We did the Glacier ATV tour
and it was **BY FAR** the highlight of our entire Alaskan cruise!!! (Southeast tours runs MANY different tours, FYI --- I wish you could review it by specific tour!)
We were kinda bummed that they jammed six grown adults into each ATV-- resulting in my husband and I ending up being split up for the excursion which super sucked. :( However... we could overlook it due to the awesomeness of the excursion.
I will say this: I'm glad I didn't know ahead of time that the van ride out there was an HOUR long each way, b/c it might have kept me from booking this tour in teh first place. DON'T LET IT DETER YOU!!!! 1:) it's super scenic and goes quickly 2) IT IS WORTH IT!!!!
You get to the ATV point and you get on these rugged, six-person ATVs and then they trek you up the mountain side on an old mining trail they used to dig samples (which you can also view and search through for gold veins in the samples at the end of the trip if time allows). Then you go up and up and up and up. You watch the timberline disappear until you're so high up (5500 feet) that there are no trees, just rocks and barren landscape and it feels like you're on a Mars rover, just drifting over another planet with the mist and fog moving around you and the hills and mountains. Seriously, like ANOTHER PLANET. Pictures cannot do it justice!
Then you keep going up, and eventually, WHOA, you're at your own private glacier and glacier lake: Paddy's Peak. It's Jaw-droppingly beautiful. And it's just you and maybe 12 other people, in the middle of nowhere, at the top of the WORLD, and just takign in this amazing site. **everything** in Alaska is hard to capture in pictures --- this glacier/glacier pool looked like you could take a quick walk to get to the water's edge.... Nope. Our guide, Mike Jr, said that it would be a good 15 minute walk to get down there! My husband tried to throw a rock into the water from where we stood at the top and came *nowhere near* hitting it. Mike Jr. laughed and said no one has been able to hit it yet - you're just note even CLOSE. The scale, the enormity, just can't even be processed by your brain.
After that, they take you to another location that makes it seem like you're on the edge of the world, just towering rocks, a huge lake far far far down below, clouds and fog rolling in and out. Totally surreal. And then you sit down to a picnic lunch (yummy, by the way!), just in an otherworldy environment. Words, pictures... just can't do it justice!
My driver was Peter and he was crazy and amazing and so much fun. He broke away from the group towards the end and took us down RIGHT INTO a rushing creek for an epic photo op. Peter has been living "in the bush" for 10 years -- ask him about his personal story and you will be left speechless!
100% absolutely totally recommend this to everyone. Worth EVERY PENNY. (we booked direct through their website, not through our cruise ship) Dress in layers and warm, b/c when you get to the very very top and the wind is passing over the ice of the glacier, it got COLD and I was glad to have my gloves and hat! read more