Helicopter Glacier Tours — Alaska's Most Unforgettable Excursion
If there's one excursion that consistently gets called "life-changing" by Alaska cruise passengers, it's the helicopter glacier tour. You'll fly over rainforest, waterfalls, and crevasse fields before landing on a glacier that covers more square miles than the city you came from. Then you walk on it.
The Juneau Icefield is the primary destination — a 1,500-square-mile expanse of interconnected glaciers that feeds 38 individual glaciers including the famous Mendenhall. Helicopter tours land on the icefield at elevations of 3,000–5,000 feet, where the ice can be hundreds of feet thick beneath your boots.
What to Expect
Tours typically last 2–3 hours total, with 60–90 minutes of flight time and 20–40 minutes on the glacier. You'll be fitted with glacier boots and crampons before landing. The helicopter seats 6 passengers per flight, making this a genuinely small-group experience.
The flight itself is half the experience. Pilots follow river valleys up through the mountains, giving you aerial views of waterfalls, blue ice crevasses, and wildlife below. On the glacier, you'll walk through ice formations, peer into moulins (glacier drainage holes), and see ice that fell as snow hundreds of years ago.
Is It Worth $400–$600?
This is the most expensive standard excursion on an Alaska cruise, and it's worth every dollar for most people. The experience simply can't be replicated any other way — you can't drive to a glacier icefield, and the views from a helicopter are fundamentally different from the deck of a cruise ship.
That said, if budget is tight, the free Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center and 1.5-mile trail to the glacier face delivers 80% of the glacier experience at zero additional cost. Save the helicopter for a trip where it won't cause financial stress.
Weather Cancellations
Helicopter tours have the highest weather cancellation rate of any Alaska excursion — roughly 15–20% of departures are canceled or delayed due to low clouds, rain, or wind. Book early in your port day and have a backup plan. Operators provide full refunds for weather cancellations.