green mountains erupting from the water, before landing in Katmai National Park’s Hallo Bay.

Protected by thigh-high waders, our group stepped into the bay’s shallow waters and sloshed to shore, to be greeted by our first incredible treat of the day: a brown bear sow and her “teenager” cub, digging into sand left soft and pliable by the departing tide. The bears have developed a unique capability to supplement their early summer, pre-salmon-season diet of grasses and leftover berries by hunting for razor clams. We huddled together with two other small groups at the shoreline to watch and photograph this unforgettable moment: the bears digging into the sand, pulling out clams, slapping the shells open on their forearms (forepaws?), slurping out the briny meat, and discarding the shells. Wandering within ten feet of us at times, we might have felt fearful of these massive animals–and their equally impressive large claws and powerful jaws. Any sense of fear, however, was completely overshadowed by the joy of having such a pure and uncaged experience with these charismatic creatures.

Later in the day, we ate lunch in the grass while watching what can only be described as the bear version of playing hard-to-get. Again, the massive animals walked right by our group, completely uninterested in what we were doing or eating. Our guide explained that while the bears’ keen sense of smell allowed them to detect everything in our picnic, their appetites have not been spoiled by human food, making them unaware that our turkey sandwiches could be something that they would want to eat as well. The optimistic pessimist in me rejoiced that there are still some things we haven’t managed to screw up…yet.

As is the case with many species of “charismatic megafauna,” the brown bears have valid reasons to want to head for the hills. While I was able to enjoy an afternoon of up-close delight with nearly 20 brown bears in the national park portion of Katmai, in the park’s connected preserve, an escalating war continues to wage. At the battlefield are brown bears, hunters, and those like me, who will treasure bear-watching memories for a lifetime.

Like much of Alaska’s land managed by the National Park Service, Katmai National Park and Preserve’s 3.6 million acres gained protection though the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980. While hunting is prohibited in the national park portion of the land, the preserve provides subsistence hunters freedom to hunt bears. Sport hunters are also permitted, and some will hire hunting guides who have contracts to operate in the preserve. Some of these sport hunters will comfortably stand and shoot bullets within dozens of yards of these animals. This 2007 video shows just how close hunters come to the animals (warning: video content is not graphic but includes footage of hunters killing a brown bear).

NPCA continues to follow the ways in which Alaska manages its wildlife population, through an ongoing saga between National Park Service regulations and those of the Alaska Board of Game, which is in charge of setting bag limits and season lengths for the state. The National Park Service is currently reviewing two proposed contracts for guided hunting in Katmai National Preserve. These contracts are a long-time source of concern for NPCA, and for visitors who wish to see these bears alive and thriving. Learn more about our most recent efforts to protect Katmai’s bears and sign up to stay informed on this ever-evolving issue and how you can help.

-Kati Schmidt, NPCA’s Senior Media Relations Manager

Love watching these bears? So does Kati. Check out a short video clip below that she captured on her recent trip to Katmai. You can also check out the park’s new webcam, set up where bears like to look for fish at Brooks Falls.

If you liked this story, you might also like:

• NPS Should Not Be Forced to Support Alaska’s War on Bears (February 1, 2012)
• Friday Photo: A Cool Swim at Katmai (June 1, 2012)
• New Beginnings for Yellowstone’s Pronghorn (July 25, 2012)

But for freelance Alaskan photographer Patrick Endres, days of preparation may go into a single click of the shutter like this one—including hours and hours of trekking through wilderness with a heavy pack of gear, analyzing the light patterns, studying local wildlife, perching high and low for the best angles, and experimenting with different lenses, speeds, and focal points. Fortunately, when you pair Alaska’s vast landscapes and abundant wildlife with patience and skill, the result is a steady stream of spectacular shots like this one, which Endres documents at http://www.alaskaphotographyblog.com.

Alaska is home to 54 million acres of national park land—two thirds of the acreage of the entire national park system, with more bears and moose and staggering mountain ranges and northern lights than you’ll find anywhere else in the States. If you want to head north with your camera, check out Endres’s excellent tips on capturing wildlife photos—complete with a peek into his gear bag. They’re a great complement to our own Scott Kirkwood’s photo tips, but specialized for the Land of the Midnight Sun. (And if you’re never gonna take photos in Alaska, click anyway to see the unbelievably cute short-eared owl about a third of the way down the page. No, really. Just go take a look.)

Of course, there’s always a wrong way to do it, too. For an alternate approach, check out this photographer who captured images of a bear wrecking his rented photography gear in Yellowstone!

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

Since the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, nearly 110 million acres of the United States have been designated as wilderness in 757 distinct tracts, from the six-acre Pelican Island Wilderness in Florida to the more than 9 million acres of the Wrangell-St. Elias Wilderness in Alaska. These protected lands represent about 5 percent of the country in 44 states (every state except Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, and Rhode Island, with more than half of all designated wilderness land in Alaska). Although several federal agencies manage designated areas, the National Park Service manages most of the wilderness in the United States.

The Park Service just produced this beautiful short video celebrating the Wilderness Act and the lands it protects. For those who appreciate the peace of wild things, it’s a perfect opportunity to spend a few minutes viewing some of the most pristine and beautiful places in America without leaving any footprints. For more information on U.S. wilderness and tips for preserving it, see wilderness.nps.gov and www.wilderness.net.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

This striking image of Bear Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska, was taken by GeoEye, a satellite imaging company that photographs millions of square miles of the earth for search engine mapping software such as Google Maps. NASA’s Earth Observatory has taken a similar image by GeoEye and identified various geographic components of the striking glacier at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7097. Wired magazine also did a recent feature on the most beautiful parks from space, with more superb satellite images from Crater Lake, Death Valley, Shenandoah, and many others.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

I like bears. It’s one of the reasons I moved to Alaska over 30 years ago. There is something about traveling in the wilderness with wild animals that are bigger than you that provides an edge to your outdoor experience. And I’ve seen my fair share of bears over the years… hundreds and hundreds of them fishing for salmon in Katmai, digging for ground squirrels in Gates of the Arctic or for razor clams in Lake Clark, climbing on a dead humpback whale that washed ashore in Glacier Bay, and eating berries in Wrangell-St. Elias.

So I was particularly irked when the Alaska Board of Game recently added shooting bears from airplanes to the state’s arsenal in its much larger war on both bears and wolves.

Unfortunately, that war has spilled over onto the 19 million acres managed by the National Park Service in Alaska. Wildlife agencies in all 50 states write the hunting regulations for all lands in their state, including those managed by the federal government. But when hunting regulations have a negative impact on national preserves, the Park Service can and should create its own rules to override the state. That’s the scenario we have here in Alaska.

The State of Alaska and the National Park Service have conflicting approaches to managing wildlife. The state’s Intensive Management strategy involves killing bears and wolves with the assumption that fewer predators mean more moose and caribou for human consumption. The National Park Service, on the other hand, is charged by Congress to maintain natural and healthy wildlife populations and NPS rules prohibit the manipulation of any wildlife population to benefit another harvested species. So the issue is not IF sport hunting is allowed on national preserve lands—it is. The issue is HOW you hunt.

In its desire to increase the numbers of moose and caribou, for example, the state has declared a quiet war on bears by authorizing, among other means, a hunting method called “spotlighting.” Imagine crawling into a bear den to shoot a hibernating Yogi or Smokey taking a winter’s nap. It’s legal in Alaska. The Game Board also authorizes killing cubs and mothers with cubs. There is nothing sportsmanlike in shooting bear cubs. Other objectionable hunting methods currently authorized include bear baiting and snaring, which is particularly egregious because it is non-selective. Any bear—young, old, male, female, grizzly, or black—can get caught in a snare. It is not a hunting method—it’s a killing method used solely for reducing bear populations.

While the National Park Service already chose to prohibit shooting bears from airplanes, our concern is with these other objectionable hunting methods that are still permissible.  For years, the National Park Service has been trying to cooperate with the state to exempt Park Service lands from these hunting methods, but to no avail. In fact, I have a list of 52 times in the past 10 years that the state has rejected Park Service requests to either change a regulation or exempt NPS from a regulation that was ultimately adopted. And I tried again at the January 2012 Board of Game meeting, but our proposals to exempt NPS lands from baiting, snaring, spotlighting, shooting cubs and sows with cubs, and even taking wolves when they are raising pups were all voted down. So much for state/federal cooperation.

Now it’s up to the Park Service to step up and write additional rules to prohibit these other objectionable hunting methods. And when they do, NPCA will be there to support them.