Chilkoot Charters & Tours — Local services in Alaska

Edited my review as we went to Alaska again in August 2025 and did the Lake Bennet excursion. Chilkoot Charters was just as fantastic this time around & by some crazy luck we got Jennie again for the bus portion! We were so thrilled. The excursion itself is wonderful, although you need to understand the train portion is 4 hrs is long…. Having said that, you can only see Bennet Lake like this if you take the train so yes, while long - it was still breathtaking. No regrets. I only mention it, in case you have smaller or wiggly kids, then I would do the bus & rail one instead. Ther are other tours where the train is about 2 hrs which I think is the sweet spot. 2 years ago we did the bus up and train down, this time we took the train up & bus down. Both are awesome. The Bennett tour does stop in Bennett BC, there is an old museum & church there & then it continues to Carcross Yukon. Get the local coffee there, so good. We had a gorgeous mild weather, amazing views and great company. Still 5 stars, highly recommend one of Chilkoot’s tours in Skagway/Yukon! Whichever one you choose, can’t go wrong. Review below - original review from May 2023. We did the Yukon rail & bus excursion a couple of weeks ago and it was hands down the best tour we did on our Alaskan cruise! Jennie was our guide and she was fantastic. Our cruise line offered the same type of tour for more $, but I’m so glad we went with Chilkoot. We were a much smaller group and Jennie ensured we got plenty of time at each stop. As it’s a much smaller bus, she was also able to quickly stop when we saw a bear on the side of the road. We sat there and observed the bear for a while, who was maybe 20 feet away. This tour includes a lot of scenic stops and goes all the way up to the Yukon Territory where you get to spend time at the Caribou Trading Post. Lunch is included there plus admission to a museum & to see puppies and other animals like cute llamas. Our son also went on a dog sled ride through the forest, this was optional & an additional cost. On the way back we stopped in Carcross, Yukon too. The second part of the tour was a nearly 2 hr train ride back to Skagway over the famous White Pass Summit. The entire experience was surreal and it’s hard to put into worlds how beautiful it is. Everyone on our bus agreed Jennie made our trip even better, she is the best tour guide. We all laughed a lot & really enjoyed the entire day. We met with our tour right when we got off the ship, super easy to find. Great value as we were gone from 9 am to after 5 pm. Highly, highly recommend Jennie & Chilkoot Charters if you’re in...

My Skagway excursion recommendation from end of May 2025: Bennett Scenic Journey Bus/Train Combo

Yes, it's an 8 hour excursion but I can't imagine not doing this entire trip, going around Bennett Lake and getting the full experience was incredible. And I thought there were enough stops along the way to break it up. We chose to go up on the bus (tip: sit on the right side if you do this). It was a bit foggy and raining but it didn't prevent us from seeing most of the landscape. And speaking of landscape, you really go through all different kinds which was really cool. We also stopped along the way to get out for photos at scenic spots, including the Welcome to Alaska and Yukon signs. Oh, and we stopped to see a cutie (bear) enjoying some breakfast. Before ending the bus portion we went to Emerald Lake which was super pretty. Once we got to Carcross we had 45 minutes to walk around before the train arrived. We grabbed a snack at Caribou Crossing Coffee and had the best London Fog latte, still thinking about it. We also went to Maple Rush where we sampled many maple syrups, think whisky barrel aged, and of course left with a few.

With the tour we booked we had a specific train car dedicated for our group and it was the last car and not packed with only around 30 of us which was great (tip: sit on the right side for this journey). Lunch was provided as part of the tour: turkey sandwich, chips, grapes, cheese cubes, chocolate chip cookie and free bottled water. The train car had a restroom and you could go outside to take photos but you could see perfectly from inside. Going around Bennett Lake was crazy beautiful. We then stopped at Bennett Station House for about 45 minutes and we walked to see the church and did a small trail to a nice viewpoint. Once back on the train, we saw another bear having lunch right along the tracks. They told us it was only the second day the train did the full Bennett trip and all of the snow proved why. Just completely gorgeous. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I absolutely recommend doing the full Bennett Scenic Journey tour. The summit portion was beautiful, but doing the full trip is the way to go in my opinion. We were happy with doing the bus up and train down, but it's offered both ways.

Note: You need a passport for this specific excursion as you enter Canada and stop at border control where they came on the bus and...

My family did the Yukon Klondike Adventure and it was absolutely incredible. The pictures don’t do it justice and I didn’t get pictures of the puppies or the sheep, but super cool. Our guide, Scotty was great at getting everyone involved, all 11 of us which you know you’re not getting that small of a group on a cruise line sponsored tour. I thought he was a hoot, and he serenaded us with his rendition of Rodger Miller’s king of the road.

While this next part was in no way “cool”, it was (to me) the most impressive thing I’ve seen from a company. On our way back to Skagway one of their divers experienced a medical emergency which caused a single car accident. Our driver stopped and made sure everyone got out of the vehicle safely and, with the assistance of medical personnel that were on tour, made sure that anyone needing first aid was tended to until first responders arrived. Additionally they called in another driver on her day off (shout out to Jenny!) who got to us from Skagway to get the people that didn’t need to remain on site were taken back to port. She remained completely professional and as “cheerful” as you’d expect a tour guide to be on a normal tour but after she got us all back to port you could tell that she, like Scotty, was seriously affected by their colleague and friend being injured and turned right around to go back to see how else she could help. All of that and we were only an hour later getting back to port than scheduled, which still was at least 2 hours before the all aboard of the earliest ship one of us was on.

TL:DR - Amazing tours run by employees who are fun, yet professional, and respond quickly and compassionately in an emergency situation. Exactly the type of people you’d want to be leading you in an emergency and I can not recommend this company, their tours, and their tour guides highly enough. If you’re in Skagway, take one of their tours. If I’m back in town I...