Travel Deals – IT was a windy, snow-whipped morning in early winter, and as I stood on a spit of land jutting into Kachemak Bay in the Alaskan town of Homer, I was surrounded by natural wonders. Or so I was told. The Harding Icefield, rugged mountaintops ensconced in interconnected glaciers, was just off to the northeast. Ten miles away were rivers where in spring phalanxes of brown bears stand paw deep in the water, practically posing for photos as they snap up spawning salmon midleap.
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But in Alaska, a vast state covering 663,267 square miles, much of the terrain is completely cut off from roads. By conventional means, a tourist can get only so far — or rather, so near. Standing at the end of the Homer Spit, I’d reached the end of the road: a few feet in front of me, the pavement dropped off into the sea.
Fortunately, there’s another option: take to the air.
While in Alaska to interview people living in remote areas for an article, I learned how vital air travel is in reaching spots inaccessible by road. I also found it to be the best way to see the state’s many stunning sights — a discovery thousands of visitors are making as the proliferation of pilots in Alaska has led to an array of aerial jaunts.
Known as flightseeing, these tours — via small, sturdy aircraft capable of landing in uneven terrain — help open up Alaska to the average traveler. From the air, the rare view of a glacier’s back becomes democratic, no longer reserved for extreme sports enthusiasts who can clamber up its icy sides. Once on the ground, reclusive animals come into focus, and hard-to-reach fishing streams are just steps away.
“You’ve only got five highways,” said Norm Lagasse, director of the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum, across a state more than twice the size of Texas. North of Anchorage and Fairbanks, for example, with the exception of dogsleds, terrain is accessible mostly by aircraft, Mr. Lagasse said. “There’s no railroad, there’s no highway, there’s just no transportation infrastructure that is based on the ground,” he added.
Accordingly, Alaska has about one registered pilot for every 58 residents, and 14 times as many airplanes per capita as the rest of the United States, according to online information collected by the state’s Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Mr. Lagasse said pioneer pilots took their first flights over the countryside in 1913.
Cruise ships also claim to provide unique access to Alaska, but the view from the deck reveals few of the details — no bird’s-eye view of the creatures that wander along the peaks, like woolly white Dall sheep and rams almost as big as donkeys. And though by ship you can float close to a mountain’s foot, you can’t see the jewels hidden in its crags: valley lakes turned Technicolor, tinged a glowing green from “rock flour,” the ground-up minerals that pour from the meltwater of a glacier and hang suspended in the lake.
There are 304 commercial airline operators in the state, according to Kathie Anderson of the Alaska Air Carriers Association, which advocates for the local airline industry. They include lodge owners who fly guests to their remote guesthouses, guides who lead bear hunting treks, and small commuter airlines.
The best viewing, I was told, was in spring, when you can pinpoint bears below you and land to snap their picture. Zack Tappan, chief pilot at Homer Air, flies over and around the smokestacks of as many as four active volcanoes on trips to bear breeding grounds. After landing on the shore across Kachemak Bay from Homer, Mr. Tappan leads visitors to within 100 yards of placid brown bear. “I wouldn’t say they have a relationship with us, but they’ve seen us enough that they understand what we’re about,” he said.
BUT even in winter you can personally view those sequestered green lakes as I did, flightseeing via Alaska’s answer to the tour bus: a Piper Navajo double-engine plane buzzing through Lake Clark Pass. Setting out from Anchorage toward the town of Port Alsworth, you see Alaska distilled, said Glen Alsworth Jr., who runs Lake Clark Air and along with his father is something of a local aeronautical legend. “You see the oil derricks and the industrial part of Alaska,” he said, “and you get into the transitioning part of the wilderness, where it’s all still being glacier-carved.”