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Awesome is a word which has been undervalued by teenagers, who apply it to everything from hamburgers to denim jeans. It takes on its true dimensions in the grandeur of an Alaskan landscape. Older than history. Jagged mountain peaks carved by relentless glacial ice.Dense temperate rainforest in a multitude of greens. Sporadic clumps of purple fireweed. A pod of orca whales dipping and diving in an icy sea. The Oxford definition of awesome seems entirely relevant in an Alaskan context.

Our flight to Anchorage gives me my first sighting of tundra – flat, poorly drained swamps featuring mosquitoes and frozen sub-soil. A patchwork of orange flowers reminds me of spring in Namibia. I’m surprised to learn that Anchorage isn’t the capital of Alaska although many think it has more claim to the title than Juneau which is accessible only by air or a nine-hour ferry trip. Anchorage by contrast is an international transport hub for rail, road and air.

Brochures describe it as the hanging basket capital of the world – over 9000 plants are suspended in a blaze of colour along every street and window box – predominantly gold triploid marigold and sapphire lobelia, the colours of the Alaskan flag. It’s easy to find your way through the tight grid of streets named according to number or letters of the alphabet – the only glitch is the missing letter J which the early Scandinavian town-planners were unable to pronounce! The Museum of Art and History provides a fascinating introduction to the 49th state which was bought from Russia in 1867 for the princely sum of $7.2 million.- about 20c an acre! The Russian responsible for signing the deal is probably still serving time in a Siberian salt mine – Alaskan oil, gold and copper make a healthy contribution to the treasury of the USA.

Our museum introduction to the unique geology of Alaska takes on three dimensions when we board our cruise ship at the ice-free port of Whittier. Our adventure starts auspiciously with an early morning wake-up call at 5.00am. I feel as if I’m about to go on a game drive at the Kruger Park as we throw on our track suits and gather on the misty deck with steaming cups of coffee. Our quarry is less elusive than an early morning lion sighting. We see the Harvard Glacier from miles away - a cliff of tortured ice rising 200ft from the sea, extending 300 ft below the surface. It becomes increasingly spectacular as we draw nearer. Silence falls on the deck as we hear an ominous crack of thunder. Our mouths fall open as a block of ice larger then a double-decker bus trembles on the brink, poised for a final moment. It breaks free and tumbles in slow motion into the icy waters below. We hear a belated splash and a wave ripples outwards from Alaska’s newest iceberg. Glaciation is suddenly a more active process than it had ever seemed in geography lessons at school.

In some ways, an Alaskan cruise offers a package identical to those we’ve experienced in other locations. Billed as a fun-ship, a programme crammed with on-board activities ranging from line-dancing to ice carving and auctions of Alaskan art arrives promptly in our cabin every evening. Our fellow passengers are genial Americans with waistlines which suggest that they are taking full advantage of the endless array of food available. I am consistently amazed by the number of Americans who think South Africa borders Morocco. The crew is far more representative of the global village; charming multi-lingual waitrons from as far afield as Macedonia, Peru and Australia; an Italian captain who ensured that his sailing schedule had satellite reception when his team clinched the world cup final; Dr Barnard is the ship’s doctor – naturally he hails from South Africa! Our son looks good in formal naval uniform as a member of the Shore Excursion team – an invaluable connection for anyone travelling on currencies weaker than the local dollar. Shore excursions are what make an Alaskan cruise superior to any other we have experienced.

There are literally hundreds of options. Travellers more intrepid than ourselves signed up for an eight hour glacial hike, complete with ice picks, ropes and snow shoes. Sea planes and helicopters circle above the glaciers offering unparalleled views of a glacial landscape so remote and silent that it seems to be on a different planet. There are kayaks to paddle through ice-strewn water; we hiked on uninhabited islands with dramatic rock formations, dense with temperate rain forests of spruce and hemlock – armed with only a whistle should we encounter a bear! Some passengers opted to snorkel in wet suits and told us about giant underwater fronds alive with purple crabs and ochre star fish – I was surprised to learn that local water temperatures are higher than those of Northern California at this particular dive site. If you don’t have access to a son on the Shore Excursion team, it would be advisable to travel with either a sack of nine carat gold coins or a very rich widow – even a lumber jack show costs $40 while a two-hour helicopter excursion to a dog-sledding camp dents the budget by about $500 a head.

Dog sledding is a phenomenal experience! It’s raining when we report to the collection point but our genial guide assures us that it’s a good day in Alaskan terms. It’s hard to capture our excitement as the propellers start to spin on our six-seater helicopter and we soar up over a tortured glacial landscape which outdoes any special effects experience that Disney has to offer. The ice below is so deeply fractured that all colours apart from blue are absorbed. The deep crevasses are a spectacular kaleidoscope of blues from a deep sapphire to aquamarine and turquoise, a striking contrast to the blinding whiteness of the snow. The ice-field we saw at Banff was disappointingly muddied by glacial moraine; an Alaskan glacier is so pristine that it literally takes your breath away.

We touch down at the dog-camp; it’s so remote that it’s hard to believe that the dog-sled team of mushers can survive even a night there, let alone a summer season. I’m reminded of the Christmas hymn as we tramp in our Wellington boots through snow that’s deep and crisp and even. It’s white and free of footsteps for as far as the eye can see. It would be eerily silent and empty without the dogs ; two hundred and fifty of them, howling like a pack of coyotes, each tethered to a tiny individual kennel. The sparsely furnished white tents which are the summer home of the mushers seem inadequate for the wind and snow and icy temperatures.

Each couple is assigned to a sled – one sitting and one standing on runners. Our musher is a young girl who spends her summer holidays on the musher team. She stands firmly on the brake as our team of dogs strains against the harness, desperate to set off through the snow, their paws encased in leather booties. They don’t look like the furry huskies in the movies. They’re lean and streamlined – bred to run for long distances in extreme conditions. They’re in training for the annual Iditarod, the ultimate dog-sled race. It’s run over one thousand and forty nine miles to commemorate dog-sled delivery of diphtheria vaccine from Anchorage to Nome over a hundred years ago. I’m aware of the damp slush of the runners sliding through the snow with a thin line of dogs snaking ahead of the sled, dark against the snow-field. Our musher calls a halt half way through the journey – the dogs are bred for colder temperatures and so they’re sweating – they roll in the snow and gulp it down like ice-cream.

A common feature of each of the excursions we choose is the enthusiasm and expertise of the guides. A marine biologist from Boston explains the ecosystem of the rain forest as we climb six hundred feet through the spectacular Mendenhall gardens in Juneau. The naturalist on our evening quest for whales is a first nation woman who tells us about the free education available to her people. An arts and drama masters student recites a multi-stanza poem describing the stark beauty of the Yukon as we travel across the last frontier on the White Pass, a vintage narrow gauge railway, the most scenic in the world and an internationally acclaimed feat of engineering. The railway follows the precipitous path followed by the gold-seeking Stampeders of the nineteenth century – a dramatic landscape plunging down to a narrow river which plummets over rapids too hazardous for navigation. The region is so isolated and rugged that we see few holiday homes, despite the beauty of a string of lakes ranging from emerald green to azure blue. We learn about charming coastal towns with names and onion domed churches that reflect their Russian origin.

Alaska is indeed awesome but there are words of caution for prospective visitors. Alaska isn’t Disney World. It’s a wilderness. All excursions involving air travel are weather dependent. The brochures refer to ‘liquid sunshine’ but they mean rain; the dense rain-forest demands a rainfall of over one hundred inches annually. It’s entirely possible that outdoor excursions may be cancelled which is as bleak for the staff as for the passengers – they watch their bonus dwindle each time they hit the refund key on their computers. But I’ve always been more likely to gamble on the weather than on the ship casino - it‘s an enormous privilege to have visited one of the few remaining wilderness areas on the planet.

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