Active Pursuits

There's a lot to do outdoors around Ketchikan, but most of it will require a boat or plane; drive-by attractions are limited. In any event, your first stop should be the trip-planning room at the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center, for details on trails, fishing, and dozens of U.S. Forest Service cabins.

Bear Viewing

Salmon returning to a fish hatchery on a creek south of town have long attracted black bears. A local business, Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary (tel. 877/847-7557; www.alaskarainforest.com), takes advantage of the viewing opportunity by hosting visitors on well-made trails with guides. A tour also includes captive reindeer and an owl and bald eagle as well, and a Native carving demonstration. The tours primarily serve cruise ship passengers, but individuals can join when space is available. Call for times. The price is $80 for adults, $50 children 12 and under, which I consider too high. But you may be able to watch the same bears from public property for free, without a guide. Drive about 10 miles south of town, beyond Saxman on the South Tongass Highway, to the Herring Cove Bridge. From here you have a viewpoint of the same estuary owned by the sanctuary and just as good a chance of seeing black bears. Bears may be present June through September, and sightings are most likely in July and August.

For more of a wilderness experience, Ketchikan is a good place to get on a float plane, soar over water and wooded islands, and land where bears are gathering at streams where the salmon are running. Depending on where the bears are, it costs $329 to $459 per person. Promech Air (tel. 800/860-3845 or 907/225-3845; www.promechair.com) and Island Wings Air Service (tel. 888/854-2444 or 907/225-2444; www.islandwings.com) offer this service.

Cabin Trips

The U.S. Forest Service maintains more than 50 cabins around Ketchikan; all are remote and primitive, but at $25 to $45 a night, you can't beat the price or the settings. This is a chance to be utterly alone in the wilderness; many of the lake cabins come with a boat for fishing and exploring. For details and descriptions of all the cabins, contact the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center (tel. 907/228-6220; www.fs.fed.us/r10/tongass).

If you stay in a cabin, you'll need all your camping gear except a tent, including sleeping bags, a camp stove, your own cooking outfit and food, a lantern, and so on. The easy way to handle this is to contact Alaska Wilderness Outfitting and Camping Rentals, 3857 Fairview St. (tel. 907/225-7335; www.latitude56.com/camping/index.html), which has been supplying cabin trips for more than 15 years. They rent almost everything you need, including small outboards and life jackets for the skiffs, and deliver directly to the air taxi or water taxi. The cabins are remote. You can hike or take a boat to some of them, but most are accessible only by floatplane (and unless you have loads of stuff, flying is probably the cheapest way to go). Expect to pay around $1,000 to $1,500 round-trip for three to five passengers. Obviously, it makes sense only if you will stay for a while -- we never go for fewer than 3 nights.

Fishing

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game produces a 24-page fishing guide to Ketchikan with details on where to find fish in both freshwater and saltwater, including a list of 17 fishing spots accessible from the roads. Get it from the local office of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, at 2030 Sea Level Dr., Suite 205, Ketchikan, AK 99901(tel. 907/225-2859), or download from www.alaska.gov/adfg (click "Sport Fish," then the Southeast region on the map). As is generally true in Southeast Alaska, most fishing takes place from boats in saltwater, for which you need a guided charters. Ketchikan Charter Boats (tel. 800/272-7291 or 907/225-7291; www.ketchikancharterboats.com) has a lot of experience in these waters. You can also find links to charter companies on the Visitor Bureau's website (www.visit-ketchikan.com) or contact them for a referral. The going rate for a daylong charter for salmon or halibut is around $300 per person, half-day about $160.

Hiking

Eight miles out the North Tongass Highway, the Ward Lake Recreation Area covers a lovely patch of rainforest, lake, and stream habitat and has a picnic area, several trails, and campgrounds. Ward Creek has steelhead and cutthroat trout, Dolly Varden char, and silver salmon; check current regulations before fishing. The wide, gravel Ward Lake Nature Trail circles the placid lake for 1 1/2 miles among old-growth Sitka spruce large enough to put you in your place. For a more challenging hike, Perseverance Lake Trail climbs through forest with steps and boardwalks from the Three Cs Campground, across the road from Ward Lake, to a lake 2 1/3 miles away that can be reached no other way. There's a good bit of climbing to get there, but the trail is extraordinarily well maintained, without mud even in wet weather. To reach the recreation area, turn right off the highway on Revilla Road and follow the signs.

Deer Mountain Trail, right behind downtown, is a steep but rewarding climb through big, mossy trees up to great views. You can walk from City Park to the trail head, half a mile and 500 feet higher on steep Fair Street and Ketchikan Lakes Road, but if you take a cab, you will save energy for the trail. The first mile rises 1,000 feet to a great ocean view south of Tongass Narrows, and the next mile and 1,000 feet to another great view, this time of Ketchikan. The alpine summit, at 3,000 feet, comes near the 3-mile mark. A public shelter (first come, first served) is a bit farther, and the trail continues to another trail head 10 miles away. Pick up a trail guide sheet from the Forest Service at the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center.

Sea Kayaking

The islands, coves, and channels around Ketchikan create protected waters rich with life and welcoming for exploration by kayak. Southeast Sea Kayaks (tel. 800/287-1607 or 907/225-1258; www.kayakketchikan.com) rents kayaks and guides day trips and overnights. They specialize in taking small groups of independent travelers, not big mobs from the cruise ships, and have half-day trips that start with a boat ride to real wilderness with only six paddlers along. Those are $149 adults, $119 children, including food and drink. A 2 1/2-hour paddle is $89 adults, $59 children as young as 6. The shop is a mile from the cruise ship dock at 1621 Tongass Ave. They have multiday Misty Fjords expeditions, too.

Majestic Misty Fjords -- In Punchbowl Cove, south of Ketchikan in Misty Fjords National Monument, sheer cliffs rise 3,150 feet straight up from calm water, as high and smooth as those in the Yosemite Valley. Misty is well over twice Yosemite's size, but there isn't a single car here; there isn't so much as a mile of road -- in fact, there are hardly any trails. It's something like a great national park before the people arrived.

Visits to the monument are by tour boat, float plane, or, for the hardy, sea kayak. It isn't a cheap place to go, and you don't see much wildlife. By boat, you don't see glaciers, although glaciated mountains are a spectacular feature of the flights. Unlike Glacier Bay, Tracy Arm, Kenai Fjords, or Resurrection Bay -- all places with more wildlife and more glaciers at sea level -- the experience at Misty is pure geology. You go for the scenery.

Two companies currently offer boat tours to Misty's Punchbowl Cove, Rudyerd Bay, and back, and both offer meals in the price. Sitka-based Allen Marine (tel. 877/686-8100 or 907/225-8100; www.allenmarinetours.com) has some distinct advantages. The fast, quiet boat makes the round-trip in 4 1/2 hours. All seats face forward. A knowledgeable naturalist interprets the scenery. Adult passengers can peruse regional books, while children work with craft boxes and activities. Tickets are $145 adults, $95 children. Sailings every day in the summer coordinate with the cruise ships' dockings. A Misty Fjords tour operated by Alaska Travel Adventures, doing business as Alaska Cruises (tel. 800/323-5757 or 907/247-5295; www.bestofalaskatravel.com), offers the opportunity see the fjords from above by float plane and return to Ketchikan by water for $269 adult, $229 child; taking the boat both ways is $139 adult and $89 child.

I prefer seeing the fjords on an extended floatplane flight (and I certainly recommend it for those susceptible to seasickness). Flying over the scenery is amazing, but it's the floatplane landing that really blows your mind, because then you get a sudden sense of the scale of everything you've seen from the air. The cliffs are magnified while you shrink to a speck. Go in the late afternoon when the light is pretty and the swarms of planes carrying cruise ship passengers are gone.

Several air-taxi operators in Ketchikan take flightseeing day trips to Misty Fjords or drop clients at remote cabins. Promech Air (tel. 800/860-3845 or 907/225-3845; www.promechair.com) is a large one, charging about $200 for a 75-minute flight, including about 10 minutes on the ground. But I like best a smaller company, Island Wings Air Service (tel. 888/854-2444 or 907/225-2444; www.islandwings.com). The owner and pilot is Michelle Madsen, and my flight with her was among the most memorable of the many I've taken around Alaska. She flew the plane with her long blond hair flowing and her little white dog, Perro, at her side (although she offered to leave him behind), offering a choice of music on the iPod as background to her impromptu commentary about the fjords. We soared with Van Morrison while Michelle told us about her favorite places down below. The landing was as long as anyone needed to soak in the awesome surroundings. It felt like an outing with old friends. Madsen charges $229 for a seat on a six-passenger DeHavilland Beaver for a 2-hour flight that includes 45 minutes on the ground at the fjords. She also flies guests to Forest Service cabins (many of them in Misty), places she knows intimately, and she will take the time to help you choose one that suits your interests and budget. Take a look at her informative website for a good start.

Visiting the fjords by kayak is a real expedition, advisable only for those who already know they enjoy this mode of travel, but I can think of few more spectacular places to paddle. Southeast Exposure (tel. 907/225-8829; www.southeastexposure.com) does guided paddles there, and has for 20 years, earning a good reputation. Their 6-day trip is $1,150 per person.