Trip
Information
Date: TBA
Duration: 5
days (12 total including the Dalton Highway Tour)
Leader: Dan
Wetzel
Limit: 15
people
Cost*: TBA
From: Fairbanks,
tour ends in Anchorage, Alaska
Featured
Birds and Mammals:
•
Red-faced Cormorant
•
Parakeet Auklet
•
Horned Puffin
•
Sea Otter
•
Humpback and Orca Whale
•
Mountain Goat
Trip
Summary
• Weather
from warm to cold, sunny to rain, calm to wind.
• Great breeding bird photography
• Magnificent scenery, exceptional grandeur and wildness
• Several highly sought-after birds
• Wonderful mammals including Sea Otter, Humpback Whale, Orca
and Mountain Goat
• Begins and ends in Anchorage
• Includes Fjords Park cruise for a seabird bonanza
• Price includes the flight Fairbanks to Anchorage
• Lunches included throughout
* deposits
on this tour are non-refundable and payments are 100% non-refundable
90 days or less before departure
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The
Kenai encompasses the Kenai Fjords Park, Maritime Wildlife Refuge and
Chugach Forest with open ocean, spruce-hemlock forests, glacial fjords,
rocky beaches and seacliffs. The bonanza of seabirds and coastal forest
species differ  greatly from those found at Nome and along the Dalton
Highway. The wildlife of the Kenai Fjords Park include whales, sea otters,
dolphins, mountain goats and black bear.
See the detailed itinerary
below.
Click on the links
for a checklist of birds from the most recent Kenai
tour.
This
tour can only be taken in combination with our Dalton
Highway tour.
Click
here to download a registration form
Photos:
Renee Franken, Dan Wetzel
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Itinerary
Day
1 -
End of the Dalton Highway Tour
The Dalton Highway tour ends midday in Fairbanks. Those continuing
on this tour will spend the afternoon around Fairbanks. Night in Fairbanks.
Day
2 – Arrival
in Anchorage
Our birding adventures on the Kenai Peninsula begin with an early morning
flight from Fairbanks to Anchorage. The Kenai is one of Alaska’s
most revered and ecologically rich regions. At the airport, we’ll
load the vans for the three-hour drive to Seward that we stretch into
a full day so we don’t miss a thing.
We visit the Alaska Coastal Wildlife Sanctuary bordering Turnagain
Arm, which was named by English Captain James Cook in 1778. Beyond,
is Beluga Point, a 4,000-year old Alutiiq Eskimo hunting site, where
we look for Beluga whales, Dall sheep, and mountain goats. At times,
powerful 38-foot bore tides, sweep through Turnagain Arm. Golden-crowned
Sparrows sing “three blind mice” from alder bushes clinging
to the rocky shores, while overhead Golden Eagles catch thermals rising
from the same rocky shores.
Farther up Turnagain Arm we enter the Portage River Valley, where glaciers
are fed from the 1,500-square-mile Harding Ice Field. At the Portage
Glacier Visitor Center, innovative exhibits and an award-winning 20-minute
movie, Voice of Ice, explain this glacial scoured landscape. Outside
the center, alder thickets host sooty Fox Sparrow, gabby Magpie and
handsome Steller’s Jay.
We continue on to the Kenai Mountains and over the alpine of Turnagain
Pass. At Tern Lake we’ll search for – Terns - Common Loons
and mountain goats nursing their kids on the slopes above. As we near
Seward, we stop to hike along a cool, closed-canopy forest trail beside
a turbulent Ptarmigan Creek. Over the roar of the creek, we listen
for Townsend’s Warbler and Varied Thrush. Harlequin Duck and
Common Mergansers nest along the creek.
We arrive in Seward, twice an all-American city, for two nights at
the elegantly rustic Seward Windsong Lodge nestled in the quiet Chugach
National Forest, on the bank of the Resurrection River as it races
seaward from the Harding Ice Field.
Day 3 - Kenai Fjords wildlife cruise – seabirds, sea
otters, whales and waves
Up early before our wildlife cruise, we’ll take a brief foray
into the nearby thick spruce forests looking for new passerines far
from the Yukon. After breakfast we’ll head for the boat harbor,
where a specially designed ocean wildlife-viewing vessel takes us deep
into the Kenai Fjords National Park and Maritime Wildlife Refuge -
one of your best days in Alaska. We’ll search the sea cliffs
and rookeries for thousands of nesting seabirds such as Red-faced Cormorant,
Tufted Puffin, Rhinoceros Auklets and Marbled Murrelet. Bald Eagles
perch by their nests in giant Sitka Spruce trees. Mountain Goats easily
scale rugged slopes, while Sea Otters lazily float belly-side up. “Thar
she blows” calls the keen observer who spots the first breaching
Humpback Whale. Nearby the Holgate’s tidewater glacier “calves” into
the sea leaving a thick wave of ice thousands of years old from the
Ice Age mixing with the North Pacific Ocean.
Day 4 – Science in the SeaLab and hiking in the forest
Today, we trade our sea-legs for our hiking boots for a full day in
and around Seward. We’ll search the heavy spruce forest along
the Exit Glacier road and up the Resurrection River Trail for Hermit
Thrush, Red Crossbill, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Golden-crowned Kinglet,
Brown Creeper and others. Later, we’ll venture farther out of
town to other forest service trails for Townsend’s Warbler and
Spruce Grouse.
Glaciers have long attracted keen interest from visitors and sourdoughs
alike. The Exit Glacier is the best opportunity in Alaska for a first-hand
look at the glacially scoured landscape retreating glaciers leave behind.
You can hike the trail of your choice – nearby easy, medium or
high above – at your pace, along the shoulder of just one of
Alaska’s 100,000 glaciers.
Seward is a special coastal community. Despite growth similar to the
rest of Alaska it has retained much of its original charm and character.
Only today, it offers visitors more to do with the Alaska SeaLife Center,
Seward Museum and Kenai Fjords National Park Visitor Center. The Alaska
SeaLife Center is a world-class marine research and rehabilitation
facility, where we join marine biologists, ornithologists and oceanographers
as they explain their scientific inquiries. The SeaLife Center is downtown
Seward, near some fun and varied art, curio and gift shops.
Your last night at the Windsong Lodge, listening to Swainson’s
Thrush opera of the forest.
Day 5 – a fond farewell to Alaska
Our all-Alaskan wilderness birding adventure along the Dalton Highway
and the Kenai Peninsula, which began 1,500 miles north as the raven
flies, comes to a conclusion. We leave Seward in the morning for a
direct return to Anchorage. From the one-foot tides against the tundra
shore of the Arctic Ocean, to the 38-foot tides shadowed by tidewater
glaciers and old-growth forests, together, we have crossed the major
ecosystems of Alaska: the best habitats for the best birds.
What to expect
The tour
begins in Fairbanks at the conclusion of the Dalton Highway tour,
followed the next day by a drive along the incredibly scenic127-mile
Seward
Highway
linking
Anchorage
with
Seward . Designated an All-American Highway, a truly spectacular
drive. One full day on Alaska’s best wildlife and birding cruise
in the Kenai Fjords National Park to see up to 10 species of alcids,
Red-faced
Cormorants, petrels and shearwaters, plus Sea Otters and whales and
dolphins. Expect warm to cold weather, so participants should layer
their clothing as conditions can
change quickly while we are in the field. A thorough and useful pre-departure
packet of clothing and equipment, contact information, etc. will
be sent upon final payment.
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