Category Archives: Wrangell – St. Elias National Park

Photos and notes on Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Northern lights and fall colors

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Northern lights, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Northern lights, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Here’s another image from a recent sojourn to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park to see and photograph the northern lights, or Aurora borealis. It was a treat to have a moonlit night to shoot by, providing plenty of ambient light to capture the fall colors as well as the northern lights.

This trip was a wild ride. A mad run from Anchorage to the Glennallen area Continue reading →

Mount Saint Elias Photo

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Mt. Saint Elias photo, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Mount Saint Elias, 18 008′ high, stands tall in the evening light over an unnamed glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska – aerial photo. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Well, just back from 2 weeks to photographing brown bears in Katmai National Park, and I’m off again already; I’ll be gone for some time on this trip, 4 weeks down along the coastline of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where I will meet up with Erin and Hig, of Ground Truth Trekking. They’re spending 2 months in the area,  finding out

“what would it be like to live on ice? In the fall of 2011 we will set out to spend two months living on the shifting, melting surface of North America’s largest glacier, along with our two young children.

Trekking between a series of camps on the Malaspina Glacier, on Alaska’s remote and harsh Lost Coast, we will explore this dramatic and wild landscape, weather the fall storms, and document climate change in action.”

Pretty cool stuff. Continue reading →

Wrangell-St. Elias aerial photo

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Wrangell Mountains, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Wrangell mountains, fall colors, sedimentation rock layers ad striations, aerial photo, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

An abstract aerial shot of the Wrangell Mountains, with a little fall color thrown in. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

I’d actually asked the pilot to fly us up in this area in the hope to find a particular glacial scene I wanted to reshoot, but the great patterns and colors along the ridges above the glacier were more interesting; in part because we didn’t find what I was looking for anyway.

Aerial photography is an exciting challenge; trying to see compositions that work in camera from such an unusual perspective is harder than one might imagine. The sensory overload of flying through such magnificent scenery, Continue reading →

Northern lights over Mentasta Mountains

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Northern lights, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Northern lights over the Mentasta Mountains, tundra, boreal forest and a small kettle pond on a moonlit night. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

From the recent trip to shoot the northern lights in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. I’ve never seen clouds move in quite so quickly as they did this particular evening. I’d se up to shoot over in the Glennallen area, and before long, high clouds rolled in from the southwest. In order to keep shooting, I had to figure which would be the best direction to head.

I chose north and east, toward the Nabesna Road, partly because I wanted to be in that area for sunrise. So I spent the evening trying to stay ahead of the lights and catch what images I could along the way. Finally, I made it to where I wanted to be, and then set off to find a composition I wanted.

For any Alaskans out there, or anyone else who’s hiked over muskeg before, you’ll appreciate this one.; try setting out at night time to hike over the muskeg for your photos. I guarantee that WILL kick your a$$.

Then I spent the rest of the evening waiting for the lights to turn on. They popped out a few times, but never really strongly, though they were pretty active. The full moon made for plenty of light for the foreground. I wish I could’ve gotten a little closer to the water’s edge here, but all that long grass in the foreground sits in about 10 inches of water. If the lights had offered something really dazzling, I might have ventured out, but for staying dry and warm seemed a better option given the circumstances.

Finally I fell asleep under a spruce tree, woke up to a clouded sky, and stumbled my way backward camp and my superwarm, absolutely amazing, Western Mountaineering Lynx sleeping bag. life was good. I didn’t get up for sunrise.

Cheers

Carl

Erie Mine, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

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Erie Mine Bunkhouse, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Erie Mine Bunkhouse and the Wrangell Mountains, fall colors. Erie Mine is one of three mines that made up the famous Kennecott Copper Mines, Kennicott, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

From the aerial shoot we did in September; this one is of the old bunkhouse at Erie Mine, one of the 3 Kennecott Mines, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

It’s interesting to me how much money, time and investment the National Park Service put into Kennecott, an old abandoned Copper Mine. The basic tenant of the Park Service is “don’t take stuff out of the place, and don’t leave your trash behind”.

It seems odd to effectively celebrate an organization that did quite the opposite of that. The mining company, like most mining companies, took what they wanted from the landscape, and left all their sh** behind when they were done. Now, what they did is revered.

But, such are the ways of the NPS; sometimes they’re hard to follow.

Cheers

Carl

Mt. Sanford

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Mount Sanford, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Mount Sanford, early morning, fall colors and a kettle pond, boreal forest, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

So while I’m off in Katmai photographing the bears, I’ll schedule a post or 2 from the summer. Here’s a shot of Mt. Sanford not long after sunrise one gorgeous sunny fall morning. What a view!

Cheers

Carl

Fall colors in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

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Fall colors, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Fall colors in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Aerial photo. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a quick shot from a flight we took over the park last week; the weather wasn’t so awesome, but the flight sure was. I’d shot this valley before, and knew it would have some nice color.

Now, back to packing gear for the grizzly bear photo tour.

Cheers

Carl

Glacial Stream, Root Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

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Glacial Stream, Root Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Glacial Stream and ogives, Root Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

From my most recent trip to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and beyond. This is an aerial photo from above the Root Glacier, near Kennecott and McCarthy, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The small stream is made up largely of runoff water from Stairway Icefall, a massive 7000′ vertical wall of ice that effectively form the “headwaters” of the Root Glacier.

This is an image I’ve wanted to capture for sometime now; I’ve seen various similar images of this same stream from a few photographers, including my friend Ron Niebrugge, and often thought it would be a cool subject to shoot. Indeed it is.  Continue reading →

Iceberg Lake photo, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

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Alaska Cotton, and glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Alaska Cotton, and glacier, near Iceberg Lake, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

We just got off a great hike in the Chugach Mountain Range, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park; the Iceberg Lake to Bremner Mines route, a popular hike I’ve done a number of times now. This trip was an exciting adventure, as always, with a mixture of weather, some great folks to hike with, tons of cool stuff to see.

We actually took what is for me a new route part of the way, and skipped one of the climbs; heading straight for a glacier moraine and on to the ice instead. That was kinda cool, and I did find a great spot to camp that I hadn’t been to before, which is always a treat.

This image is from the first morning of the trip, when the skies cleared and we had some nice morning light. The day before it had been drizzly and overcast, and we hiked along the now empty lakebed of Iceberg Lake; it drains every summer.

After a hearty breakfast and packing up camp we headed off across a glacier and up higher to another campsite, where we did a short dayhike down to a few small alpine lakes. Great day indeed. The weather changed a lot during the 8 days of our trip, and we were constantly layering clothes on and off. The wind was cold, even on the sunniest of days, and fall is most definitely here in Alaska.Fresh snow on the peaks around us, the locals calls “Termination Dust” (i.e., the termination of summer) greeted us a number of mornings.

We made it to our pickup at Bremner Mines on time, and then had to wait for a break in the weather before our pilots came and got us, ferrying us quickly back to McCarthy, hot food, showers, chairs with backs, and all the comforts of the a small town. Good times.

Great trip, all in all.

Cheers

Carl