#15 of 18 top-rated excursions

Traitor's Cove Bear Viewing by Floatplane

A floatplane hop of about 30 minutes each way lands at Traitor's Cove, followed by a short van ride on a Forest Service road and a boardwalk walk to a platform over a salmon creek.

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By Greg Peters, editor · Updated October 2026 · Ratings checked October 18, 2026

#15 Highly rated · ranked 15 of 18 Ketchikan excursions

A floatplane hop of about 30 minutes each way lands at Traitor's Cove, followed by a short van ride on a Forest Service road and a boardwalk walk to a platform over a salmon creek. You get about three hours there watching black bears fish, in a group of no more than 12.

Tour details

OperatorIsland Wings Air Service

TypeWildlife

How longAbout 4 hours 15 minutes (Tripadvisor advises budgeting 4.5 hours)

SeasonJuly 20 to September 30 (Tripadvisor listing)

Good forBear enthusiasts in late summer. Not wheelchair accessible; requires a forest walk.

Rating4.8 / 5 from 44 reviewsViator (Viator and Tripadvisor reviews combined), checked October 18, 2026

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Times and policies from viator.com, tripadvisor.com, checked October 18, 2026. They change; the booking page has the final word.

Non-refundable on Viator (weather cancellations rebooked or refunded per Tripadvisor). SeaWind Aviation sells a shorter version to the same Margaret Creek platform (3 hours, late July to mid-September).

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ViatorTraveler ratings and reviews TripadvisorTraveler ratings and reviews

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How we ranked it

On October 18, 2026, we pulled up each Ketchikan tour on Viator, Tripadvisor and GetYourGuide and wrote down its star rating and review count for that specific product, ignoring operator-wide totals. Tripadvisor reviews are folded into Viator's numbers, so a tour counts once from that pair, with GetYourGuide kept separate. The list is split into rating bands, and inside each band the tours with the most reviews come first; that keeps a brand-new trip with a few perfect scores from leapfrogging one with a long track record. Several Misty Fjords and Saxman products showed as unavailable for the rest of 2026 on the day we checked, which looks like the season ending. Reviews live on the booking sites, and our links go straight to them. Nobody paid for a spot on this list.

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