Alaska Backpacking Trips

Tussocks
Ankle-high frost heaves that form lumpy, unstable platforms. Walking on them is like hopscotch on half-inflated basketballs. All day.

Moraine
Piles of rock debris left by glaciers. Everything from gravel to car-sized boulders. Often loose and unstable. Hours of boulder-hopping with no rhythm to it.

Willow and alder thickets
Waist high to overhead vegetation that fights back and steals things from your backpack. Dense, stubborn, and often wet. You don’t walk through it. You wrestle.

Glacial rivers
Fast, cold, opaque with silt. You can’t see the bottom. Boulders tumble down them. They rise dramatically during warm afternoons and drop overnight. River crossings are serious business and the number one backcountry hazard in Alaska.

Wet bogs
Low-lying areas where your feet sink into mud up to your knees. Slow, buggy, miserable.

Scree and talus
Sidehilling steep slopes of loose rock piled upon loose rock. Terrain that slides underfoot. Exhausting on the way up, treacherous on the way down.

Alpine tundra
The good stuff. Ankle to knee-high brush, generally solid footing, and what Alaskans call “easy going”.

There’s no rhythm to any of this.

Not Every Trip Has Every Thing

Our moderate trips focus on easier terrain with minimal river crossings. Intermediate trips mix challenging sections with easier travel. Advanced and expert routes involve more of the difficult stuff described above.

The difficulty ratings matter. Choose appropriately and Alaska becomes an adventure you can handle, not an ordeal.

The Weather

It can snow in July. It can be 80 degrees in August. It can rain for three days straight. *The Rule:* If you wait for good weather to do something in Alaska, you will never do anything. We hike in the rain. We set up camp in the rain. Bring the right gear, and it’s just part of the adventure.

Why This Is the Point

All of this difficult terrain is precisely the attraction. These landscapes remain wild because they’re hard to reach and harder to cross. There are no shortcuts, no maintained trails (and so no trailheads). No infrastructure to make things easier. What you get in return is wilderness on a scale that no longer exists in most of the world. Raw. Unfiltered. Authentic.

The competence and self-sufficiency required to travel here keeps the crowds away. And that’s exactly how we like it.

A Reality Check

Not every trip involves all of this. Not every day is a grind.

Our moderate trips stick largely to easier terrain. You’ll still be off-trail, but you’re rarely battling willows for hours or crossing major glacial rivers daily. Intermediate trips mix challenging sections with easier travel. Even our expert routes have stretches of beautiful alpine tundra where you can actually move easily.

The difficulty ratings exist for a reason. Match your trip to your experience level, and Alaska becomes an adventure, not an ordeal.

Some days you’ll cover ground easily. Some days the light is perfect and the terrain cooperates. Some days you’ll sit by a river with good coffee and wonder why anyone would travel any other way.

It’s hard. But it’s not always hard.