A waterfall in a small stream near the Upper Marsh Fork River, Brooks Range mountains, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska. Please click the thumbnail to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey folks,

Here’s another image from our recent trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. this trip was simply awesome. A great group of folks, from Florida, Colorado and Washington, who all carried the most ingredient for a great trip – great attitude. Everyone really clicked, and we had a ton of fun; lots of laughs and good times.

This photo was taken on our 1st night out; we camped on a big alluvial fan that comes out of the mountains, on the west side of the Marsh Fork River. After dinner we hiked up the stream and climbed a small ridgeline for some amazing views back south, to the heart of the mountain range and the contintental divide. The light was really happening, and I was pretty happy with a few of the images I made.

Afterward, the light began to fade and we hiked back toward camp. The sun began to poke through again, for one great show, and I saw this little miniature waterfall that I knew would make a great foreground. The light show only lasted a couple of minutes before high clouds to the north dulled the glow. By the time I’d rearranged this for a horizontal composition, the light was noticeably dimmer on the distant peak. Minutes later, the glow was gone.

This image was taken around 2:00am. Photography in the arctic summer is a challenge, shifting ones mental and body clock to the wee hours of the “night“, to capture the nicest light. Oftentimes I’ll shoot til later and go to bed around 4:00am, or later. They don’t call this the land of the midnight sun for nothing.

Here’s a photo below of Steve, from Colorado, shooting the following morning, around 4:00am. We’d gone to bed, got some rest, and then the sun came around the corner of the range to the north, and lit up the valley. I was up immediately, woke Steve, and we shot for a couple of hours before going back to bed. It’s an absolutely incredible experience to watch the mountains here, in the quiet hours of the “dawn“, and feel the arctic air start to warm. Magical doesn’t describe the experience.

Steve shooting the Marsh Fork River, Brooks Range, ANWR.

What a blast we had! To view some of Steve’s fantasic work from this trip, visit his gallery here. He made some amazing images.

It’s really nice to have another serious photographer along on a trip like this, even the trip is not promoted as a ‘photography tour’ at all. Steve inspired and motivated me to work harder and longer, and to look more closely than I otherwise might. I learnt a lot from watching him shoot.

Cheers

Carl

Hikers enjoying horseplay of aufeis, Canning River, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska. Please click on the thumbnail to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a shot from our recent trip down the Canning River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. You can see we had a lot of fun, great spirits, great weather, spectacular scenery and a great, great group of folks. What more could we ask for?

Aufeis is a German word to refer to overflow ice, that typically melts out during the summer, and re-accumulates in the winter. It’s pretty common along most waterways in the Arctic. Here it provided a platform for some tom-foolery. Good fun all the way around.

Minutes earlier we’d been watching a mature bull caribou wander along the ridges of Aufeis; caribou often hang out on the ice to keep cool and stay away from the oft-present mosquitoes during summer’s brief madness. Fortunately this year the bugs were largely gone by the time of our trip, and we all had a great time with no insanity from the mosquitoes.

Cheers

Carl

Snowshoeing through the forest in search of the wolf, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

A week or 2 through the winter boreal forest hoping to find wolves is always a treat – whether the wolves show themselves or not. So far, no luck – they remain the mystery.

But what a treat it is to hear their howls, or find their soft tracks in the snow, and to know they too sift through the boreal forest. To enter the winter boreal forest is to enter the realm of the wolf – the home of Canis lupus. Few creatures can quite so vividly engage our mind and spirit like the wolf – so rarely even seen, yet so enmeshed in our cultural histories and stories.

I’ve walked I don’t know how many miles and waited hours, days, hoping for a glimpse, and yet the pack remain unseen. The reward though, is the detail this adventure forces me to see, hear and smell. One can’t help but become more in tune with the depths of the forest in the presence of the wolf. The white spruce, Picea glauca, cracks in the cold, the willow bend under their heavy snowload, and the cold seeps into the landscape.

I’ve yet to see or photograph a wolf in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, though I’ve had some amazing experiences: listening to the calls of the pack under the aurora borealis, or stumbling onto their tracks in the mud, or finding the remains of their recent kills. Maybe one day the pack will grant me their witness. Or not. Either way they remain, and the forest resonates with their wild being.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

This short video was taken on the Skolai Pass Phototour, fall 2009. We had a great trip, some great weather, some great people, and loads of fun. This particular afternoon we put in some miles hiking out along the Russell Glacier toward Mt Bona and Mt Churchill, to awesome peaks 16 000 and 15 000 feet high, respectively. The Russell Glacier runs right up to the north face of Mount Bona, and inspiring sight.

We had a fantastic hike, enjoyed lunch on the high flat plateau, and then walked back toward camp at Chitistone Pass for the afternoon, and to shoot the evening light on the mountains. And, I must say, we had a simply unbelievable evening, with gorgeous alpenglow on the mountain peaks. It was a lot of fun being in the right place at the right time for some photography. That doesn’t happen everyday, but when it does, it makes al those hours and miles worthwhile.

This trip is always a lot of fun, and everytime we do it the trip is different. In 2009 we ran the trip in July and then again in early September. Both groups were tons of fun, with good people, good food and good times. we had excellent photo opportunities on both of trips, yet both were very different. We concentrated more on landscapes on the latter trip, and were blessed with amazing light and weather much of the time. The first trip in July we ended up shooting a bit more wildlife, which was a blast. We saw a golden eagle swoop by camp nearly every day, and I’m still kicking myself for not managing to make a photo of that incredible experience.

The fall trip we covered some miles; we did a lot of hiking, with some very strong group participants, which was fantastic. Up early every morning, we shot the sunrise, had breakfast, then dayhiked most of the time, until heading back to a predetermined destination for the sunset. It was really a productive trip, and I must thank the folks on the trip for their willingness, if not eagerness, to really jump in and work hard. Especially thanks to Doug Roane for the loan of his camera. My camera simply stopped working the 1st morning of the trip, and Doug was kind enough to loan me his backup body. Thanks Doug.

Just as an indication of how productive the trip was, we were sitting on the ground, cameras out and firing away within 20 minutes of landing. The plane dropped us off at Skolai Pass, we unloaded, the plane departed, we ran through a quick safety talk, shouldered the backpacks and hiked maybe 300 yards before finding a small Least Weasel running through the brush. The packs were dropped, cameras grabbed, and we had a blast shooting the little guy. I had my first photos of a weasel from Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and we weren’t even half an hour into the backcountry. Awesome stuff!

The music on this video is “Avalanche”, a song written by Shawn Colvin. This snippet is from a recording I made a few years ago with a good friend of mine, Steve Lusk. He’s singing, and we’re both playing guitar. Steve sings this song so great.

Cheers

Carl

School teacher Natalie keeps up with her reading on the Sanford Plateau trip, July 09, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a photo of school teacher Natalie from this past trip. We had a great walk across the Sanford Plateau in July. The weather was awesome, as you can, and we had an absolutely gorgeous evening after dinner up on the Plateau; the sun going down to the north lit up the entire region just beautifully. Natalie wanted some photos of her reading a book that she could show to her school students when she returned to teaching after the summer. I took a couple of her in front of Mt. Drum, and a few with the awesome west flank of Mt. Sanford as a backdrop. You can also see some of the glacial moraine in the valley below, a remnant of the receding Sanford Glacier. We hiked across the lower portion of the moraine, and then climbed up on to the plateau the following morning. It’s a steep climb, but as is the case so often with climbs like this, so well worth the effort. Once upon the plateau, the walking is easy, and the vast open range of tundra really a great place to visit.

This trek was a first for Natalie, she’d never taken on quite a trip like a backpacking trip in Alaska before, and I admired her willingness to jump right on in with a fly-in trip like the Sanford Plateau hike. Even when we got a little re-routed by high water in the Dadina River, and had a bit of bushwhacking to do in order to get to our landing strip destination, she handled it with aplomb! Far better than I did on my first ever bushwhack through Alaskan alder. Great job, Natalie.

This trip is really a nice walk, and generally gets far fewer visitors than some of the better know hikes on the south side of the park. We didn’t see another hiker on the entire trip. We saw a grizzly bear, found a huge moose rack, and saw bison (and a grizzly bear den) from the plane on our flight back to Glennallen. Don’t let the lower visitation deter you; the views don’t get any better than from the Sanford Plateau, which offers spectacular vista of Mt. Drum, Mt. Zanetti, Mt. Wrangell and Mt. Sanford, all of which stand over 12 000′ high, Mt. Sanford topping out at over 16 000′ high! Snow-capped peaks like these, bathed in warm summer alpenglow, make for great hiking, camping, backpacking, photography, and even reading.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

Someone told me summer’s been and gone already for 2008 here in Alaska. I missed it, somehow, apparently. What a crazy year it was, weather-wise. Thunderstorms and lightning in the arctic, rain and clouds, snow and clouds, sunshine, wind, cool weather, hot weather, a mixed bag for sure. What was super, super appreciated, was the great spirits everyone brought along on the trips this summer – I couldn’t be more appreciative, and the groups couldn’t have better. Thanks.

I’ll try to have a slideshow up the website with a little review of the summer trips, but I’m heading back over to Wrangell – St. Elias to photograph the remaining fall colors, and then come back to Anchorage early October to get website updates, etc, done. So look for a slideshow on the home page in October. Until then, thanks SO much to everyone who came out this year, for all the good times, the great company, and some killer hiking trips. Thank you.

This photo is me, staring in awe at Mt St. Elias, from Icy Bay, in mid-June. What a mountain!

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

I finally get a chance to catch up quickly here – it’s been one trip after another, and though the weather’s not been the best, the trips have all been a ton of fun. I’m heading out in a few days for another basecamp/photo trip, which should be great, and then the season is over – it’s gone WAY too quickly!

One of the highlights this year was our Bremner Mines to Tebay Lakes trip – the first ever commercial trip here, and one of the first groups of people to complete the route. We had an awesome group of experienced hikers, adventurous all, and we had a blast. The route was challenging at times, but enough long mellow stretches of easy hiking that we all enjoyed it. This photo was taken along the middle of the Klu River valley, where we passed through some amazing wildflowers stretches – it’s always a treat to see a great bloom of alpine flowers, but never more so than after you’ve been hiking over moraine and talus and through willow and dwarf birch for a few hours. The lupine here was fantastic.

We sure had a variety of weather on the route – our flight in to Bremner was delayed nearly 24 hours due to weather, and when we finally DID get in, a short hailstorm greeted us. We hiked the 25 minutes up to the Bremner Bunkhouse without too much chatting or laughing, all of us trying to keep tucked in from the hail. The weather pushed to a unanimous decision to spend the night in the bunkhouse, before heading out in the morning over the first pass. We ran into a short snow flurry the following morning, but had clearer weather after that – in fact, though we had cloud cover most of the time, we got almost no rain at all for the rest of the trip – 10 days! Awesome!!!! Nice cool weather with no rain. It was a little cloudy for great scenic photography, but the respite from precipitation was much welcome.

One of the favorite places was Harry’s Gulch, and the hiking the few miles east and west of that – a sweet section of mountain terrain, for sure. Certainly the bear trail up in the pass was WAY cool – a narrow trail where individual footprints, embedded in the soil over millenia, reflect the steps of countless grizzly bears, each walking in the footprints of the predecessors. But I think for me the Klu River valley was the most scenic – and I look forward to hopefully getting the opportunity to photograph that area a little more in the future. I’m fairly certain, on the other hand, that everyone agreed the alder was the least likable hiking – but we were lucky, I think, and didn’t hit as much of that as we might have had our route been a little different.

The finish was great, with a quick bushwhack down to Tebay Falls, some blueberries, and a relatively easy walk over to the lake for our final campsite. Tebay falls are really something else.

I think this trip will become a classic hike over the next few years – I’m looking forward to running it again and learning it a bit better, and exploring the area further. There’s no doubt the terrain and scenery is on par with any I’ve seen – really a fantastic hike. A huge thanks to Mike, Sergei, Sveta, Geoff and Jodee for coming along on this trip – I couldn’t ask for a better group to do such a hike – you guys were all awesome, thank you.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

We just got through a great trip up on the Sanford Plateau, on the north side of Wrangell – St. Elias National Park. The hiking was great, the views sublime, and the group awesome. This image is from our campsite on the 2nd night, where we spent 2 full days enjoying the high alpine tundra and incerdible views of the massive mountains nearby – Mt Sanford (over 16 000′), Mt Wrangell (over 14 000′) and Mt Drum (over 12 000′). This image is of early morning at Mt Drum, and a larger version can be found here.

The weather wasn’t too bad – a mix of rain, clouds, wind, and calm sunny weather as well – a welcome respite. Much better than the weather on the previous trip to Skolai Pass, where rain, sleet and even a little snow bound us up tight for much of the trip. I’m excited to start doing more treks on the north side of the park and exploring this area further – we’ll definitely be back on the Sanford Plateau in 2009, and hopefully be able to do a few other trips in the area as well.

I’m off tomorrow for the 2 week trek from Bremner Mines to Tebay Lakes, which I’m very excited about, and hopefully we’ll get some good weather. We’ve a great group of hikers again, and this promises to be loads of fun. I need to get to bed and get some rest, because tomorrow evening, we’ll be in the backcountry. I’ll try to put a trip report together when I get back on the 20th. Stay tuned!

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

I just got back from a trip to Icy Bay, down on the southern edges of Wrangell – St. Elias National Park. This will definitely be a trip for next year. It was my first time in this amazing place, and it really is cool. There’s SO much to see and explore in the area. It’ll be a sea kayaking/hiking trip, a little of everything. the scenery is awesome, and the geology of the place is fascinating. 100 years ago it was a wall of glacial ice, now 3 glaciers have receded, and the valleys left in their wake filled with water, creating 4 deep cold fjords. The Taan fjord is the most navigable for paddling, the Tsaa fjord is almost covered with icebergs. Here’s a shot from a camp site along the shores of the Taan fjord, Icy Bay, looking out over the bay towards Mt. St. Elias, as it catches the last rays of the sun for the day. Pretty sweet view, eh?

I’ll have a detailed page for this trip on the website this fall, outlining more of what we’ll be doing, etc, and a bunch of photos from the area. The trip will leave out of Yakutat, Alaska, and we’ll probably want to spend a day or so there, and maybe do a boat trip up Disenchantment Bay to the Hubbard Glacier as well – it’s simply incredible!

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

Here’s a short trip review of a trip we did this previous summer. Skolai to Wolverine, a favorite route for just about everyone who’s done it. We did this trip in 2007 in late July, early August, and had a blast. Allowing extra days to spend on route gave us the leeway to make some shorter days, with less time carrying heavy packs, and more time eating good food, enjoying the lingering sunsets, and dayhiking and exploring the region. We hiked up to Hole in the Wall on our first afternoon, where we saw and photographed a family of White-tailed ptarmigans, along with some Dall sheep. Hole in the Wall is one of the first places most visitors get to be up close with a glacier, so it’s always a treat. We had a late lunch up in the hanging valley, and moseyed back down to camp in the early evening. The following day we hiked over to Chittistone Pass, where we set up and camp and did a short walk around that area. The following day we dayhiked across to the Russell Glacier, and got great views of Mt. Bona and Mt. Churchill, towering 16 000′ and 15 000′ peaks. The University Range is something to behold, for sure, and the southern reaches of Skolai Pass is probably the best place to view it from. We saw caribou and red fox in the area as well.

Our backpacking trip began in earnest the following day as we hiked down the Chittistone Valley and across the Goat Trail. Camping on the west side of the Goat Trail is great, and being up high we had great views of the valley below. Nick had asked me beforehand where might be a good place to propose to April (pictured), and I said I though this was as good as any. I’m pleased to say the proposal went well, and next thing I knew April had this huge rock on her finger! Nick told me later he wanted to propose as early in the trip as possible, so she could carry the ring and get it out of his pack.

It was really cool to share in this experience with these 2 wonderful people, and I couldn’t have appreciated their willingness to share it with me. Thanks so much to both of you, that was definitely a highlight for me.

We hiked up Hassen Creek and April found a place she wanted to camp down by a couple of waterfalls. It looked like a great place to camp to me, and we spent the night there. The following day we had an easy walk up onto a bench near Wolverine Ridge, and we did a short trek over to the north side overlooking a moraine and taking in the HUGE vistas north to the Nizina drainage and the Wrangell mountains.

Over at Wolverine we saw a Dall sheep ewe, and I managed to grab a few decent images. One I really liked. We found a nice site close to the landing strip, hunkered down for the evening and prayed for good weather in the morning, as Wolverine can be quite windy, making a plane landing iffy. The morning broke calm and clear, and before long the sound of Don coming up the valley in the Beaver was in the air. We jumped on in, flew back in time for breakfast in McCarthy, showered, and spent the afternoon wandering around Kennecott and the old mill, even venturing out to the glacier. Next morning we were back in the van on the road for Anchorage, with an engaged couple now riding along.

Congratulations to both of you, and all my best for a wonderful marriage I’m sure you’ll enjoy for years and years to come.

Cheers

Carl