Alaska and Russian Far East in Luxury

Embark and set sail

Kenai Fjords National Park’s famous Holgate Glacier is a spectacularly active river of ice. The surrounding glaciated landscape paints a dramatic portrait of the rugged mountains in contrast to the cold blue ice of the glacier.  Periodically loud cannon-like blasts emanate from the glacier, and some are accompanied by calving events off the ice front.  

The Chiswell Islands are part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Small bays, inlets and sea cliffs are populated by innumerable seabirds including black-legged kittiwakes, pelagic cormorants, horned and tufted puffins, as wells as guillemots, auklets and murrelets.  

Katmai National Park is known for its otherworldly landscape, including 15 active volcanoes. In Kukak Bay it is possible to view the abundant wildlife and raw beauty of this magnificent scenery. Kukak Bay is well known for its concentration of bears and the salmon on which they feed, and this is one of the prime areas in this region for bear viewing.

Geographic Harbor is at the head of Amalik Bay in the Katmai National Park. Bears can be spotted digging for clams on the low tide, munching on berries, roots and grasses ashore or, most famously, fishing for salmon in the rapids of clear mountain streams. The waters around the harbour are also known to be fishing grounds for seals, otters, countless seabirds, and whales. .

This stunning and nearly uninhabited archipelago is home to some of the largest populations of native and undisturbed wildlife in the United States. There are 2.5 million birds here, almost half the breeding seabirds of the Alaska Peninsula. Large numbers of seabirds including ancient murrelets, parakeet auklets, horned puffins, northern fulmars and jaegers (skuas), and over a million guillemots are on hand here. The surrounding sea is home to sea otters, sea lions, seals, Dall’s porpoises, Pacific white-sided dolphins and whales.

Chignik is a fishing village on the Alaskan Peninsula and home for just under 100 year-round inhabitants. Most of the houses in the community are connected by a boardwalk - this is a remote outpost at the doorstep of the Aleutian Island chain and offers up a true taste of Alaskan outback life.

The Aleutian island of Unga holds an ancient petrified wood forest and a more recent ghost town that was the site of a small gold rush in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The village was eventually abandoned in the 1960’s and many of the houses have collapsed and are overgrown with brilliant fuchsia fireweed wildflowers. Great horned owls nest near the church and in the bay kittiwakes, double crested and pelagic cormorants, common murres and tufted puffins can be seen. .

The crumpled peaks and tranquil scenery of Dutch Harbor belies its history as one of the few places on American soil to have been directly attacked by the Japanese, who bombed the US military base here during the Second World War. Walk the volcanic, green landscapes, and look out for wildlife, like bald eagles and marine mammals just offshore.

Enjoy on board facilities and watch for wildlife from deck.

Russian traders led by Vitus Bering in the mid-1700s were some of the first non-native explorers to visit Kiska Harbor. The Japanese occupied the island during WWII and relics of war have been left behind in the harbor including a Japanese two-man submarine. The occupying force of 6,000 soldiers also left a Shinto shrine behind whose remains can still be visited today. Ashore there are ptarmigans, Lapland longspurs and bald eagles. The cliffs of Sirius Point are home to least and crested auklets, peregrine falcons and Laysan and black-footed albatrosses. 

On a world map Attu Island marks the westernmost point of the United States. It is also the site of the only WWII battle fought on North American soil. Today the island is an ornithologist’s paradise visited by an array of birds migrating through as they come or go to Asia with the seasons - Peregrine falcons, Lapland longspur and Aleutian Canada geese can be seen.

Crossing the dateline and losing a day

Our entry into Russian territory. This is a frontier town with a backdrop of volcanoes and a very Russian feel.

South of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy is the 15 km long Ruskaya Bay.  A river, used as a source of freshwater in former times, meanders through the valley and with our Zodiacs we will have to see how far we can explore, or if we walk to the small stands of trees found there.

Three small islands form Utashud and seem to be the remnants of a former volcano raising 80m out of Vestinik Bay. Although the island is deprived of forest, fragments of giant petrified trees have been found on its shores. Utashud is one of the richest islands on the southeastern side of Kamchatka in terms of wildlife. The island is notable for its population of sea otters, Steller’s sea eagles, brown bears, harbour seals, spotted seals, grey whales and at least 10 species of seabirds islands.

The near-perfect cone of Alaid volcano dominates Atlasova Island with its 2000m peak. It is the highest volcano in the Kuril Islands and over time generated the black lava beaches and the eroding Taketomi tufa limestone cone near the landing site. At one time a women’s prison, or gulag, was located on Atlasova. The women, many of them political prisoners during the Soviet rule, were sent here to raise foxes for fur. Peregrine falcons can sometimes be spotted flying above the beach, while buzzards, Eurasian wigeons, and tufted ducks have all been observed on the island.  

Matua is home to one of the Kuril’s most active volcanoes, with more than 14 documented eruptions in the past 250 years. Singing Eurasian bullfinches, Siberian rubythroats, ravens, eye-browed thrushes and some very active Peregrine falcons are among the birds that can be spotted from the upper plateau of Matua either along dirt roads, or in dense thickets of alders. Matua was a Japanese military base during WWII. The Japanese inhabitants captured geothermal heat from the volcano to keep the runway open during winter. The newest building on uninhabited Matua is a tiny Russian Orthodox Church with room for four or five people inside.

Yankicha is distinct in having at its centre a caldera that is accessible by small boat only during high tide. Inside this extraordinary lagoon are fumaroles and hot springs. Fortunate visitors may encounter an Arctic fox or the rare whiskered auklet. Ashore it is also possible to see Arctic warblers and Middendorff’s grasshopper warblers. From the sea, the number of auklets around the island is truly incredible.

The oftentimes fog-shrouded coasts of Chirpoy Island teem with a profusion of wildlife including Steller sea lions, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, puffins and auklets. Whales, and specifically orcas, have also been seen around Chirpoy. The dramatic volcanic nature of the island is apparent in the subtly shaded layers of sediment flanking the sides of the active Snou volcano.

Tyuleniy means “seal” in Russian and during the summer months, tens of thousands of seals and Steller's sea lions haul ashore here during the breeding season and many thousands of young black pups all jostle for space on the crowded beaches that flank the small rocky island. Alongside the marine mammals, black-legged kittiwakes, slaty-backed gulls, tufted puffins, common murres and pelagic cormorants summer on the busy shores in the thousands.

Korsakov is used as a technical stop for ships clearing in and out of Russia. In addition to being a port of call for these formalities, the city was once home to an Ainu fishing village frequented by regional traders and early Russian expeditions.  

Arrive and disembark