Alaska Multi-Sport, Hiking, & Family Adventure Camping & Lodge Trips
We offer a couple of different Lodge-based trips: Our 10-day Alaska Explorer, and our new 2+ or 3-day Kenai Fjords Hike & Cruise (or Fish!) lodge-based tour (the latter one stays in boutique yurts)! Scroll down for dates and prices. (We also offer a 9-day Alaska Family Explorer).
GET UP AND GO! TO ALASKA: Experience wild Alaska for yourself this summer on one of Get Up and Go! Tours active and exciting 10-day Lodge-based Multi-Sport / Hiking tours. As with our other fully-guided, small-group tours, Get Up and Go! Lodge Tours are designed for the active, adventurous person who wants to experience not the prepackaged Alaska of mainstream tourism, or the restrictions of the cruise ship, but the real Alaska available only to those who are willing to get out there and actively explore!
With this in mind, all of our lodge-based tours offer fantastic daily hiking and adventure multi-sport activities, as well as great chances to view wildlife, soak up the spectacular scenery, and get a good feel for the immensity, beauty, and very special nature of the sub-arctic Alaskan wilderness. Unlike on our ‘Camp & Cabin’-based tours, however, at the end of an exciting day of adventuring, “lodge-trippers” cozy up not in a tent, but in a warm room and comfortable bed.
Please read on for more general information about our Lodge-based tours program, or to go directly to detailed tour description sheets, click on the links above.
You may also want to consider one of our Alaska ‘Camp & Cabin’-based tours.
“I don’t typically do this following a trip, but this trip was so sensational I really need to let you know. Tim and I were beyond satisfied with the great itinerary, optional opportunities, and terrific planning for our 10 days in Alaska.
“Thanks for offering such a great way to see Alaska and having the good sense to pick such a great guide. I’ll spread the word to my traveling friends.”
— Joan Fulton, York, Pennsylvania, Alaska Explorer Lodge-based tour
OUR LODGING: Locally owned and operated, and ranging from somewhat rustic to very modern, our lodges, B&B’s and cabins are not extravagant (don’t expect televisions, baggage handling, or room service). They are however comfortable, friendly, scenically situated and rich with Alaskan hospitality and character! Most feature private bathrooms and showers, although in more remote locations, a few are more rustic, with shared (and very clean) facilities. Many of the lodges also offer opportunities to meet local people, thus offering a slice of local color, and some insight into what it’s like to live in the Great Land year around. You’re going to like them!
MEALS: Except on the ferry, all breakfasts and lunches and some dinners are included in the prices of our lodge-based tours. Most breakfasts are either ordered off the regular menu or are hot, multi-course buffets; a few are continental style. Lunches are high quality, all-you-can-eat picnics, or pack-your-own brown bag lunches to be enjoyed at some scenic viewpoint during a hike. Non-included dinners are taken either at our lodges or in local restaurants, and are paid for individually (your guide will arrange these, no worries).
AND THE GUIDE? Our guides are friendly, capable, and multi-talented men and women who are passionate about Alaska, and about being active in the outdoors. He or she will also take a personal interest in you, making sure you are enjoying yourself and your Alaska experience.
Your hard-working guide will organize and coordinate the daily schedule and activities, transport you, keep you informed, guide you on hikes and adventures, handle all the details and any unexpected problems that might arise, and, in a nutshell, do what it takes to make sure that the trip is successful. You can relax knowing you’ll be in good hands with Get Up and Go!
LODGE-BASED MULTI-SPORT / HIKING TOURS: Our Lodge-based Multi-Sport / Hiking tours include all the same great multi-sport activities as our ‘Camp & Cabin’-based tours. Depending on which tour itinerary you choose, sea kayaking, whitewater rafting, glacier trekking, and/or canoeing, as well as truly great hiking, are included activities on these tours. See our Activities Comparison Chart or the individual Tour Description Sheets (click the links at the top of this page) for details.
Never tried some of these before? Don’t worry, no previous experience is necessary; they’re fully guided, easier, and safer than they might seem, and a tremendous amount of fun. A Get Up and Go! Tours trip can be the perfect opportunity to safely try these exciting and fast-growing adventure activities for yourself. All optional activities will be arranged by your guide, and are payable locally. Credit cards are accepted.
GET UP AND GO! HIKING: In addition to all the included multi-sport activities, there are also great scheduled hikes nearly every day of every tour. The hikes are of varying lengths and difficulty levels, but all have in common dramatic scenery and larger-than-life Alaskan beauty. Alaska hikes traverse a variety of terrains and ecosystems, from rolling tundra hills, to glacial gorges and moraines, to mountain ridges, to lush forests, to alpine meadows, and more. If there’s anything that characterizes Alaska hiking, it’s variety! Whether your goal is to climb every mountain in sight, simply to enjoy a more casual walk at your own pace, admiring the wildflowers, scenery, and wildlife, or something in between, you’ll find a hike to suit you. The scenery always looks better when you experience it on foot, and long after you’ve returned home, the thing that you’ll remember most about your Alaskan experience will be the beautiful hikes.
NATURAL HISTORY INFORMATION: All Get Up and Go! tours feature daily activity briefings and “set the scene” commentary from your guides on the human and natural history of places to be visited. This friendly, casually presented commentary helps to bring the people, places, land forms, flora and fauna alive for our clients, and is one of the things that really distinguishes our tours. If you’ve been fortunate to have knowledgeable guides in the past then you know how much this can add to your overall experience. It’s even part of our motto: “Get Up and Go! Tours: Active, Informative, Fun! Alaska Adventures.”
WHAT’S THE RUSH? A big advantage of all Get Up and Go! tours is the leisurely pace of our itineraries. Rather than packing up and driving every day, with just a little time in the afternoons for hikes, our tours feature a majority of 2 and 3-night stops, giving us more time to enjoy the beautiful Alaskan country you came to see, more time to hike, and more free time to relax.
HAVE QUESTIONS OR WANT TO RESERVE YOUR SPACE ON A TOUR? Please contact us by calling 1-888-868-4147 (toll free from the US or Canada), or 1-907-245-0795 (from all other countries). You can also reach us by email at: alaska@getupandgotours.com.
10 Days. Starts and ends in Anchorage
2025 Tour Dates & Prices:
Lodge-Based Tours Dates: June 22-July 1 (sold out); July 10-19; July 22-31; August 7-16*; August 21-30*
(*Fall Colors & Northern Lights!)
Lodge-Based Tour Price: $4,495 pp (no sales tax). Lodge Tour Single Supplement: $1,295.
Supplements apply only to single travelers or those who want a private room throughout the tour; to try to avoid the supplement, ask about sharing a room with another same-sex single.
ALASKA EXPLORER: For those with more than a week of vacation time, the 10-day Alaska Explorer is our most wide-ranging and popular tour. This tour features the top highlights of our shorter Mountains & Glaciers and Alaska Ranger itineraries, including visits to two of the world’s largest and most spectacular national parks: Denali and Wrangell-St. Elias. We’ll spend 3 nights at each of these mountain refuges, as well as traversing the Alaska Range on the spectacular Denali Highway (where we’ll also take a beautiful canoe trip down a calm river through the tundra wilderness), and drop down to the heavily glaciated coast of Prince William Sound at Valdez for 2 nights. There is a day here for a spectacular (and included) sea kayaking trip to Columbia Glacier (a highlight among highlights!). On the last day we’ll take a scenic ferry trip across the Sound, before continuing back to Anchorage.
In addition to all the beautiful scenery, sea kayaking, glacier trekking, whitewater rafting and canoeing are included multi-sport activities, and sensational day hiking is also a highlight of the tour.
As mentioned above, Denali preserves what is perhaps the continent’s richest wildlife habitat: the north side of the mighty Alaska range in the vicinity of Mt. Denali (formerly Mt. McKinley), North America’s tallest and most spectacular peak. With it’s ages-old food chain still intact from bottom to top, Denali is the home to a huge variety of wildlife, including hundreds of grizzly bears, 14 wolf packs, thousands of caribou, Dall sheep, moose, foxes, beavers, and numerous smaller mammals, as well as over 200 species of birds. You’ll spend a day traveling through the park and observing this wildlife on the park shuttle bus, with chances for hiking. The following day will be spent hiking. We’ll also enjoy an included whitewater rafting trip on the Nenana River before carrying on. “Flight-seeing” over the park to Denali, with a possible glacier landing, is another option.
Next, we’ll traverse the gravel Denali Highway, paralleling the south side of the mighty Alaska Range and bisecting some of the wildest road-accessible country on earth, on our way to the wild and beautiful Maclaren River. Here we will take a jet boat upstream to launch our stable canoes on the above mentioned wilderness canoe trip. The hiking here is also great: marvel at the mountain scenery, wildflowers, and varied bird and wildlife of this beautiful, remote and little-known-spot, rich with wildlife that you will long remember.
Next we’ll drive to the ghost town of Chitina, where a few small planes will meet us for an amazingly scenic flight across the volcanic and glacier-clad Wrangell Mountains into immense Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Our destination? The copper rush village of McCarthy (pop. ~100), everyone’s favorite Alaskan ghost town! We’ll spend three nights at the charming and spectacularly situated Kennicott Glacier Lodge, overlooking the mighty Kennicott Glacier and 16,390′ Mt. Blackburn!
Here we will venture out onto the ice with local mountaineering guide and crampons to explore the blue crevasses, moulins, and the rest of the fascinating glacial geography on a guided glacier trek. For a ~$60 supplemental fee you can upgrade to an introductory ice-climbing course on the glacier. A guided tour of the historic Kennecott Mine, now a National Historic Landmark undergoing Park Service renovation, is another option.
On the next day we can hike up to the abandoned Bonanza Mine for a spectacular view of the 26-mile long Kennicott Glacier, Root Glacier, Mt. Blackburn, and many other Wrangell Mountain peaks. This vigorous hike is one of our favorites anywhere. Less strenuously, you can walk along the glacial moraine or out to the toe of the huge glacier, and watch it as it actually moves, as it deposits the boulders and debris it’s carried from the mountains into the terminal lake that it has formed (headwaters of the Kennicott River). You won’t want to leave McCarthy/Kennicott!
Dropping down out of the mountains to the picturesquely set town of Valdez, we’ll get our first taste of magnificent coastal Alaska. The young and geologically very active Chugach mountain range rises up literally out of the sea, ringing the super-scenic Prince William Sound. Glaciers are all about, some of them spilling their loads of prehistoric ice directly into the sea. Here you can try your hand at sea kayaking, to the face of the dramatic Columbia Glacier, Alaska’s largest tidewater glacier! No previous experience is required for this easy but breathtaking trip which is an included highlight of the tour. Alternatively you can enjoy a spectacular full or half-day cruise (depending on availability) to Columbia Glacier with great marine wildlife viewing opportunities. Fishing charters for salmon or halibut are optional alternative activities.
Finally, Alaska Explorer is climaxed by a scenic ferry crossing of Prince William Sound, from Valdez to Whittier, and following a short hike, a short drive back to Anchorage (or, on some departures, a scenic overflight, depending on the ferry schedule. If neither are available on the scheduled day, we’ll drive back to Anchorage, and you’ll receive a $75 per person refund; sorry, these schedules are late to be announced, are rarely cancelled, and are out of out control).
The ferry trip features amazing scenery, wildlife (sea otters, sea lions, bald eagles, salmon, and if we’re lucky, orcas or humpback whales), and a view of the icebergs to Columbia Glacier, at 400 square miles, one of the largest tidewater glaciers in the state.
With Denali NP, Wrangell-St. Elias NP, and Prince William Sound all included, Alaska Explorer combines three of Alaska’s top highlights. Spectacular scenic beauty, unparalleled wildlife viewing opportunities, superb hiking, and exciting adventure multi-sport opportunities make this most popular trip hard to beat.
Please note that our Alaska Explorer Lodge tour combines very well with our 2+day Kenai Fjords Hike & Cruise (or Fish!) Yurt-based tour if you would like a longer holiday that visits a third national park, stunning Kenai Fjords NP (see just below for details and dates).
3 days/2 nights
(or, when added on to Alaska Explorer or Mountains & Glaciers, it meets those trips on their last days in Portage, and is thus a 2+ day/2 night tour)
2025 Tour Dates & Prices
$750 + local sales tax. Single supplement: $150. Fishing Upgrade Supplement: $50
July 7-9; July 31-August 2; August 16-18; August 30-September 1
KENAI FJORDS HIKE & CRUISE (OR FISH!): NEW for 2025!
After many years of putting together private, post-tour extensions to Kenai Fjords National Park for clients participating in our other trips, and also being unable to accommodate people who don’t have as much time and are just interested in a shorter tour, we’ve finally added this new, 3-day “mini-tour” to stunning and inspirational Kenai Fjords National Park!
This new Kenai Fjords Hike & Cruise (or Fish!) tour can be done on its own, in 3 days/2 nights, in combination with our 6-day Alaska Ranger , or *added on to our 10-day Alaska Explorer or 6-day Mountains & Glaciers tours as a 2 ½-day/2-night extension (it meets up with those tours in Portage, following their final-day Alaska state ferry trips across Prince William Sound, and then carries on to Seward; this means those Alaska Explorer and Mountains & Glaciers clients don’t need to return to and overnight in Anchorage before visiting Kenai Fjords National Park).
This active ‘Multi-Activity/Hiking’ tour is highlighted by one of Alaska’s premier day hikes: up alongside Exit Glacier to the 800-square mile Harding Ice Field, one of the best hikes in the entire National Park system!
The tour climaxes with an absolute Alaska must-see: The definitive and sensational 6-hour Kenai Fjords National Park Glacier, Whale and Wildlife-Viewing Cruise in the dramatic fjordlands of this truly beautiful, mostly marine national park. Watch in awe as Pleistocene-era ice sloughs off the tidewater glacier faces, crashing into fjordal bays. Orcas, humpbacks, and/or other species of migratory or year ‘round whales are usually seen up close, often bubble feeding in large pods for extended periods of time: a sight to behold! Sea otters, sea lions, playful porpoises, and a wonderful variety of birds, including bald eagles, puffins, oyster catchers, murres, cormorants, auklets, and many others are usually seen, and bears and mountain goats are also often sighted.
Alternative to the cruise, fisher folk can do a half-day fishing charter for salmon, rockfish, cod and other species, at the same time and mostly in the same waters as the cruise ($50 upgrade supplement required, plus the purchase of a one-day fishing license; subject to availability; please let us know if you prefer the fishing charter when you register for the trip).
On this tour, we stay in heated, twin-share yurts at a charming and unique, locally owned boutique lodge, some with queen beds and some with two or four twin beds (when four beds, it’s two on each floor of a larger yurt). The yurts have comfortable beds, attractive furnishings, electricity, and wifi. (They are not plumbed however, although the clean and private flush toilets and reservable hot showers are just a few steps away). The Yurt Village includes a kitchen where our guide is able to prepare our famous ‘camp-style gourmet’ meals, multi-course affairs featuring grilled salmon or other proteins, along with delicious salads, side dishes and desserts: the food is a highlight! Vegetarian and vegan fare and most special diets can also be accommodated.
GET UP & GO! Either as a shorter, standalone adventure for those with limited time, or as an add-on to one or more of our longer tours, Kenai Fjords Hike & Cruise (or Fish!) is a beautiful and ‘Active, Informative, Fun!’ adventure in one of Alaska’s most iconic and beautiful national parks. Please join us and see for yourself!
Lodge-based: $4,495 pp ($1,295 Single Supplement): June 22-July 1 (sold out); July 10-19; July 22-31; August 7-16*; August 21-30* (*Fall Colors & Northern Lights!)
Alaska Explorer Tour Description Sheet (.pdf)
Camp & Cabin-based: $1,850 pp: June 9-14; July 26-31; August 11-16*; August 25-30*
Mountains & Glaciers Tour Description Sheet (.pdf)
Camp & Cabin-based: $1,795 pp ($80 Single Supplement): July 18-23; August 3-8*; August 20-25*
(*Fall Colors & Northern Lights!)
Alaska Ranger Tour Description Sheet (.pdf)
Yurt-based: Introductory Tour Price: $750 pp ($150 Single Supplement) + local sales tax: July 7-9; July 31-August 2; August 16-18; August 30-September 1
Kenai Fjords Hike & Cruise (or Fish!) Tour Description Sheet (.pdf)
Lodge-based: $2,795 adults, $1,795 children plus local sales tax: June 14-22 (sold out); June 21-29 (sold out); July 14-22 (sold out); July 27-August 4.
Additional, custom and/or private dates possible, as are private Camp & Cabin-based trips, please inquire.
Alaska Family Explorer Tour Description Sheet (.pdf)
For details and descriptions of combination tours, please see the descriptions of the shorter tours that compose them (by clicking on the underlined tour names).
When you sign up for any of our combination tours you’ll receive a $50 per person discount for each additional tour booked (as indicated below).
*Note: The “+” sign indicates that there may be one or more unguided/free additional layover days in Anchorage between tour segments (no Anchorage lodging or meals included). Take a day or more off, or go on an Anchorage-Area Day Hike or two with us!
8-Day Combination Tours
9+ Day Combination Tours
12+ Day Combination Tours
12 & 13+ Day Combination Tours
14 & 15+ Day Combination Tours
Alaska Tour Selector
Questions? Call Us Toll Free: 1-888-868-4147 or 1-907-245-0795
Email: alaska@getupandgotours.com