How to Get to Valdez, Alaska
There is no day trip to Columbia Glacier from Anchorage. The three ways into Valdez — a 300-mile drive, a 45-minute flight, or the ferry — and which suits your trip.
The single most useful thing to know when planning a Columbia Glacier trip: there is no day trip from Anchorage. Every boat into Columbia Bay leaves from Valdez, and Valdez is not a place you get to and back from in a day. Plan to sleep in town the night before your tour, and ideally the night after.
There are three ways in, and they suit very different trips.
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The three ways in, at a glance
Drive it in five to six hours and get one of Alaska’s best road days. Fly it in 45 minutes and keep your itinerary short. Take the ferry across the Sound and turn an out-and-back into a loop. Each is covered below.
Driving: about 300 miles, five to six hours
The standard route runs out of Anchorage on the Glenn Highway to Glennallen, then turns south onto the Richardson Highway for the last 119 miles. Five to six hours without stops, six to seven realistically, and nobody sensible does it without stops.
What you pass, in order: the Matanuska Glacier along the Glenn, the Wrangell Mountains opening up east of Glennallen, Worthington Glacier right beside the road, Thompson Pass, and then Keystone Canyon with Bridal Veil and Horsetail Falls dropping straight onto the highway shoulder in the last half hour before town.
This is the option to take if you have a rental car and the time. The drive is not the price of the glacier — it is one of the better road days in Alaska, and treating it as transit is the common mistake.
Practicalities: fuel at Glennallen; services are thin in between. Thompson Pass gets weather early and late in the season. In May, check road conditions before committing.
Flying: 45 minutes with Ravn Alaska
Ravn Alaska flies Anchorage–Valdez in about 45 minutes, with two flights on weekdays and one at weekends. It turns a two-day logistics problem into an afternoon.
Fly if your Alaska trip is short, if you are not renting a car, or if you want to bookend a Valdez glacier day between two Anchorage nights without losing twelve hours to the road. Valdez is compact enough that you do not need a car once you are there — everything including the glacier cruise dock is within walking distance of downtown.
The trade is obvious: you skip the Glenn and the Richardson, which many people rate as highly as the boat.
The ferry: across the Sound from Whittier or Cordova
The Alaska Marine Highway runs to Valdez from Whittier and Cordova, a crossing of around six hours with glacier views and wildlife on the way, and it carries vehicles.
This is the option for a loop rather than an out-and-back: drive one way, sail the other, and see Prince William Sound from a third angle. Sailings are limited and seasonal, so build the itinerary around the schedule rather than the other way round — check current timetables well before booking anything else.
How long to stay
Two nights, if the glacier is why you came. Weather cancels kayak departures and occasionally reshapes a cruise, and a spare day is the only real insurance in a town with one small fleet. Two nights also means you are not driving six hours and boarding a boat on the same day.
One night works if you are flying in, or if you are content to book the 6-hour cruise — back by mid-afternoon — and accept that a cancellation ends the attempt.
What to do with the rest of your time
If you arrive early in the day with the tour booked for tomorrow, the three-hour Duck Flats sea kayak is the easiest thing in Valdez to slot in: sheltered water immediately east of town, nesting bald eagles, harbour seals hauled out on the islands, and a guide who will tell you why the town sits four miles from where it used to. From $109, groups capped at eight. Our breakdown of the Duck Flats paddle →
With a fuller day, the Gold Creek coastal kayak adds a remote beach picnic and a walk into old-growth rainforest to a waterfall.
Booking order that works
Book the glacier tour first, then the beds, then the transport. Valdez accommodation is limited in July and August and the tours are the constrained resource — a cruise seat you cannot get is a trip that does not happen, whereas a room a little further out is an inconvenience.
Then read the which-tour guide to make sure the tour you booked is the one you actually want, and the best-time guide for how your month changes the odds.
See Columbia Glacier While It Is Still Columbia Bay
The glacier has pulled back more than 12 miles since 1980, and the bay it left behind is packed with its ice. Day boats and kayaks run out of Valdez from roughly mid-May to mid-September. Free cancellation on every tour here.
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