On an August Day in 2019 a wildfire closed the George Parks Highway, the main vein between Anchorage and Fairbanks and the only way to drive to or from Denali National Park. On this same August day, a landslide suspended train travel and the smoke from the fires prevented small planes from flying.
This year, during one of the busiest weeks of the short summer season a wildfire closed Denali National Park for ten days. Power was out in “Glitter Gulch”, the area that is home to the big, cruise ship hotels (Princess and Holland America), as well as The Grande and Bluffs hotels. This disrupted the plans for thousands of people hoping to spend the fourth of July week in one of the country’s national parks, The crown jewel of the north.
If you’ve invested your most precious resource, your time, as well as a good chunk of money into planning a trip to Alaska as some distant date in the future it’s hard to say what may be going on during the time you’ve selected.
People come to Alaska to be in a wild place. Wild, by definition includes such descriptive terms and phrases as “not ordinarily tame or domesticated, uncontrolled, unruly, not amenable to human habitation or cultivation.” And, my favorite, “deviating from the intended or expected course.” Alaska is a wild place. People that live here know this. Flights get cancelled, roads close, rivers rise unexpectedly, power goes out, earthquakes and wildfires destroy infrastructure. It’s part of living in the land of extremes. But just like the sun shines all day during the summer and hides in the winter. The awe-inspiring, extreme and wild beauty makes up the other side of these extreme events. And this is what people show up for. But there are no guarantees.
Another reason people come to Alaska is for adventure. Some of the terms and phrases used to define adventure are “an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks, “an exciting or remarkable experience”, and appropriately, “an enterprise involving financial risk.”
If you have decided to invest some of your most precious resources into going on an adventure in a wild place, wouldn’t you want to have travel insurance?
Part of our job at Traverse Alaska is to manage expectations for our clients. We are a small, flexible organization. Flexibility has to remain at the core of everything we do in order to deliver the high level of service we’ve signed up to provide. All of our professional, private guides are trained to be flexible and not to overcommit to any objective where the pursuit is subject to variables outside of their control. We insure ourselves by knowing we will have a good time and that may include changing our plans due to conditions outside of our control.
Please take the time and spend the money to insure your trip.
