Noel Dechambeau
Former Alaska Marketing Director for Holland America Line

Having worked in, around, and for Alaska for over 20 years now, one of the questions that I am inevitably asked about the Great Land is “ When is the best time to travel?” The inquirer is really asking a couple of questions at the same time, though he or she may not know this.

First off, by “best time” the visitor means; “when is it the best time of during the summer season to travel?” They assume summer because that is the only time year they would image any one could travel through what they perceived is a land that is locked tight with ice and snow. Visions of visitors completely frozen the minute they step off of an aircraft play out wildly in their minds.

This is of course not true, particularly for places like Southeast Alaska where the climate is more akin to the Pacific Northwest than to the Arctic. However, I know what they mean. Fairbanks is the only place I have ever lived that the local grocery chain held frozen vegetable sidewalk sales.

The second part of their unasked question is one that is a little harder to explain. They want to know what month is the best time to travel to Alaska to ensure the best weather. This is because they have made the mistaken assumption that the Great Land is as homogenous a place as say a Florida or New England.

It isn’t.

Alaska is about 1/5 the size of the rest of the United States. It has more coastline than the lower 48, more lakes than Minnesota, more heartland than Kansas and more big sky than Montana. In another words, because of the size of Alaska, there are as many diverse weather conditions as there is in the rest of the United States.

Case in point. It doesn’t matter if you travel to Ketchikan, Alaska’s “First City” in May, June, July, August or September…you will be rained on. Guaranteed. Sunshine is so rare in this gateway to the rest of Alaska that the schools will actually let children out for a “Sun” day. Ketchikan sits next to the Tongass National Forest, the United States largest National Forest and one of the world’s largest rain forests. Ketchikan will have as much as sixteen feet of rain in any given year.

On the other hand, there is Fort Yukon in the Interior of Alaska. Average rainfall in this bush community less than an hour’s flight north of Fairbanks is somewhere below 29 inches a year. Average summer temperatures hover in the 80’s. The record for the State was set here at 100 F. Because of the Midnight Sun (Fort Yukon is north of the Arctic Circle) it is normal to have summer days that are blistering hot well past 11:00 at night.

So given that the State is huge and that weather is as diverse as it can be, what is the answer to the question?

Well…it depends.

Before you throw this piece of paper away in frustration let me explain.

Lets assume that you are going to travel Southeast Alaska by cruise ship and the Southcentral and the Interior by dome railcars and motorcoaches. Southeast Alaska incorporates the ports of Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Haines, Icy Point and so on. Southcentral Alaska is where Anchorage, Alyeska and the Kenai Peninsula are located. The Interior encompasses Fairbanks, Tok, and just over the boarder… Dawson, Beaver Creek and Whitehorse.

For Southeast Alaska, the month you travel in the summer matters very little. The temperature will be mild, not unlike a early fall in New England. It can get hot in mid-summer but that is unusual. The thing you notice more is the length of time the sun is up. In May, June and July, the sun is hanging in the sky well past 10:00 pm.

In Southcentral Alaska you start to notice differences in the months. This is very much more pronounced in the Interior.

April is known as “breakup”. This is when the rivers melt, the snow recedes back into the mountains and the leaves pop open on the willows and birch. What is amazing is how fast this all happens. I remember one day it was snowing in Fairbanks and the next we had daffodils coming up in our garden.

Why? Midnight Sun. Summer Solstice is June 21. But by May there is almost continuous daylight. So…flowers literally bloom overnight. A thing called Sun Light minutes measures the growing season in the Interior. It turns out that because of the continuous sunlight, Alaska’s interior has a longer growing season than the rest of the US. Image having a spring day in your part of the country that is twice as long as you normally experience. That is a May day in Alaska.

I was told not to fertilize my lawn by wise Fairbanks residents. I didn’t listen. During May and June my first year I had to mow my lawn every other day.

June is the height of this daylight. About mid-June most of the wildflowers throughout the Great Land have reached their maturity and are starting to seed. However, the leaves on all of the trees are a wonderful emerald green. It is the green of a new time. I am not sure how else to describe it.

July, the most popular time to travel in Alaska ensures one that you will have fair skies and hot days. It has never been my personal favorite time to travel through the Great Land. Though the weather will certainly be clear, it will also be hot. The chances of smoke from distant forest fires are greatly increased. A couple of million acres of bush burn every year in the state, usually started by lightening. There is nothing bad about this. It is Mother Nature’s way of refreshing the land. Nor are any visitors ever in danger. However, the smoke can be irritating. Coupled with hot days this may be the reason for my less than enthusiastic endorsement of traveling in July.

August really holds two seasons. There are the “dog days of summer” that most of the rest of the nation experiences; hot, at times muggy. Then, around the middle of the month, Mother Nature decides to redecorate.

It begins with the Fireweed. These long red stocks of flowers are one of the only blossoms that stay through out the summer. The blossoms travel from the bottom of the stock up to the very top by late August.

Then the low brush cranberry and heather begin to turn from a dull green to a rusty red. You glance early signs of this in Denali National Park, where the alpine tundra sitting at a higher elevation turns the soonest.

By late August Alaska is magical. The night has returned in the Interior. By 9:00 pm there is darkness, giving the guests the opportunity to see the Aurora Borealis; the Northern Lights. Most guests need it pointed out to them. Though the Northern Lights are present most evenings throughout the year, light pollution and the Midnight Sun blind one to the very delicate, wispy cloud looking aurora.

Then the leaves turn.

I know that New England has amazing fall colors. Alaska’s “fall” can’t compete in the diversity that sugar maples and other species bring to the canopy.

But no other region can beat Alaska in the last weeks of August and the first couple weeks of September for the sheer magnitude of golden color. Miles and miles of birch, alder, maple and willow change to a gold that is breathtaking. If Alaska was explored for the gold in its soil, it is loved for the gold in its hills and valleys during this special time of year.

Snow begins to fall in the higher elevations. We Alaskans call it “Termination Dust” because it marks the beginning of the end of summer. The animals that were often hidden in the middle of the summer to escape the heat of the day can now be seen with their lush winter coats.

October marks the end. The first big storm is usually around the middle of the month. It is then that the land is covered and hidden.

I am sure that it is no surprised to the reader that I favor the end of the season to travel to Alaska. After all these years I try never to miss the colors. The days are warm but not too much so. The death grip of winter is a long way off. Yet the nights are crisp with open skies, dancing northern lights and thousands of stars. The majority of the State’s visitors have gone home and the land feels open and some how more personal.

Robert Service the famous poet wrote these words about the North in his poem “The Spell of the Yukon”

“There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old:
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big broad land ‘way up yonder,
It’s the forest where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.”


And that is how I feel.