Whittier from Anchorage: the Tunnel, the Glacier Discovery Train, the Ferry Terminal and Prince William Sound

Leaving Anchorage with the sky still gray, you follow the water around Turnagain Arm, turn off toward Portage and slip into a mountain. On the far side the air smells of salt and wet spruce, and a small harbor town sits under peaks hung with waterfalls. Whittier is where Prince William Sound begins for most visitors, and getting there is half the story.

How do you get to Whittier from Anchorage?

Whittier lies about 58 miles southeast of Anchorage, and you reach it either by road, through a single tunnel, or by the Glacier Discovery Train. The road route is the one that ends with you driving into town yourself, while the train brings you to the same town without a steering wheel in your hands.

What decides between them is mostly what you want from the trip. The drive lets you stop along the Seward Highway and at the Portage area before you enter the tunnel.

The train turns the journey into part of the outing, with the mountains of the Chugach range passing at window height. A third link, the Alaska Marine Highway ferry terminal in Whittier, belongs to a different kind of trip, one that continues over the water.

Whittier is not a town you pass through on the way to somewhere else on the road system. The road ends here, at the water, so everything you plan for the day (a glacier cruise, a kayak paddle, a walk along the harbor) starts within sight of the docks. Many travelers arrive with a boat tour already in mind, and the timing of that tour is what shapes the rest of the morning.

The weather in Whittier has a character of its own. This is a place of low cloud, drifting mist and frequent rain, and a gray sky over the harbor does not stop the mountains from looking dramatic. Dress for water in the air, and let the Anchorage forecast tell you only half of what you will meet at the other end.

Ways to get to Whittier from Anchorage

By road through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel

The road is the Portage Glacier Highway, which leaves the Seward Highway at Portage and runs through the Chugach National Forest to the ferry terminal in Whittier. The distance from the highway junction to town is a little under twelve miles, and in the middle of it the road enters the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel. Inside, the speed limit is 25 miles per hour, so crossing takes about ten minutes.

The tunnel is for motor vehicles. Pedestrians and bicycles are prohibited from using it, except during the annual Walk to Whittier event in June, so you cannot plan to cycle in.

If you drive, you decide your own stops before the tunnel, and you can pull into the Portage Glacier area of the national forest on the way. Before you set out, the Alaska 511 road conditions site lists each road as Good, Fair, Difficult, Very Difficult, Hazardous or Road Closure, which tells you what to expect on the Seward Highway.

By the Glacier Discovery Train

The Glacier Discovery Train runs from Anchorage to Girdwood, Whittier, Portage, Spencer and Grandview. It follows much of the same route as the Coastal Classic train, then makes an added turn off the main line to reach Whittier, with Grandview as its turnaround point. Along the first stretch the tracks follow Turnagain Arm, where the Chugach mountains drop straight to the water, and that is a view a driver watching the road rarely gets in full.

The train also stops at some places that can only be reached by train, which opens up day trips for all ages and energy levels. That makes it a good fit if you like the idea of stepping off at a remote stop rather than parking at a trailhead. Keep in mind that the Coastal Classic itself goes on to Seward rather than Whittier, so the two are different trips that happen to share part of the line.

By ferry from the Whittier terminal

The Alaska Marine Highway ferry terminal is at the end of the Portage Glacier Highway in Whittier. The system as a whole covers 3,500 miles of coastline and serves over 30 communities, from Bellingham, Washington, to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Chain. For a visitor, Whittier is the point where road and water meet, and the terminal gives the town a link to the rest of Prince William Sound.

Prince William Sound has other settlements, among them Cordova and the Alaska Native villages of Chenega and Tatitlek, while Valdez is its largest port. A ferry is therefore less a way to reach Whittier from Anchorage than a way to leave it for somewhere farther along the water.

Options compared

Putting the three side by side shows that they answer different questions. The road asks you to handle the driving and rewards you with freedom about when you pause. The train gives you the landscape without the wheel, and it opens a few places a car cannot reach. The ferry looks outward, toward the rest of the sound.

Whichever you choose, the town waits at the end of a single approach. That shapes the day more than anything on the table, because everything in Whittier is arranged around the harbor, and the journey in is part of the sense of arriving somewhere set apart.

Making a day of it

The best use of a day in Whittier starts with the water. Prince William Sound near the town holds the world’s largest concentration of tidewater glaciers, which are glaciers that reach the sea.

Cruises head out from the harbor toward them, and the 26 Glacier Cruise offers a no-seasickness guarantee, a comfort if you worry about a rolling boat. The sound can show you ice, steep green shores and, with some luck, wildlife, though none of that can be promised.

College Fjord, in the northern part of the sound, is one of the places that draws people out on the water. It contains five tidewater glaciers, five large valley glaciers and dozens of smaller ones. Most of them carry the names of East Coast colleges, with women’s colleges on the northwest side and men’s colleges on the southeast side, so you can read a map of old university names off the ice.

If you would rather move under your own power, sea kayaking tours launch from the docks in Whittier. Kayak drop-offs are also available in more remote parts of Prince William Sound for those who want to be farther from town. Paddling in a fjord gives a very different sense of scale from a cruise, with the cliffs rising right beside you and the quiet broken only by water and birds.

Portage Glacier on the way

Portage Glacier lies 4 miles west of Whittier, south of Portage Lake. In summer, seeing it requires a boat ride across the lake, and commercial boat tours are available for that. In winter, if Portage Lake freezes, the glacier sees a good deal of foot, bike and ski traffic, so the same spot turns into a frozen playground.

Because it sits close to the tunnel approach, it fits naturally into a drive from Anchorage. You can look at the lake and the ice before heading on to the harbor, and then leave Whittier with the sense of having seen two different faces of the same mountains, one inland and one at the sea.

A walk around town

Whittier is nicknamed The Town Under One Roof because almost all of its residents live in the Begich Towers Condominium. It is an odd and memorable sight, a single tall building standing in a small harbor town, and it explains why the place feels so compact. Take a slow walk along the waterfront between boat departures, watch the working harbor and let the weather do what it likes.

As for what to bring, the climate answers it. Whittier is extremely wet, so a rain jacket belongs in your bag on any day, and the harbor is a place where mist can lift and drop within an hour. Leave Anchorage with a plan that has some flexibility in it, and enjoy whatever the sound gives you.

Good to know before you go

Whittier receives about 197 inches of precipitation in a year, so wet weather is the rule rather than the exception. Before driving, look at the Alaska 511 site, which draws on reports from the Alaska Department of Transportation and Waze and shows closures and road conditions. Keep in mind that pedestrians and bicycles cannot use the tunnel, and plan your return with the same care as your arrival, since the road in and out of town is the same one.