Alaska Wildlife Guide Blog

While the spring daffodils are flowering in the southern states, Alaskans are still wondering when spring is going to arrive as we are still buried under a lot of snow, with a little more expected this weekend.

This winter, the interior of Alaska saw record amounts of snow. In fact, the day after Christmas, we had a massive blizzard that caused power outages across the region.  Some people were without power for up to a week, including our business which had no power due to a damaged power box and a broken pole.  It seems like the snow removal business is very busy this year but we are running out of places to put it!  It will certainly be an interesting time when it all melts.

Winter 2021/2022 has been a very busy season though, and also a tough one.  Unfortunately, some tours had to be cancelled due to hazardous weather conditions.  The safety of our guests is paramount and a lot of consideration and thought goes into the decision to ultimately cancel a tour.  When taking snow machines out in extreme cold, there is a risk of frost bite and hypothermia.  These are conditions we are sure our guests would not wish to succumb to.  When we have to cancel tours, it is usually when temperatures or wind chill factors are as less than -40°F which again, are hazardous, especially in the event of a flat tire, accident or vehicle break down.  On some occasions blizzards have created zero visibility, again creating very hazardous driving conditions for our guides and our customers.  Safety of our guests has always been and is our main priority.

We understand that cancelling tours results in a major inconvenience to people’s travel plans and can be very disappointing for some, especially those who have planned for a long time to make their trip to Alaska, however, we do not make these decisions lightly and we thank our guests for their understanding.  Cancellations are costly to our business both in reputation and income, but we would rather everyone be safe than not.  If you are planning a trip to Alaska and taking a few tours, we recommend taking out travel insurance that covers cancellations.

Also throughout the winter seas, we strove to ensure that our vans were sanitized and cleaned to a standard that complied with the CDC’s guidelines for managing Coronavirus.  We are happy to say that there were no reports of any positive cases from any of our guests who took tours with us.

On a lighter note, the weather is warming up and we are expecting the snow to soon disappear which will be nice. The landscape has been blanketed in white since mid to late September and the birch trees are starting to bud already so it will be nice to see some color.

As our winter season come to an end, we will be kicking off the summer tour season with our day tours starting at the end of April/beginning of May.  We are currently finalizing our winter tour schedule for 2022/2023 and all our winter activities and aurora viewing tours should soon be available to book into next year already.

Let’s hope when the snow melts we won’t be needing to run boat tours!