It took 9 years for me to get back to Alaska, but it made for an epic summer flying adventure. Here's the story of my second journey to Alaska, with a focus on the aviation aspects of the trip.
Prologue
July 1-5: San Diego to Dawson City
July 6-10: Dawson City to Nome
July 11-15: Wildman Lodge and Kodiak
July 16-21: King Salmon and Brooks Lodge
July 22-23: Anchorage to Gustavus (Glacier Bay)
July 24-29: Skagway to San Diego
Logbook
Winning the lottery
The cornerstone of the trip, a visit to Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, set the date a year and a half in advance. Made famous by Thomas Mangelsen's iconic 1988 photo Catch of the Day, Brooks Falls is known for its high concentration of bears during salmon spawning season. The National Park Service now operates a BearCam there during the summer months. Options for visiting include day trips flying from Anchorage or King Salmon, or staying at the campground or lodge at Brooks Camp.
Brooks Lodge consists of only 16 rooms with bunks for 4. Due to its popularity, a lottery is held each December for the right to book rooms for the summer a year and a half out. There's no bargaining for dates. On the lottery application, you provide a rank ordered list of dates you are willing to accept, limited to a maximum stay of 3 nights during the peak months of July and September. If your number comes up and there's availability among your listed dates, that's what you get. Otherwise, you get put on a wait list. The notification period runs through the month of January and into early February.
The day after Christmas 2024, I duly filled out my lottery application. Peak season for the salmon run at the falls is usually mid-July, so I listed the entire middle week as primary, with the week before and after as secondary options. I clicked submit on the web form and got a simple "Thank you for entering" page. There was no email confirmation. Hmm... I hope it worked...
Weeks pass. I hear nothing. Maybe the form got lost or didn't actually submit? Then one day in late January I get an email "Congratulations for having your number draw [sic] in the Brooks Lodge Lottery!" I scored 3 nights starting July 18, in the middle of what should be peak season!
I wondered if I got lucky or if the lottery was a marketing ploy, and found online that there were applicants being told they were number 7500+ on the waitlist. Ok, probably not just a ploy.
I wouldn't have space in the plane, and they wouldn't have the time to fly with me, but I offered a few friends that if they could get themselves there, the bunks were available on me. Not surprisingly, they all accepted.
Additional plans
I felt like I tried to squeeze too much into my first trip to Alaska - Barrow, Fairbanks, Valdez, Denali, Homer, and Juneau all in about 3 weeks. Not wanting to make the same mistake this time, I figured I'd allow for 4 main attractions over the course of the 4 week trip:
A consideration for my itinerary was that in the event of a weather or mechanical issue, I could still get myself to King Salmon in time for the Brooks Lodge portion of the trip. One of the lottery rules is that the winner must be in the party - not surprisingly, the reservation may not be transferred. I didn't want to test that and leave my friends in the lurch if I got stranded out somewhere. With that in mind, I planned to get to King Salmon a couple days ahead of time. I also found that even my most remote stop at Wales had a once daily flight to Nome, should the need arise.
To get to Alaska, I settled on a similar routing as my previous trip - the "Trench Route" through Canada on the way up, and Ketchikan-Bellingham along the coast on the way back.
Itinerary
The final itinerary I drew up looked like this:
Some of the bookings were made as late as June, but I had lodgings lined up at each stop before departure. That turned out to be helpful as I had limited connectivity for much of the trip, so one less thing to have to do when I was connected.