Port Chalmers Cabin

Port Chalmers Cabin offers a remote, scenic setting on Montague Island in southcentral Alaska, with hiking, fishing, hunting and wildlife viewing all within steps of the cabin. Access is by float plane or boat from Cordova, Seward or Whittier. Visitors are responsible for their own travel arrangements and safety. Anglers can fish for pink, chum and coho salmon in the bay and streams around the cabin, and some pink salmon spawn in the tiny creeks nearby. The main spawning stream in the area is Chalmers River, about a mile to the north across the inlet, where chum and pink salmon can be found. Rockfish and halibut can be found in kelp beds and on the rocky bottom area in the open ocean outside the bay. Hunters have a long season on the island and in the surrounding national forest — bear in spring and fall, deer from late summer through late fall. The rustic, 12-by-14 cabin has wooden bunks, without mattresses, that can sleep up to six people. It is also equipped with a table, wood stove, oil stove, a rainwater catchment barrel, axe, saw, splitting maul and an outdoor pit toilet. There is no running water or electricity: bring your own water, food, sleeping bags and pads, cook stoves, matches, cut firewood, cooking gear and utensils, a light source, No. 1 stove oil, toilet paper, first aid kit and garbage bags. Montague Island lies in the Gulf of Alaska, at the entrance to Prince William Sound. The cabin is located in a grassy clearing at the edge of a dense spruce-hemlock forest interspersed with muskeg openings, within the tidal bay area at the southern end of Port Chalmers on the northwest side of the island. Low hills rise from the surrounding area, and in the distance snow drapes higher peaks. Wildlife in the area abounds, including migratory waterfowl, Sitka black-tail deer and brown bears. Guests should be aware that although the cabin sits within the Chugach National Forest, some of the land on Montague Island is owned by the Chugach Alaska Corporation, and access to these lands requires permission from the corporation.