Golden Circle & Glacier Bay | Yukon & Alaska

The Golden Circle tour contains some of North America’s grandest scenery, wildest places and plenty opportunities for enjoying the Midnight Sun or the Aurora Borealis. This great tour offers different landscapes—from boreal forest to coastal rainforest to immense icefields. You can experience native culture and lifestyle by visiting local museums and traditional fishing villages. Both passes, White Pass and Chilkat Pass were used during the Klondike Gold Rush and the towns of Carcross and Skagway still retain the character of those times. Starting in Whitehorse with the more rounded mountains of the Yukon’s interior valley, the South Klondike Highway rises as you approach Carcross and the Southern Lakes region. The road borders some of these large, long, beautiful lakes before rising over the rugged coastal mountains and then descending into the Alaskan Coast, where Skagway and Haines is located. 

Reaching Haines by Ferry, and taking a plane to the stunning Glacier Bay Country, in quiet Gustavus Alaska, the gateway to Glacier Bay National Park. From Haines we follow the wide valley of the Chilkat River until it steeply rises through thick forests of hemlock and Sitka spruce to the magnificent mountain scenery of the Chilkat Pass. The road ends in Haines Junction on the edges of Kluane National Park and Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contains Canada’s highest mountains, the largest non-polar icefield in the world, and a rich variety of bird, plant, and animal life. The park contains over 2,000 glaciers—including valley, alpine and rock glaciers.