Anadyr Adventures — Local services in Valdez

UPDATE: I am updating my review of this company after lengthy, inappropriate, unprofessional communication with the business owner/manager following a trip I took with friends in July.

I had given them three stars originally - only because the guides were so great. The company and the experience with booking and one of the employees on the day or our trip would have only earned 2.5 stars (max) on their own. Given more recent experiences with the company, however, I feel compelled to update my review and lower the rating.

Had the response of the company owner/manager been more professional I may have considered raising my three stars... maybe. But when a business owner/manager chooses to behave unprofessionally and inappropriately, I draw the line.

The rest of my original review is below. The business owner/manager responded to my review with a series of false statements, scapegoating, and gaslighting tactics, both directly in response to this review (4th paragraph) and in two follow-up email conversations, therefore I have changed my rating to one star. I cannot in good faith, recommend booking with this company.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: (due to character limits on Google Reviews, I had to shorten this text, but have uploaded screen shots of the rest) Very hesitant 3 stars, rather than 2...

If I could give separate reviews for the company and the guides, I would. My experience with the company would be 2-2.5 stars, but my experience with the guides would be 5+ stars - amazing all the way.

Here's the breakdown: 2-2.5 STARS - CONS with the COMPANY First, the booking process was so bizarre and antiquated that I nearly thought it was a scam. In order to pay the deposit, which was 25% of the total cost of the trip for our whole group, I had to calculate and manually type the deposit amount into a text field to make the payment online.

Second, the woman I spoke to told us that the best tour to see lots of wildlife was the Columbia Glacier tour. When we were out with our guides on the water we were informed that there was almost no wildlife in those waters due to the high silt content of the water from the glaciers. We selected this tour for the express purpose of seeing lots of wildlife, which didn’t happen.

Third, the morning we checked in for our tour (we arrived right on time at 8am as directed), I asked the woman who signed us in and took the rest of our payment how much time we had before departing as I wanted to organize a few things in my bags. She told us we had a good 15-20 minutes before leaving. "Plenty of time," she said. But perhaps only three minutes later, a man came out and told me that if I didn't come in right then I would be "left behind."

I was startled by his threatening announcement and immediately grabbed my bags and went inside. Communication skills from the company need much improvement!

It was only much later, on the boat that I realized his announcement caused me to leave behind all the food I had packed for our eight-hour long day.

Finally, at the end of the day, as our boat docked, the man who had told me I would be “left behind” met me as I stepped off the boat, put his hand on my arm and said something like “You know I was just joking, right,” and that they wouldn’t have really left me. He tried to play it down but he didn't address this in any kind of mature or respectful way. This whole exchange, both before and after the tour felt inappropriate and unprofessional.

5 stars – PROS with the GUIDES August and Anna were our kayaking guides, and they were both fabulous!

Even though I didn’t have my food for this long day and the tour we booked was not what we were told it was, we all still had a wonderful time, thanks to the professional skills, knowledge, playfulness and good-natured energy of our two guides. They were both friendly and happy to answer questions during the long boat rides to and from...

If you want to have an amazing kayaking experience in Prince William Sound, go with Anadyr. Our group of six booked a 4 night, 5 day paddle July 2021. Off the bat, booking and communication was easy and timely. Read all of the info. They provide all the gear you need, but pack exactly the clothing and supplies they tell you to. I would highly recommend you bring waterproof gloves as well. Your hands will thank you on those cool, rainy days. Summer weather in Alaska is an experience all its own: Cloudy, cool, rainy, sunny, beautiful but ever changing. Be prepared to be flexible if weather isn’t perfect.

On the first day of our trip, Scott (the owner and overall cool dude) taxied us to the face of Columbia Glacier to start our trip (~2 hrs on motoring over the Sound, so fun!). The decision to start at the glacier and then paddle 70 miles over the week-long trip to Glacier Island was made based on weather. We had an absolutely gorgeous, sunny day at the face. We learned you quickly you can't get up close and personal with Columbia Glacier as the calving events were pretty frequent. The face of the glacier is 100ft tall. It's like entire buildings collapsing into the water when the ice breaks off. The sound is thunderous, and the waves generated were substantial. Anadyr made it crystal clear that our safety was a priority and explained in detail how to stay safe. Anyone posting a review complaining about not being brought close to the glacier should actually be grateful of Anadyr expertise. We learned that icebergs large or small are the result of the calving events and depending on weather and currents, you may or may not see a lot of them. Also, the risk of large ones flipping over is also a potentially dangerous scenario on a kayak. Again, we were well instructed and kept safe during the entire trip. Jay was our guide and he an expert naturalist of PWS. Ask him any question and he can answer it, animals, birds, geology, hydrology, history. We camped along the route and Jay would hop out of his kayak, help us get on land so that we could start setting up our tents and then he would jump on preparing simple, delicious meals. We saw a ton of wildlife including the pink salmon that were running and leaping out of the water, seals, sea lions, sea otters, puffins, orca whale, eagles, oystercatchers as well as a huge pod of humpback whales feeding that included a double barrel breach of two humpbacks about 100 yards in front of us. A lifer memory as I like to call it, that I will never forget. The landscapes were stunning, from a stark rocky coastline where the glacier recently receded to the lush coastal rainforest with beautiful sea caves, to calm bays with mountain goats spotted up on the craggy rocks.

I believe the price of the excursions are extremely reasonable. Just the boat taxi alone requires a lot of fuel, the gear is well maintained and in great shape. Also please keep in mind that guides should be tipped at the end of a trip if they did their job well. It is much appreciated as they work hard to keep their visitors safe and comfortable. Much like a job in a service industry, base pay is limited due to the nature of the business. They do this work because they love it. I know this from personal experience. Thanks so much Scott and Jay! Hope to...

Their ad pictures to the Columbia face were quite misleading. We were at least 3 miles away from the face and it’s nowhere near their pictures shown online.

Our tour was pretty disappointing and tiring. The entire trip took 10 hours (8am-6 pm) and was an operation disaster.

1)The company must have overbooked the tour. We had 17 people in our group. Two people on our boat had to stand for entire 5 hours round trip. The guides had to spend the whole time out out on the deck which must be so cold for them.

2)Anadyr also got a water taxi to tag along the bigger group. They didn’t load any kayaks before the trip onto the taxi. We couldn’t set out until an hour later.

3)The landing and taking off from an island also became really time consuming with the additional small water taxi that could not get close to beach by itself.

4. Our guides were nice but they were not good at handling a big group of people. They didn’t set times for each activities and most of time we sat confused about what we needed to do.

As a result, we had little time to kayak out. We spent most of our time waiting for the group to get into water, and our energy practicing kayaking around a small floating ice or looking at the black lines of the glacier on the sides while not going in the direction of the face. Not very exciting really.

When we finally set out to get close to the face, we didn’t even kayak for 30 minutes to the face and we were asked to turn back. Our guide was adamant that we needed to get back and have lunch when we could have gotten lunch when we landed at the first place. There was a lot of back and forth between going or not going and in the end everyone followed a guide who offered to kayak a bit further. We almost had to fought our own way. We could have discussed about all of these when we were on the beach. It was so hard to communicate all these on kayak when people were far away with the wind blowing.

For people who spend time, money and valuable vacation time to kayak to the face, we treated this opportunity like a once in a lifetime experience. Most of us won’t have the opportunity to come back to Valdez and do it again. So it’s really disappointing when we spend 10 hours in the trip and only spent less than an hour going into the face even with pretty pleasant weather. A lot of things could be improved to make the experience better and the operations more smooth and efficient.

TL;DR It’s cool to kayak close to icebergs. But if you are after the effects shown on their website or like some old photos in the reviews or the ones posted by the owner be warned that you weren’t be able to get that close now. Also it’d be smart to ask about the group size before you go since you would spend a lot of waiting and not a lot of time kayaking. Or just check out other better run kayak companies. Or kayak around another more accessible glacier might be a...