Choose your path
Explore Skagway by river and trail
In the great Alaskan outdoors, there are many activities and adventures at your fingertips. From hiking along the Chilkoot Trail to floating down a scenic river, there are opportunities around Skagway to satisfy every outdoor enthusiast.
A winning team
Husband and wife Cris Siegel and Katie Leonetti decided to move to Alaska in 1997 and they haven’t looked back. Today, they are the owners and operators of Skagway Float Tours and are living out their desire for adventure.
“Alaska is a great outdoors place,” said Leonetti. “A lot of people want to have an adventure in life, and Alaska is a good place for that.”
Leonetti said the float tours mainly take place around Dyea, where a lot of prospectors landed when they came to the area looking for gold. In fact, if you choose to do the hike-and-float combination that Skagway Float Tours offers, you will be hiking along the Chilkoot Trail within Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park; this is the route that the prospectors once journeyed along.
“In the Dyea area we do scenic floats as well as a hike-and-float combination,” said Leonetti. “We hike the first two miles of the Chilkoot Trail and then back down the river. Our float tours are two and a half hours long—we pick people up in Skagway, take them floating and then take them back. Our hike-and-float is four hours and that combines about an hour and a half of hiking and 45 minutes of floating.”
Nature and culture combined
Leonetti, a certified Alaska naturalist, said she likes to combine the historical and natural aspects of the area in the tour so that people also learn about the region while having fun.
“Our tours focus on the natural history of the area as well as the Klondike gold rush history,” said Leonetti. “We try to impart both of those things to our customers and give people a good background into the region.”
For a longer excursion in Alaska’s backcountry, check out Seatrails. Designed for the independent traveller, this regional effort promotes and maintains more than 75 trails in 19 communities in southeastern Alaska. It includes hiking trails, cultural walks and canoeing and kayaking routes.
