Why & How We're Going Carbon Neutral
I’ve been privileged and lucky enough to spend my life traveling to some of the wildest, most rugged, and least-visited places on the planet. These places have nurtured me and supported me and helped me grow. And for the last decade I’ve had the blessing of being able to share those places with others for my living.
But there’s always been a disconnect. There’s been a disconnect between loving wild places but knowing that by visiting them I’m harming their homeostasis. I’ve put way more than my fair share of carbon into the atmosphere. After a month of backpacking I often laugh and revel in the fact that it only takes 3 hours of driving to get back to the trailhead where we started. Combustion engines are awesome!!! And treacherous. On IAG trips guests often take a car to a jet plane to another car to a bush plane to another bush plane just to walk 30 miles. It’s a bit hard to swallow when I think of it.
Uggg…. but bush planes are fricken incredible. Most Indigo Alpine Guides trips involve a bush plane flight. And guests often tell us that the flights in and out of the mountains were one of the expedition highlights.
While the true brunt of climate change responsibility is undoubtedly in the hands of large corporations, and while the narrative of personal responsibility seems merely a scape goat while carbon-loving corporations sit by twiddling their thumbs, I still believe in personal accountability and action.
There really isn’t a perfect solution out there for carbon neutral wilderness trips like the ones we offer. In earnest, if you really want to minimize your carbon footprint, maybe bike to your nearest wilderness area and go walking. Or drive to your nearest wilderness area and stay for a few days. Perhaps that’s the great irony of National Park designation — once something gets that name people want to fly there. And I have seen first hand the way all of our flying is literally melting those very same NP designated mountains.
But life is short and I still want to spend my days sharing Alaska and other wild places with good company. I’ve made some peace with it. And it still tears me up inside. I had a particularly ironic flight flying from Anchorage over the Chugach range. It had been a decade since I’d flown over them last and well… it was like seeing someone first as a 25 years old and then next as an 85 years old — the mountains are falling to pieces. The effect of our warming is not a visual whisper but a siren.
Trift Glacier 2006
Trift Glacier 2015
The problem with achieving carbon neutrality with carbon off-sets is that it’s not really clear if it works — and it’s definitely a band-aid on a flesh wound. To me, it tastes similar to recycling — “oh, I'll use tons of plastic, cause I can just recycle after all.” And even if it does work we’re not very far along. Carbon credits alone aren’t going to halt climate change. The 98.4 million tons of carbon offset by the entire voluntary carbon market in 2018 accounted for less than one-quarter of one percent of total global emissions that year.
But ya know what — we’re going for it anyways, because there’s no perfect solution. And the imperfect is better than sitting on our laurels. Starting with our Denali Whale’s Tail trip in July 2022 we’ve been neutralizing all the carbon emissions from all our multi-day trips. We’ve been doing this in a few ways:
1. We’ve been using Project Wren to calculate our emissions and then actively offset them. Using a service like Wren gets us the best bang for our buck. The simple truth is that by leveraging financial global inequality, our offset money goes further. It is much more effective to support offset projects in developing countries than say, here in the U.S.
2. We kinda hate that last sentence, so we’ve also been using our company budget to support organizations that work to elect U.S politicians that are fighting for a low-carbon America. After all, America is responsible for 25% of global emisions.
3. We’ve started searching out routes and itineraries that are less carbon intensive. We’re super excited for this 2025 season to run some routes that use cars, trains, and jetboats to get us where we need to go. Not perfect, but better than bush planes from a carbon perspective. For 2026 we’re looking at how we might use some sailboats!
Going forward we will continue to:
Educate our guests about the impacts of climate change on the landscapes we visit.
Continue to look for epic itineraries that involve a bit less air travel.
Continue to travel as light as possible with the best ultralight gear which both benefits your back and our fuel consumption!
Encourage other travel and guiding companies to move towards carbon neutrality.
We’re excited by what we’re doing. And we’re going to keep searching for more meaningful actions.
We know that all these measures mean our trips will be a bit more expensive. We hope you share our vision and believe that it’s worth it.
So know that any Indigo Alpine Guides trip you join will be a carbon neutral one.
Sort of.
With love and care and hope for change,
Jack Bynum