Whittier cruise port guide
Alaska · from AlaskaThings, the offline iPhone guide
Where ships dock
Whittier Cruise Terminal
Turnaround port, one street long. Everything is within 10 minutes on foot; the only way out is the one-lane tunnel (opens on the half hour each direction) to Portage and Anchorage.
Turnaround day: arrive early, sail ~8:30 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.
26 Glacier Cruise
Phillips' high-speed catamaran from Whittier harbor through Prince William Sound — 26 named glaciers in five hours, calving ice, seals on the floes, and lunch on board.
Jessica Spengler · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons Begich Towers
The 14-storey Cold War Army building where almost all of Whittier's 250 residents live — with the school, the post office, the clinic and the church inside.
Portage Glacier & Begich, Boggs Visitor Center
A lake-front visitor center on the road between Whittier and Anchorage, with a one-hour boat trip across Portage Lake to the glacier's face.
Alaska Region U.S. Fish & Wildlife S… · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center
A 200-acre refuge for orphaned and injured Alaskan animals on the Turnagain Arm road — bears, moose, musk oxen, wood bison, caribou and eagles, seen from a driving/walking loop.
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More places within walking distance
Also in AlaskaThings, from its OpenStreetMap listings.
- Paddlers' Realm
- Horsetail Falls Hiking Trail
- Whittier Historical Museum
- Day Use Area
- Buckner Building
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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Ketchikan · Juneau · Skagway · Sitka · Icy Strait Point · Haines · Seward · Anchorage · Victoria, BC · Wrangell · Petersburg · Valdez · Klawock · Kodiak