Icy Strait Point cruise port guide
Alaska · from AlaskaThings, the offline iPhone guide
Where ships dock
Icy Strait Point pier
A private resort port built by the Huna Tlingit — everything is walkable or on the free gondola/shuttle. Hoonah village is 1.5 mi east (shuttle or a flat walk).
Typically 7 AM – 4 PM
All-aboard is in ship time. Check the daily programme and be back at the gangway 30 minutes early.
Top places near the pier
Walking times come from the app: straight-line distance plus 30% for streets, at an easy 4.5 km/h. Places further than an hour on foot show the distance instead.
Icy Strait Point
A cruise port built and owned by the Huna Tlingit on the site of a 1912 salmon cannery — cannery museum, restaurants, a gondola up Hoonah Mountain, the world's longest zipline, and whale watching from the pier.
ZipRider at Icy Strait Point
A 5,330-foot zipline dropping 1,300 feet off Hoonah Mountain at 60 mph, six riders side by side — 90 seconds, and a summit gondola ride to get there.
Spasski River Valley Bear Viewing
Boardwalks and platforms over a salmon stream in the forest behind Hoonah where coastal brown bears fish in July and August.
More places within walking distance
Also in AlaskaThings, from its OpenStreetMap listings.
- Orca Statue
Ready-made port days in AlaskaThings
Each is a timed plan in the app, starting and ending at the ship.
- Icy Strait Point Day
The zipline, the bears, the whales — all run by the Huna Tlingit
Getting around: what the app tells you
- Book direct, not through the ship
- The same whale boat, train or floatplane typically costs 30–60% less on the operator's own website than in the ship's excursion catalog. The ship's price buys one thing: the guarantee it will wait. In port towns this small, that's rarely worth the difference.
- Check whose clock you're on
- Ships often stay on Pacific time while Alaska runs an hour behind. Your phone switches; the ship's clocks don't. Set a manual alarm in ship time for all-aboard.
- Ask for the return guarantee
- Most Juneau whale-watch and glacier operators, and the White Pass railroad, promise to have you back before all-aboard or cover your way to the next port. If the operator offers it, the ship's markup buys nothing.
- The jewelry strip is not local
- The same chains fill the storefronts by the dock in every port and pay the cruise lines for the 'recommended store' map. Buy Native art at the heritage centers with the Silver Hand seal, and anything else a block or two back from the pier.
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Other AlaskaThings ports
Ketchikan · Juneau · Skagway · Sitka · Haines · Seward · Whittier · Anchorage · Victoria, BC · Wrangell · Petersburg · Valdez · Klawock · Kodiak