This Might Be the Coolest Alaska Cruise to Take in 2025

It was the boat that got me. Swell, run by Maple Leaf Adventures out of Victoria, British Columbia, was built in 1912 as a wooden-hulled tugboat. Refitted in 2004, it now operates as an elegant 88-foot expedition cruiser for 12 guests, five crew, and an onboard naturalist. Full disclosure: I don’t much like the ocean, but I’ll take a boat if there’s no other way to get somewhere, and I had always wanted to see Alaska’s southeastern coast.

Swell appealed because it’s not a floating luxury hotel but rather an intrepid former workboat. With a modest 12-foot draft, it can tuck into the nooks and crannies of the Alexander Archipelago, homeland of the Tlingit nation. Even the name of its midsummer itinerary had a ring of adventure: the Alaska Supervoyage. The 11-day trip is a wildlife safari through whale-rich waters, past old-growth rainforests, and into glacier-bound fjords — some of the wildest scenery on earth.

Monday

Our first full day on the water delivered rain in the morning and more rain in the afternoon. Fortunately, Maple Leaf’s pre-trip packing checklist had called for a full set of waterproofs. There’s no bad weather, Alaskan wisdom has it, just bad clothing.

Over breakfast I chatted with fellow nature geek Manda McCoy. At 40, she was the youngest passenger on board — and was traveling with the most senior, her octogenarian aunt Lindsay Hofman. McCoy suggested I keep the group’s wildlife log, and proposed the ground rules: a second spotter had to verify each sighting, and eagles wouldn’t count because they were commoner than crows. By the end of the day, McCoy wondered if our recordkeeping could keep pace with the sightings. 

“There’s a grizzly on shore. Grizzly bear, starboard bow,” English-born captain Matt Whelan announced over the ship’s intercom after lunch. I leaped up from my bunk, trying to remember which side was starboard. 

Then a guest yelled “humpback!” and pointed toward a whale cruising parallel to shore. Suddenly an eagle swooped into the frame. Then a sea lion popped up. People were laughing with wonder. “Bear, whale, sea lion, eagle,” McCoy cried, like a director calling the cast to set. “Action!”

Tuesday

After a morning excursion in one of Swell’s two Zodiacs, inflatable launches nicknamed Flotsam and Jetsam, we cruised to Warm Springs Bay, where the air smelled distinctly of schooling salmon — a clean, oceanic scent. Less appealing was the intermittent rotten-egg whiff from the super-heated waters of the sulfur springs. “It should be called Scalding Springs Bay,” Whelan said.

An afternoon talk by naturalist Misty MacDuffee described salmon as the backbone of the ecosystem. And not just in the ocean; there were also salmon in the trees, said MacDuffee, who looked like Sissy Spacek and sounded a lot like Diane Keaton. She explained that when the last Ice Age retreated, 14,000 to 12,000 years ago — a mere blink in geologic time — it left behind a chaos of bare rock. How did lush rainforest colonize the sterile land so quickly? 

One theory is that salmon returned to Alaska’s newly thawed rivers from refugia further south. After spawning, they died and were eaten by bears, wolves, eagles, otters, and crows, which deposited salmon-based fertilizer across the land. Plants moved in: an ecological succession of lichens, mosses, grasses, shrubs, and deciduous trees. Last to arrive were giant cedar, hemlock, and spruce trees, which can grow up to 12 feet in diameter and live a thousand years — the stable climax forest we saw through the portholes as MacDuffee spoke.

Wednesday

Morning brought a surprise: MacDuffee heard via text that a friend happened to be visiting the tiny settlement near Warm Springs. Within the hour, conservation scientist Lauren Eckert, who is on the board of the Alaska Whale Foundation, had come aboard to give an impromptu talk connecting the ocean’s largest creatures, baleen whales, with its smallest, the tiny floating zooplankton that whales consume in vast quantities. 

Alaska’s population of humpbacks, one of several baleen species, has rebounded since the 1982 international moratorium on whaling. “Save the Whales” worked, Eckert said, proving that social and cultural change on a global scale can occur “essentially overnight.” Unfortunately, Eckert’s hopeful story came with an asterisk: whales are imperiled again, this time because of an underwater heat wave known as the Blob, which disrupts food supplies and is caused by climate change.

Thursday

The day dawned clear and bright at 4 a.m. — I know because I forgot to close the curtains. The waters of Security Bay, our overnight anchorage, were oily-calm and full of sea otters. They paddled past singly and in pairs, trailing V-shaped wakes. Weather rolled in during breakfast, and we suited up for the Zodiacs. A few minutes out, first mate Bryan Bowles spotted a 400-yard single-file line of…something. It turned out to be a huge gathering of sea otters, a so-called raft, perhaps 100 in all. Even MacDuffee was giddy at the sight. “How do you know you’re in Alaska? A hundred sea otters!”

Friday

After breakfast, I joined a small group on a kayaking trip around Brothers Islands. Shy harbor seals peeked up from kelp beds and disappeared in a blink. Two big sea lions surfaced as we crossed an open channel, sizing me up boldly. The rarest sighting of the day, however, was a giant starfish known as a sunflower sea star — its 20 or so arms can span three feet. 

After lunch, Swell motored up Frederick Sound. The intercom crackled to life. “I don’t know the collective noun for this many whales,” said the captain, “but there’s a bunch of humpbacks coming up — it’s a soup of whales.” 

By the time I reached the bow, people were giddy. A cow and calf surfaced within 100 feet of us. Many more whales were feeding in the middle distance. Someone saw seven blows at once. MacDuffee watched three separate groups of a dozen each. Farther out, visible only with binoculars, so many humpbacks were spouting that you couldn’t not see one — 360 degrees of whales. 

Saturday and Sunday

In Alaska, grizzly-bear hunting is allowed everywhere except in a sanctuary on Admiralty Island called Pack Creek, where, since the 1930s, bears have lived unbothered by humans. We were among the lucky few who get the chance to visit under the close watch of the rangers. The rules are strict: advance reservations required, small groups only, and absolutely no food allowed on shore. 

Swell anchored several miles away, out of sight in Windfall Harbor, a hidden cove surrounded by soaring granite peaks laced with waterfalls. Because of visitor quotas at Pack Creek, we split into two groups. One party sped away in a Zodiac, while the rest of us scanned for wildlife. Salmon schooled along the shore and leaped madly at nothing. Whelan led Hofman and me on a shore hike through the estuary. Signs of bear activity, such as tracks and chewed vegetation, were everywhere, and we cut short our sortie when the ship called via walkie-talkie to report an approaching bear. 

The next morning it was my group’s turn at Pack Creek. We landed on a cobble spit and walked to a gravel pad above a stream. The bears ignored us. One dug clams on tidal mudflats, while a glossy 15-year-old female known to the rangers napped on the opposite bank. Two black-tailed deer wandered out of the woods and grazed peaceably behind her until the wind shifted and, suddenly smelling the grizzly, they dashed away, tails flashing danger.

Monday

Alaska is a rich feeding ground for humpbacks, in part because mineral-laden glacial runoff nourishes plankton blooms. On our last two days, we went glacier hunting. We followed a fjord called Endicott Arm to its furthest reach, the soaring face of Dawes Glacier. The rocky fjord was bare — trees hadn’t yet moved in — and the glaciated side canyons showed the classic U shape, like Yosemite Valley. Seals hauled out on small ice floes. With the help of chef Guy Morgan, we wrestled aboard a 10-pound chunk of floating ice for cocktail hour. It was clearer than rock crystal and dimpled all over, like a cut-glass knickknack. Morgan chiseled it into blocky cubes for G&Ts, which one guest dubbed “Ice Age cocktails.” 

Tuesday

The last wildlife encounter of the trip was, as if by design, the best. After a morning on the Zodiacs exploring an eerie, ice-filled glacial fjord, I was bundled in my cabin when the intercom called us to the deck. A group of five humpback whales were bubble-net feeding — an extraordinary natural spectacle. They worked together to corral baitfish into a compacted ball near the surface, coordinating their efforts vocally. MacDuffee dropped a microphone into the water so we could listen. At a precise cue — a sustained note — all the whales went silent and in unison lunged upward through the bait ball. The surface seemed to explode with whales, their garage-size mouths agape. It was a heart-stopping sight. That afternoon, as we drank Ice Age cocktails on the deck and recounted the extraordinary day, someone proposed a new collective noun: a symphony of whales.

5 More Alaska Cruises to Consider

For Bon Vivants

The 373-cabin Seven Seas Explorer, from Regent Seven Seas Cruises, offers luxe amenities such as high end restaurants, top-notch live entertainment, and spacious suites. It also affords guests plenty of glacier spotting, wildlife watching, and tours of places such as Sitka National Historical Park.

For Water Lovers

UnCruise Adventures has a fleet of Alaska ships ranging in size from 11 cabins to 42, and puts an emphasis on active pursuits. Stand-up paddleboarding, kayaking, and even snorkeling in the waters of the Alexander Archipelago are among the options.

For Wildlife Enthusiasts

Organized as a conservation nonprofit that supports groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Boat Company operates its 12-cabin Mist Cove and 10-cabin Liseron in the waters off the Tongass National Forest, where humpback whales, orcas, sea lions, and other charismatic creatures are often seen.

For Keeping Your Options Open

Tour operator AdventureSmith Explorations connects guests with more than 30 small ships and yachts that operate in Alaska. Among them is the Sea Wolf, a six-cabin expedition vessel first built as a U.S. Navy minesweeper that is today kitted out with kayaks and a skiff for scenic trips around Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve.

For the Utmost in Privacy

The seven-cabin Hanse Explorer has operated private charters in the tropics and Antarctica. Come 2025, the superyacht managed by EYOS Expeditions will summer on the coast of Alaska, with weeklong departures out of Juneau on a full-buyout basis.​ — Parker Wright

A version of these stories first appeared in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headlines “The Call of the Wild” and “Five More Out-there Alaska Cruises.”