23 Things To Pack For An Alaska Cruise: What To Bring & Outfits To Wear

An Alaska cruise is the rare trip where the packing rules you already know don’t apply. It’s a cruise, so part of your brain is saying swimsuits and sundresses, and then you’re standing on an open deck at seven in the morning watching a glacier calve into the water and it’s 41 degrees with the wind coming straight off the ice.

That gap is why so many people get this one wrong. This Alaska cruise packing list covers what to pack for an Alaska cruise through southeast Alaska’s cool, wet, wildly changeable summer, including the layering system that does most of the work and the Alaska cruise outfits that actually make sense for sea days, port days, and dinner.

1. A Waterproof Rain Shell

If you pack one thing well, make it this. Southeast Alaska is a temperate rainforest, and the ports you’re stopping in get rain the way other places get afternoons. Ketchikan averages around 150 inches a year, which is more than twelve feet of rain.

The word that matters on the tag is waterproof, not water resistant. Water resistant means it’ll handle a five minute drizzle and then start soaking through, which is exactly what happens on a three hour whale watching trip in an open boat.

Get one with a hood, and get it roomy enough to fit a fleece underneath. A shell that only fits over a t shirt is useless on the morning you actually need it.

2. A Warm Mid Layer

The shell blocks wind and rain but it doesn’t make heat. That’s the mid layer’s job, and it’s the piece people most often leave at home because the forecast said 60 degrees.

The forecast isn’t lying, it’s just measuring the wrong place. Sixty in town at noon becomes low 40s on an open deck at glacier viewing, and colder once the ship is moving and the wind picks up.

A fleece or a light packable puffer both work. The puffer squashes down smaller in a suitcase, the fleece handles damp better, and either one beats a cotton hoodie that holds water all day once it gets wet.

3. Base Layers That Fit Under Everything

A thin merino or synthetic base layer is the quiet workhorse of an Alaska cruise packing list. It weighs almost nothing, takes up almost no space, and adds real warmth on the two or three mornings you’ll want it.

Merino has one more trick worth knowing about on a week long trip: it doesn’t hold odor the way synthetics do, so the same top can go multiple days without a laundry run.

Skip cotton for this layer. Cotton against your skin in cold, damp air stays wet and pulls heat out of you, which is the opposite of the plan.

4. Wool Socks

Cold feet end a shore excursion faster than cold hands do, and you can’t fix them once you’re on the boat. Two or three pairs of wool socks cover a week easily.

They’re also the fix for the most common Alaska footwear problem, which is shoes that got soaked on day two and never fully dried in a cabin with no real airflow. Dry socks make damp shoes survivable.

5. Waterproof Walking Shoes

Port days in Alaska mean wet streets, wet docks, wet trails, and gangways that stay slick most of the day. You want something waterproof with real grip on the sole.

Full hiking boots are overkill unless you’ve booked serious hikes. A waterproof trail shoe or a light hiking shoe handles Juneau, Ketchikan, and Skagway without making you clomp around the ship all evening.

Whatever you bring, break it in at home first. A cruise is a bad place to find out where a new shoe rubs.

6. A Hat And Gloves You Can Wear Under A Hood

It feels ridiculous packing a winter hat for July, right up until the glacier viewing morning, when everyone on deck who has one is comfortable and everyone who doesn’t is back inside behind glass.

Keep both thin. A bulky ski hat fights with a rain hood and a thick glove means you can’t work a phone or a camera, which is a problem when the whole reason you’re standing out there is to take pictures.

Thin liner gloves that work with a touchscreen are the sweet spot for the average summer sailing.

7. Waterproof Pants For Excursion Days

This is the item most people skip and a fair number regret. Jeans in Alaska rain are a bad combination: they soak through, they stay soaked, and they’re cold for hours afterward.

You don’t need real rain pants unless you’ve booked something like kayaking or a long boat excursion, and plenty of tour operators hand out waterproof gear for the wettest activities. Check what your excursions include before buying anything.

If you’d rather not pack them, quick dry hiking pants are the compromise. They still get wet, but they don’t stay wet the way denim does.

8. One Nicer Outfit For The Dining Room

Most lines run one or two dressier evenings on a seven day Alaska sailing, and the standard is lower than it used to be. Think what you’d wear to a decent restaurant at home, not black tie.

One outfit is genuinely enough. Alaska is the most casual itinerary most cruise lines run, because everyone is coming back aboard from a day in the rain, and packing three formal looks means carrying two of them around the state for nothing.

Dress codes do vary by line, so it’s worth a two minute check on your cruise line’s site before you pack for it.

9. A Packable Daypack

Every port day turns into a small logistics problem: you need the rain shell you’re not wearing yet, a water bottle, a camera, and the layer you took off when the sun came out for twenty minutes.

A light packable daypack solves it and folds down to nothing in the suitcase. A tote won’t do the job here because you want your hands free on wet gangways and boat steps.

What To Wear On An Alaska Cruise

The items above are the parts. This is how they go together, because the thing that makes Alaska cruise outfits confusing isn’t the cold, it’s how much the day swings. A single port day can run from 43 degrees and raining at breakfast to 65 and sunny by two in the afternoon.

The answer is always the same three pieces: a base layer, a warm mid layer, and a waterproof shell over the top. You add and subtract as the day moves instead of trying to pick one perfect jacket in the morning.

Sea days and glacier viewing

This is the coldest you’ll be all week, and it catches people off guard because you’re technically just standing on your own ship. Glacier days mean an open deck, no shelter, a moving vessel, and air coming off several hundred square miles of ice.

Wear all three layers plus the hat and gloves. Bring them out even if it looks fine when you leave the cabin, because the bow is a completely different climate from the buffet.

Port days in town

Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway are walkable and casual, and nobody in Alaska is judging your outfit. Base layer optional, mid layer on, shell in the daypack, waterproof shoes on your feet.

Jeans are fine for a town day if the forecast is dry. Save the quick dry pants for anything that puts you on the water.

Excursion days

Whale watching, kayaking, and floatplane trips are wetter and windier than anything else on the itinerary, and an open boat at speed is cold even on a warm day. This is where the full setup earns its suitcase space.

Waterproof everything, dress a layer warmer than you think you need, and assume whatever you’re holding is going to get rained on.

Evenings on the ship

Inside, the ship is a normal cruise ship at a normal temperature, so this is the one part of the trip where you can dress like you’re on vacation. Casual clothes most nights, the one nicer outfit on the dressier evening.

A light sweater is worth having for dinner anyway. Dining rooms run cold, and the walk back to your cabin along an outside deck is bracing at ten at night.

10. Binoculars

Alaska is a wildlife trip where most of the wildlife is far away. Humpbacks surface a few hundred yards out, bald eagles sit at the top of spruce trees, and bears on shore are usually a brown dot to the naked eye.

Binoculars are the single biggest upgrade to what you actually see all week, and one pair per couple is enough since you’ll trade off. Ships sometimes have a few to borrow, but never enough for everyone when the naturalist announces something off the port side.

An 8×42 pair is the standard recommendation for a reason. Higher magnification sounds better but gets shaky on a moving deck, and 8x is steady enough to hold on a whale.

11. Motion Sickness Remedies

Most of an Inside Passage cruise is protected water, which is calm in a way that surprises people who were worried about it. The exception is real: one way sailings between Vancouver and Seward or Whittier cross the open Gulf of Alaska, and that stretch can get rough.

Small boat excursions are the other place it hits. Whale watching boats sit still in open water for long periods, which is the exact recipe for seasickness even in people who are fine on the ship.

Bring whatever works for you from home. The ship sells remedies and the front desk often hands out tablets, but shopping for medicine at sea at the moment you need it is not a great plan.

12. A Sleep Mask

In June, Juneau gets around eighteen hours of daylight, the sun doesn’t set until close to ten at night, and it never gets fully dark after that. It’s one of the best parts of the trip and one of the hardest things to sleep through.

Cabin curtains are decent but rarely a true blackout, and balcony cabins are the worst of it. A cheap sleep mask fixes the whole problem for a few dollars and no suitcase space.

This matters more than it sounds like it does, because Alaska port days start early. A 7 a.m. excursion after a night of half sleep sets the tone for a rough day.

13. Hand Warmers For Deck Days

Air activated hand warmers are a few cents each and they make the difference between staying out on deck for the whole glacier approach and giving up after fifteen minutes.

The trick is to open them before you head out, since they need fifteen minutes or so to get going. Tuck one in each jacket pocket on glacier morning and you can hold a camera the whole time.

They’re also nice on early excursions and small boat rides, which are colder than anything happening on land.

14. A Waterproof Phone Case

Your phone is your camera all week, and every good photo opportunity in Alaska happens somewhere wet: an open deck in drizzle, the rail of a whale watching boat, a kayak.

A simple dry pouch on a lanyard is enough. It keeps rain and spray off, it floats, and most of them let you shoot right through the front window.

Newer phones handle a bit of rain fine on their own, but salt spray is a different story, and a phone going over the side of a boat is a trip ruining moment that costs a few dollars to prevent.

15. Sunglasses And Real Sunscreen

People pack for the cold and forget the sun completely, which is how you end up burned on a 55 degree day. Glacier ice and open water both throw a lot of glare, and the sun is up for most of the day in summer.

Sunglasses do double duty out on deck, where wind and spray in your eyes get old fast on a scenic cruising morning.

Sunscreen goes on your face, ears, and the back of your neck. The wind hides the burn until you’re back in your cabin.

16. A Camera Or Phone With Actual Zoom

This is the one piece of gear worth thinking about ahead of time if you care about the photos. Phone cameras are excellent at landscapes and genuinely bad at a humpback three hundred yards out.

If you already have a camera with a real zoom lens, this is the trip to bring it. If you don’t, it isn’t worth buying one, and the honest move is to watch the wildlife through binoculars and let the scenery photos carry the album.

Bring more storage than you think you need either way. Glacier days generate an absurd number of nearly identical pictures.

17. A Power Bank

Cold weather drains phone batteries faster than normal, and a long port day of photos, maps, and video will finish off a full charge before dinner.

Cabin outlets are also famously scarce on older ships, so charging everything overnight isn’t always as simple as it is at home. A power bank takes the pressure off.

One note worth knowing: cruise lines require power banks and spare lithium batteries to be in your carry on, not your checked luggage.

18. Magnetic Hooks For The Cabin Walls

Cruise cabin walls are steel, which is the single most useful fact about packing for any cruise. Magnetic hooks stick anywhere and give you the hanging space the cabin doesn’t have.

On an Alaska sailing they earn their place more than on a warm weather cruise, because you come back from every port with a wet shell, wet pants, and a wet hat, and a cabin that small dries nothing if it’s all piled on a chair.

Four or five is plenty. Hang the wet layers by the door where the air moves and they’re dry by morning.

19. A Lanyard For Your Key Card

Your key card is your room key, your ID at the gangway, and your shipboard credit card, and you’ll take it out a dozen times a day at every port.

Digging through a zipped rain shell for it in the rain gets old on day one. A lanyard with a plastic sleeve costs a couple of dollars at home and noticeably more on the ship.

Check whether your card comes pre punched. Some lines punch them for you, and some ask you not to punch them at all, in which case the sleeve style is what you want.

20. Small Bills For Tips

Alaska runs on excursions, and excursions run on tipping: boat crews, bus drivers, guides, and the person who spots the whale for you. Almost all of it is cash.

Ones and fives are what you want, and the time to get them is before you leave home. ATMs in small Alaskan port towns charge steep fees, the ship charges more, and cruise ship days are exactly when everyone else needs cash too.

A couple hundred dollars in small bills covers a typical week for two people with a few excursions booked.

21. A Refillable Water Bottle

Alaska tap water is safe and often genuinely good, so this is purely about convenience and cost. Ships sell bottled water at ship prices and you’ll want water on every port day.

An insulated bottle is the better pick here because it holds coffee or tea on cold mornings, and hot coffee on a glacier deck at 6 a.m. is one of the small pleasures of the trip.

Check your cruise line’s rules on bringing bottles ashore and back aboard. Most are fine with an empty or water filled bottle.

22. Bug Spray For Inland Excursions

Nobody expects mosquitoes in Alaska and then they get to a rainforest trail in July. The coastal port towns aren’t bad, but the moment you head inland or onto a wooded trail, they show up in numbers.

This matters most if you’ve added a land portion, since interior Alaska around Denali and Fairbanks is where the bugs are legendary. For a pure cruise, a small bottle is insurance rather than a necessity.

One bottle for the group is fine. This isn’t something you need to buy in bulk.

23. A Dry Bag

A dry bag is what turns a rainy excursion from stressful into fine. Everything you’re carrying goes inside it, and then it doesn’t matter how wet the boat gets.

A 10 liter roll top is the right size for a day: camera, spare layer, snacks, wallet. Anything bigger is more than you want to haul around Skagway.

It’s also the answer for the wet clothes problem on the way home, since a soaked rain shell can go in the dry bag instead of against everything else in your suitcase.

What To Leave Off Your Alaska Cruise Packing List

Half of packing well is knowing what not to bring, and an Alaska cruise packing list attracts a lot of things that sound right and aren’t.

• A heavy winter parka. Summer in southeast Alaska is a layering problem, not a deep freeze. A parka eats a third of your suitcase and you’d wear it once.
• An umbrella. The rain comes sideways and the wind on deck will turn it inside out. That’s what the hood is for.
• Three formal outfits. Alaska is the most casual itinerary the big lines run. One nicer outfit covers the dressy evening.
• A hair dryer. Nearly every cabin has one, and some lines don’t allow personal ones anyway.
• Swimsuits, mostly. One is worth packing if your ship has a hot tub, and a hot tub in the rain off a glacier is a real experience. Just don’t pack for a beach week.
• Rubber rain boots. Tempting given the rain, but they’re heavy, they’re bad for walking any distance, and waterproof shoes handle everything a cruise port asks of them.

The thing to keep in mind is that you’re never far from the ship. A port day is a few hours, not a wilderness expedition, and anything you forgot is waiting in your cabin.

Final Thoughts

The whole trick to packing for an Alaska cruise is accepting that you’re packing for two trips at once: cold, wet mornings on an open deck, and a normal cruise ship evening indoors. Get the three layer system right and the rest is small stuff.

Everything on this list fits in a normal suitcase, and most of the gear items are cheap and tiny. Pack the shell, the mid layer, the base layer, and the waterproof shoes, and Alaska stops being a weather problem and goes back to being the best scenery a cruise ship can get you to.