Water rushing into Glacier Bay up ahead. The pristine white peaks of Mount Fairweather to the west. The expanse of the Juneau Icefield to the east. As you’re rushing down the Icy Strait Point’s Ziprider, the pristine wilderness surrounding you will more than likely take your breath away. But you’ll want to experience it again and again.
With six 5,330 feet ziplines dropping 1,330 feet, the Icy Strait Point is home to the world’s largest ZipRider. The zipline quickly accelerates to over 60 miles per hour as you soar 300 feet above the rainforest below.
Icy Strait Point’s director of marketing Mickey Richardson has gone on the ZipRider himself about 20 times. One of his favorite parts about the thrilling experience is the carriage attached to the line above you, since it falls slightly before you do when the gates open. That causes you to be pulled forward quite quickly down the initial 800 foot drop.
Of course, it’s facts like that which made his wife avoid the ZipRider for many years, since she’s afraid of heights.
“All season I would run down the zipline in a group. I kept telling her it’d be fun if she went with me, but she always said no. Finally, I found out what the magic words were: It will be romantic. I told her we’d get in the swings and stare at each other romantically in the chute and then all the way down,” he said with a laugh.
Well, romance was in the air. Literally. But only for a few seconds.
When the gate opened, Richardson realized their gaze wouldn’t be locked for long. Since he weighs about 100 pounds more than his wife, he was pulled out of the chute much faster than her. Using his hands to catch the wind and turn himself, he turned almost all the way around and saw that his wife was nowhere close at that point.
Racing down the zipline propels a surge of adrenaline followed by a genuine appreciation of the local scenery [Photo/Icy Strait Point]
But when his wife got to the bottom, she already wanted to go again.
“When you get out there, you’re not free falling. You’re looking out across the beautiful scenery. You’re moving at a speed that allows you to look around, enjoy the view. Once people get to the bottom, they want to go again,” Richardson said.
While flying down the ZipRider is an exhilarating adventure on its own, Richardson said it’s actually only half the experience.
The adventure truly begins when visitors board the bus for the scenic drive up to the top of Hoonah Mountain, 1,550 feet above sea level. During the drive, it’s not unlikely to see brown bears, since Hoonah has such a high population. There’s also deer and eagles to be pointed out. But wildlife spottings aren’t totally guaranteed.
But what is guaranteed on the ride up is learning more about the village of Hoonah, which has only 750 full time residents. It’s a cultural experience, Richardson explained, where you learn more about the Tlingit Tribe. The same people that convinced Richardson to move to become one of those 750 residents himself when he saw how welcoming they were.
Hoonah came to be in the 1700s, when people were pushed out of their homeland of Glacier Bay and moved to Chichagof Island. This was due to a tectonic shift that caused several years of snow, pushing out glaciers. Hoonah means “protected from the north winds,” but the land also provided a lot of berries, salmon runs, and a plentiful deer population.
This is stuff you will learn on the ride up. Or even online. But there’s no way to truly emulate the experience of hearing this story from the people of Hoonah themselves.
Richardson was born in California and raised in New Hampshire. But once you move to Alaska, he noted, it becomes a part of your heart. He had come by cruise ship for many years while working with various cruise ship lines. But he was convinced to stay once he met the Hoonah residents and learned more about the Tlingit people.
“You just feel like this is the real Alaska. It’s local people welcoming people into their home on a daily basis,” he said.
While there’s no shopping centers or strip malls in Hoonah, visitors often find endless entertainment through whale watching. A body of water just north of the Icy Strait Point is home to over 200 whales. The older ones like to stick around there as well, never migrating to mate. There’s one local whale named Freddie that residents enjoy spotting.
And there may be no chains, but Hoonah is home to waterfront restaurants that offer Alaskan cuisine. According to Richardson, Hoonah is home to some fo the best fish and chips, caught right out of the water. Another one of his favorites is smoked salmon, made fresh. It’s cooked in the traditional Tlingit way, and it “never gets old.”
Since Icy Strait Point is on an island, many people come by ferry in the summer, or by sea plane. And some people come by cruise ship, of course. Cruise ships can be seen in the ports as you zip through the sky towards sea level.
People traveling by RV will often camp at the Glacier Bay National Park and then take a ferry over.