Wilderness World Heritage River

Departing Whitehorse, Yukon
Duration of Trip: 12 days

The St. Elias Mountains rear steely blue and glacier-draped where Alaska abuts Canada's Yukon and British Columbia. Carving a 300 km corridor through this expanse of towering rock and ancient ice, the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers form a ribbon-like oasis of green forest and mocha waters - a course renowned as one of the world's premier mountain river trips.

On its journey to the Gulf of Alaska's pounding Pacific, the "Tat" runs a ragged course through deep canyons and broad alluvial valleys, boreal forests, the world's largest sub-polar icefields and Canada's highest peaks. Hummingbirds buzz over luxuriant fields of paintbrush and fireweed, beside massive tongues of ice that imperceptibly flow to the river's edge. Grizzlies browse the banks for berries. Arctic ground squirrels chitter-chatter in a catch-me-if-you-can routine. And eight story sapphire icebergs sheer off Alsek Glacier with thunderous roars.

Half of the landscape is permanently covered in snow and ice; the other half nurtures lush sprucelands and tundra rich with wildlife including red fox, wolverine, beaver, coyote, porcupine, marmots and grey wolves. It sustains BC's only year-round populations of Dall's sheep as well as great numbers of mountain goats and the huge Kenai moose. Because of its remote and productive wilderness environment, the Tat basin is a stronghold for the grizzly in North America, and it is the only place in Canada where the rare subspecies of black bear, the silver-blue glacier bear occurs. At journey's end, sea lions and humpback whales can be spotted beyond the breaking surf.

The Tat provides nesting sites for some 180 species of birdlife. Bald and golden eagles, gyrfalcons, plovers, jaegars, ptarmigan and grouse all find a home here. Rare waterfowl include both the King and Stellar's eider, trumpeter swans, and harlequin ducks.

Fully protected within the abutments of Kluane, Glacier Bay, and Wrangell-St Elias National Parks in Alaska and Yukon and British Columbia's Tatshenshini provincial park, the Tatshenshini-Alsek is the only large river drainage in North America that is completely safeguarded. The Tatshenshini-Alsek is the lifeblood of this 97,000 square kilometre World Heritage Site - the largest international protected area in the world.