We wanted to stay at Brooks Lodge, but we didn't start planning this trip NEARLY far enough in…read moreadvance to get a room here. That being said, we still had the opportunity to stop by here while visiting Katmai National Park. Located in the main area of the park in Brooks Camp, Brooks Lodge also offers meals for anyone visiting the park. We came for lunch, and if I recall, it was $32/person for full access to the buffet bar. They had salad, soup, crab cakes, and a burger bar among other things. The food was actually really good. I was expecting just average food considering it was buffet style, but the flavor was great. Staff managed the bar well, routinely switching out trays to ensure everything stayed appropriate temperature. There was also a comfortable sitting area around the fire pit along with a small bar. Clean bathrooms, always a positive. If you can book a room here, enjoy your stay. Otherwise, stop by for lunch. The food is tasty.

Brooks Falls absolutely exceeded my already high expectations. The Park Service runs a very…read moreprofessional and organized operation. Rangers and staff were friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful. The lodge and campground are clean and in great shape. The lodge serves a very good (if pricey) buffet and even has a an excellent little bar! The campsites are in great shape in a beautiful area. Can't say much about the cabins, as we didn't stay in them, but the camping experience was excellent. Well worth the trip!! Oh, and the bears weren't bad either!!!

This is a sneaky, secret beach, right here in Anchorage!…read more Sure, there are very tiny ones at other spots on the coastal trail, if you know where to look (*cough*yelp.com/biz/lyn-ary-par... *cough*) but this one is pretty big, it's the only true beach in town. To get here, you first have to go to Kincaid Park *yelp.com/biz/kincaid-par...), then you hike down the trails towards the water. Eventually you'll access the water. Hang a left, and go down about a half a mile and BAM! sand! There usually aren't many people here and you can walk for as long, or as little, as you'd like. More details about getting here in the business description, enjoy! EDIT: disregard previous review, I don't know my right from my left, apparently :-/

This is a the perfect course for beginners and amature practice. Open areas and wooded areas.read more

This is a great, less well-known spot to see the sunset or walk the "beach"…read more I accidentally ended up here after a long walk south from Kincaide Park proper. But, you can also drive right here. (it's right next to a dirt bike track) Bring a telephoto lens, the views of the Aleutians, Tordrillos, and Fire Island (and its windmills) are pretty incredible!

Spectacular is one of the superlatives to describe the experience with Captain Al and the Northern…read moreExplorer. We hiked, saw bears, doll porpoises, and the most amazing scenes of glaciers from Blackstone Bay. The food was a culinary delight, Christian out did himself each night. Rena oozed hospitality and exceeded our every need.

We just returned from our two week trip to Alaska. The middle part of that was 5 days and 4 nights…read morewith Captain Al and his crew for our cruise. Unexpectedly, we ended up being the only guests as others had backed out. We started out of Seward with a nice trip from Anchorage with Joan and Jeff as our shuttle team. They were both very personable and a pleasure to make the trip with to Seward. We were greeted with champagne and quickly got underway. Our accommodations were exactly as described in the Master suite. After two days of being wined and dined, we finally had to say, the "food is amazing, but we don't eat this much in a day. We need to slow down on the amount" LOL Certainly all you could possibly eat and nicely prepared. En En set beautiful tables for every meal and and our wine glasses were never dry. The weather was not the best for the first few days, so with everyone's agreement, we decided to roll the dice and cross the Gulf of Alaska to head towards Whittier. At that point, the weather became amazing, we did kayaking and had a 13,000 year old cocktail (Bourbon on Glacier ice). Who knew we would go to Alaska to get a tan? We spent the entire time cruising out on the deck getting sun. Captain Al and his team were wonderful hosts. I guess I could address every complaint that has been posted, but I'm not going to give it much credibility by spending any time on it. Yes, the boat is not brand new, but we had no issues on board (except the battery, but that's a little joke between Captain Al and us.). I can't speak to any of the other accommodations because we did not see or use them, but there were absolutely no complaints with ours. We are already considering the possibility of taking friends and going again some time. Thanks for everything Captain Al, En En and Christian! It was the trip of a lifetime! Thanks for being a part of it! Lori and Bob

I would not recommend this tour company. Our guide was impatient and provided very little safety…read moreinstruction. During the trip, my companion fell into the snow, and the guide showed little concern or compassion. What made the experience worse was what happened afterward. After I posted a negative review on Google, the business owner falsely claimed that I had never toured with them and even resorted to personal insults. I later noticed that the company responds to every negative review across platforms in a similarly confrontational way. They frequently justify their behavior by saying they are a "small family business," but that does not excuse dismissing legitimate safety concerns or attacking customers. If anything goes wrong during your trip, be prepared for this company to deny responsibility as if they are not grown-ups.

Amazing experience! The owner and guides were awesome. Very personable, knowledgeable and upbeat. I…read morewas disappointed that the glacier tour was unavailable but the mountain tour did not disappoint. The views were beautiful. I enjoyed being able to go at my own pace and speed up when I felt comfortable. It wasn't the best conditions but the crew ensured we still had a good time. Highly recommended.

This peak is accessed from the penguin creek trail:…read morehttps://www.yelp.com/biz/penguin-creek-trail-anchorage Depending on who you ask, it may be considered the most difficult hike in Chugach State Park. It definitely requires lots of off-trail travel and navigation, that's for sure! Here's my trip report from when I summitted it: We left the penguin creek trail shortly after and began our traverse into the hanging valley. We ended up maintaining an elevation of roughly 1400 ft before steadily ascending to 2600 ft to drop down into the hanging valley. This decision was...OK. It wasn't a sufferfest, but it wasn't exactly great. There was definitely some bad snow and some alder-wrangling. The lake of any chlorophyll in any of the foilage made route-finding through it much easier...but there was still ample grunting and rubber-banding-gunning of branches. Rather than take the full ridge up Bird, we decided to go up-valley and then gain the ridge near "Point 4800"/"Point 4840" (I've heard it called both things, and on my map it isn't either of these elevations, anyone know where this name is documented?) Anyway, we started ascending form the valley floor at roughly 60.9989, -149.3137. It was mostly snow climbing on snow of marginal quality. Lower down it was very bad wallowing, so we climbed the rock bands. Eventually the rock bands ended and we were climbing a spine of snow (reminded my of the "hogsback" from my Mt Hood climbing days!). It was straightforward ascending, but extremely bad visibility was a little anxiety-inducing. We were in and out of rolling whiteouts and there was so little contrast my camera couldn't auto-focus, ha! We kept taking the obvious gully up, and eventually were dumped out onto a flattish rock band. From there steep, firm snow climbing to gained the ridge proper. (we didn't put our crampons on for this, but we probably should have) We aggressively side-hilled to avoid going up and over Point 48XX, a decision that didn't end up saving any time. Knife-hard Icy snow slopes peppered sloppy scree fields making travel annoying, unless you're really good at crampon-changing! Eventually we were at a low-point in the ridge, where I found a sneaky route down. I was a line I had heard described in some trip reports at the end of the valley that could take you directly to the summit ridge and probably save a lot of time, if it had snow on it. There was a ton of good-looking snow on it, so I noted it in caltopo (60.9981, -149.2958) for a possible, hot-pizza-at-Moose's Tooth-preserving descent short-cut. What we did next is hard to describe, but sticking to the ridge became difficult so we started side-willing east towards the true summit. Eventually we were on and off of really bad choss that was either dusted with half-melted powder or hardened by rime ice (similar to what Kevin Downie experienced last fall: https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=1524570) . I can see how this would be a fun scramble in the summer, but dodging icy gullies and scraping choss with crampons was not! Abbey found an "easy" icy ramp to the summit area (I thought it was kinda scary), and after front-pointing on some rime, we reached the snow-and-rime dome that is the Bird Peak summit...to absolutely zero views. Vis was probably at 20-30 ft? There was enough visibility for us to scout an easy snow ramp that would take us down from the summit. (Anything to avoid down-climbing the Abbey M0 variation!) Long story short, the snow ramp was also extremely hard snow. It would've protected beautifully with even vertical pickets. We just kept our heads down and slowly front-pointed down it for what seemed like forever. Eventually we got back down to the scree slopes, took the crampons off, and started side-hilling back to the ridge (west). We went right to the descent line I had marked and...it still looked pretty good. I got out and tested it a little and it was just too hard to tell what the quality of the snow would be once we got out on it. I still had some mild anxiety from the summit downclimb and wasn't interested it going down a long slope with that level of firmness (especially with my crappy ultra light crampons, but that's for another time) We talked about it and, with some hesitancy, decided to go down the way we came up. We didn't side-hill Peak 48XX this time, we stayed pretty high, and travel was much faster! We found where we were topped out on the ridge, put our crampons on, and started down-climbing. The first small section was really steep, but eventually we were quickly plunge stepping down the slopes. I decided to go left (south) down a different way than what we came up to make it a pure snow down-climb. Heavy, wet snow in this area made for perfect wet-cement, slow-and-steady glissade conditions. We then trudged through chunky-water-style snow back to our tent, and we quickly saturated our gaitered mountaineering boots. Good day in the hills? Um, kinda?

Amazing experience, Andy was amazing and kind. He really took good care of us and snowmobile riding…read morewas soo much fun!! Amazing customer service...Amazing experience! Definitely a must if visiting Alaska.

Ok! Peeps ... have to tell you! Andy and Mickey are friggin incredible! Decided last minute…read morewanted to do snowmobiles. Andy got back to us via text quickly and adjusted their schedule to take care of myself and a friend! We were a bit sketchy on why few reviews and I'm telling you they deserve the best review! We felt like we had a private tour customized just for us! Andy doesn't believe in too much mkt but they are a hidden gem! We highly recommend contacting them as we saw the other company with 20 people and we (just the three of us) felt like royalty with the service and custom tailored tour at such a great price! There are only three companies that do this and we feel like we found the BEST!