Finding the Perfect Alaska Hiking Trip for You   

When you start researching the possibilities for hiking and backpacking trips in Alaska the number of options can be overwhelming. So it helps to be a bit systematic to whittle the list down to something manageable. 

There are many factors to consider when evaluating trip options: duration, mileage, terrain, special challenges or hazards, weather, group size and more

All of these can effect the overall challenge level of a trip.

Start with Yourself

Before you begin analyzing and comparing trip options, you need to do ask yourself some basic questions:

• What sort of physical condition am I in?
• What is my prior experience level with backpacking trips?
• What sort of experience do I want on this trip?
• How much time do I have available?
• What is my budget?

Conditioning
 

You don’t need to be a triathlon champion to do even a challenging Alaska backpacking trip and there are trips for all levels of physical challenge. But you need to do an honest appraisal of your level of fitness and endurance.

Going to the gym three days a week doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in great shape. A lot of folks who would classify their conditioning as good are really more in the fair range.If you’re not in the shape you need to be for the trip you want to do, will you actually do the work needed to get there?

A great way to do a reality check is to shoulder a fully loaded pack and do a weekender trip, hiking two full days. That will give you an idea of where you are in terms of conditioning.

Experience

What sort of multi-day trips have you done in the last several years? I was chatting with a man about his prior hiking experience and he told me of his through-hike of the Appalachian Trail. That would be a lot of backpacking experience for sure. But turns out he did the trip 25 years earlier and no big trips since. 

I said, “Ya know that guy who did the AT? Yeah, he won’t be going on this Alaska trip.”

Twenty five years of backpacking experience is great but it matters what you have done in the last 3-4 years. 

This is not to say a person can’t do something that goes beyond their prior experience. You can, and we encourage folks to push their comfort zone a bit. But you need to be realistic about your abilities.

So before you even get to looking at Alaska backpacking trip ideas, complete a self-survey of what you’ve done, where your at now and what you are ready to take on.

Trip Ratings
You’ve done your self-analysis and have an honest idea of what you can do. You’ve decided you’re ready for something in the moderate to challenging range. But what does that even mean?

Backcountry trips are often rated for difficulty: easier, moderate, somewhat strenuous, one boot to five boots, three stars - but what do those ratings really signify?

Ratings provide a way to group trips of a similar challenge level but such ratings are relative to other trips not absolute ratings. Ratings for an  Alaska hiking trip are  relative to other Alaska trips but not to trips in the lower 48. The Alaska difference is that deep-backcountry trips in Alaska are almost always 100% off-trail and that changes the game.

So a six day, trail-based backpacking trip in Montana rated as challenging might be similar in its physical demands as an Alaska trip rated as moderate.

Ratings can provide a general idea what various trips will be like but you need to look deeper than a simple rating category.

Mileage and Terrain
 

Folks often ask how many miles in a trip and how many miles will they cover on an average day.

There is a scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc when Marion (Karen Allen) says to Indiana Jones, "You're not the man I knew ten years ago," he replies, "It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage.”

When people ask about mileage on an  trip I say that in Alaska it’s not the mileage, it’s the terrain.

There are backcountry routes that might limit travel to a couple of miles per day. If you just look at mileage you might conclude this trip will be a pushover. But those couple of miles might include stream crossings, rock-fields, bushwhacking, nasty moraine, steep inclines and more. And not a trail in site. Without a trail, even gentle tundra will slow you down compared to a maintained trail.

So better questions would be; how many miles per day, how many hours will we hike daily and most importantly what is the terrain like?

Elevation Gain

Hiking up 2000’ of vertical gain to a pass might seem fairly moderate if you’re on a nicely groomed trail. But replace the trail with boulder fields, streams and toss in some brush and it gets a bit more taxing to hump a 50 lb. backpack up and over a ridge.

One or two up-and-overs on a route is different than doing major gain every day. So look at how much up and down is involved on different routes.

Elevation level is rarely a concern on an Alaska backpacking trip. A trip in the Rockies might involve a lot of travel above 10,000 feet (3000 meters) where elevation and subsequent oxygen levels effect the physical demands of a route. But in Alaska, a backpacking trek is going to top out around 7000 feet (2100 m.) or less. Above that elevation in Alaska and you are in the permanent snow and ice realm making it a mountaineering route, not hiking. So oxygen levels aren’t much of a factor at the elevations you will likely hike in Alaska.

Trip Duration

How much time do you have for your Alaska trip? Take into account your travel time on both ends of the trip. It will take you a day to travel from your home city to Anchorage and possible another day to get to the point from which your trek embarks. The time you have for a backpacking trip is a big factor on point-to-point trips. Such trips usually have a minimum time needed to hike from one backcountry airstrip to another. If your time is tight you might be better off on a basecamp or loop style trek.

Trip Type
​​​​​​​Even within a category of difficulty there are different trip types: Base camp, loop and point-to-point. 

Base Camp
A straight-up base camp trip means you fly into a spot, hike off a ways from the landing strip (mile or less) and set  camp. You then do day-hikes out of the base for the duration of the trip.

See our Alaska Base Camping Trips

Loop Trip

On a loop trip you  fly into an area and spend most of the first day backpacking then set camp. The remainder of the trip might be day hikes out of the base or we might move camp once and do additional day hikes out of there before returning to the strip where we got dropped off. A loop trip could include one campsite or we could move camp every day. It depends on the group and what they are up for. Loop trips offer more flexibility than straight basecamps.

See our Alaska Loop/Mini-backpack Trips

Point-to-Point

These are backpacking trips where you will be backpacking and moving camp most, if not every day. That makes these the more challenging type of trip and required the most fitness. On a week long point-to-point you will be carrying full packs of about 45-50 lbs for the men and a closer to 45 for most women. Clearly these are the most demanding and you need to be in better than just okay condition. The following are some of our point-to-point treks ordered in descending order of challenge.

See our Alaska Point-to-point Backpacking Trips

Once you have defined how much time you have, what you want in terms of challenge levels, your budget and available dates you can make a list of the trips that meet those criteria. But you will still end up with a difficult decision but I tell folks not to overthink it. It's really not possible to pick a bad trip as long as you have done your research.

Consultation

I hope this helps to provide a framework for comparing different Alaska backpacking trips. If you want to know more about a particular trip or how various trips compare, just give a call and talk with me, the owner of Trek Alaska and the author of Hiking Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park published by Falcon Guides. 

People are always glad they called - we can cover so much more ground and most find it extremely helpful.

 PH: 907.795.5252

Email: trips@trekalaska.com