Summer in Southern Alaska is Full of Surprises

A week of natural wonders and onboard indulgence proves summer is a time of plenty in southern Alaska. 

Flame the humpback whale’s offspring each have a uniquely patterned fluke and a fiery name: Spark, Ember, Smoke, Cinder and Sizzle. I watch on as the creatures are doused by the frigid waters near Juneau, in southern Alaska, where the summer feast is underway.

Gliding through the channels on a whale-watching excursion on day four of Silversea’s seven-day itinerary from Vancouver, Canada to Seward, Alaska, we’re alerted to their presence by dorsal fins and the periodic exhalations spouting from powerful underwater fountains. Eyes adjusted, I see that this placid strait is in fact filled with heirs to Flame, Juneau’s most prodigious whale. The spirited youngsters breach, smash and sashay before sinking back into their pantry. “The whales eat here for six months – most of them spend the rest of the year in Hawaii, some go to Mexico,” says guide Ainsley Meyer. “I’d love to spend the winter in Hawaii and the summer in Alaska!”

The American state’s golden season is indeed exalted. Snow shellacs the mountain tops while fluorescent-pink fireweed colours the foothills; as the season wanes, the blooms will turn to cotton – much like the clouds, which are dour and fuse with the river of ice that is Herbert Glacier. “The most exciting thing we’re going to see here today is the sun,” says Meyer.

Steller sea lions are longing for the same thing, it seems. The “orca sausages” flop on the Faust Rock channel marker, raise rheumy eyes as we pass by and rearrange their lumpen bodies. Mercifully, no predators appear; an orca sausage sizzle would upend my equilibrium, which I reset wallowing with my sister in the infinity-edge whirlpool on the sundeck of our ship, the 728-passenger Silver Nova.

Coincidentally, two other sisters join us here as we set sail for Seward. Such encounters become commonplace: we meet sisters from Kansas who share our last name, sisters from North Carolina and sisters from Virginia who adopt us into their warm-hearted family for rambunctious trivia tournaments in the Panorama Lounge. The convivial space transforms into party central once the trivia is over and we hit the dance floor.

On day three in Ketchikan, located on Revillagigedo Island at the entrance to the Inside Passage, we meet Australian siblings Jnel and Lincon Hauser. Like those visiting whales, their family began spending summers in “the salmon capital of the world” in the mid-1980s. Their origin? The world’s opal-mining capital, Coober Pedy.

“Dad came up here on a fishing trip and someone told him this was going to be the cruise-ship mecca and boy were they right,” says Jnel in a hybrid Aussie-American twang. The pair’s father opened an opal shop on Creek Street in the town’s historic district. “It’s all up on pilings and the water flows underneath – it’s the main salmon-spawning creek here in Ketchikan,” she says.

The shop changed hands when the Hauser parents retired to South Australia; Jnel and Lincon set down permanent roots in their childhood summer playground. Now Lincon’s accent jingles through Blasphemous Bill’s, the Main Street emporium he owns with wife, Glory. Among the local products he sells are Ketchikan’s signature fare, including salmonberry jelly, smoked sockeye and Taku dry seafood rubs that promise a “sweet, hot and smoky” finish.

We arrive at the shop already stuffed with salmon brioche doughnuts (no sprinkles) from Ketchikan’s Jellyfish Donuts and as we waddle back to port, I notice Silver Nova is dwarfed by neighbouring ships. Though compact from afar, it expands miraculously within: vaulted public spaces filled with eye-catching artworks, nine dining venues and a plenitude of bars. So canny is the design, a bath and small dressing room are accommodated in our suite on deck nine. Built in 2023, it’s the first luxury cruise vessel to be powered by liquefied natural gas.

We’re ascending in the glass lift when the captain weighs anchor. Ketchikan’s Tlingit totem poles and colourful clapboard dwellings dissolve behind the ships that remain docked at port. Only the Tongass National Forest looms above this tableau; the world’s largest contiguous temperate rainforest, it cloaks islands and mainland, vaulting across fjords and glaciers on its almost seven-million-hectare sprawl.

The misty scene glides behind us in the soft evening light as we drink Alaskan gin and maple syrup cocktails with yet another group of siblings – this time from Houston – at SALT Chef’s Table. Cooking classes are also held here as part of Silversea’s SALT (Sea and Land Taste) culinary enrichment program, which is making its Alaska debut.

“Chef’s Table is about this beautiful place, this beautiful view – although it’s a bit foggy today,” says sous chef Samuel De Oliveira.

Smoke rises from the mason jars in which Alaskan salmon sashimi rests on beds of ice. From our seats at the marble counter we watch De Oliveira preparing our dégustation: Pacific spot prawns, dungeness crab, braised reindeer tart with bone marrow crumb. He scatters spruce-tip salt on the venison carpaccio. “It’s something very unique here in Alaska. Spruce tip is a herb, very rich in vitamin C.” To finish it’s baked Alaska, the parcel of brûléed meringue plump with saskatoon berry ice-cream.

By the time we reach Sitka we’ve eaten so well we’re beginning to resemble those steller sea lions. But as we’re sweating post-massage in the Otium Spa’s sauna, my sister spies a humpback through the floor-to-ceiling windows. We pull on robes, race to our suite and settle on the balcony. Our butler, David Chege – ever intuitive to our needs – delivers a well-timed bottle of bubbly. The shuttle boat to Sitka glides back and forth below; flying fish skate beside the bow. We ought to go ashore and explore the town where Russia ceded Alaska to the United States in 1867. But the clouds are lifting, the champagne is fizzing and we’re staying put.

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