Category Archives: News

Stuff to Click On – Oct 2010

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Chuck and his MSR hubba on the coastal plain, ANWR, Alaska.

Chuck and his MSR hubba (tent) on the coastal plain, ANWR, Alaska. We spent 2 weeks rafting the Canning river, and this photo was taken toward the end of the trip. It wasn’t as cold as it looks; Chuck’s from Florida. Good times indeed.

Hey Folks,

I’ve decided to make some changes to the blog and will be trying to get them up and running in the coming months. The first one is in this particular post. I want to post a kind of ‘Clips of the Month’ page; videos, photos, articles, quotes, whatever, that caught my eye during the month. I find nowadays there’s simply so much amazing material getting blasted around the web that it’s about impossible to keep up with even a fraction of it. Facebook posts and Tweets come down the pipe a mile a minute, all pushing (and pushed) down the page, completely gone; disappeared before I’m done reading the actual link; it’s a frustrating race to the bottom. I end up missing most of what folks post out there.

That’s compounded by a popular trend whereby (some) folks think it’s good to simply tweet and post every link that runs across their monitor – which wastes an awful lot of time for the receiver. Rather than simply tweeting every single post that says “Hey, check out this totally awesome photo”, I thought it might be useful to post a collection of links that (a) I’ve actually visited/read/watched, and (b) I honestly thought were not just above the banal, but that I felt were pretty cool/interesting/and yes, even awesome. Hopefully posting them as a blog page makes the content a little less transient, as well. We’ll see if the idea is a good one or not. It’s simply a collection of links to articles, photos, etc, that I ran across, one place or another, and thought were actually worth sharing. Continue reading →

New Grizzly Bear Images

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2 young grizzly bears fighting in a salmon stream. Rarely do real vicious fights break out, but when they, these well-armed opponents can do some serious damage to one another. Grizzy bears, or coastal brown bears (Ursus arctos), playfight in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
How ’bout that for a left hook! 2 young grizzly bears fighting in a salmon stream. Rarely do real vicious fights break out, but when they, these well-armed opponents can do some serious damage to one another. Grizzy bears, or coastal brown bears (Ursus arctos), playfight in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

I’ve finally added some new grizzly bear images to my website – after way too much time. I’ve just added nearly 250 new grizzly bear images from my trips to Katmai in 2009 and 2010. Check them out; some of the images have appeared on the blog in the past, but many of them have not; those photos are from this most recent trip.

So, how about this particular photo?

We were shooting 2 other bears when I saw this scuffle start to erupt behind us. Time to move and move fast, these little eruptions (usually) don’t last too long. So we shouldered the tripods and heavy gear, and moved quickly through the long marshy grass to be in position to shoot this ‘fight’.

Knowing what might happen is a big help when you’re photographing wild animals. It can make all the difference between being ready for something awesome, and completely missing it. (See my recent blog post on Expeditions Alaska about how often we miss).

We saw these 2 young bears playfight several times during the 2 weeks I was down there.

Continue reading →

Extreme Environmentalists, the Gulf Oil Disaster and ANWR

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Arctic fox and oil barrels on the coastal plain, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.
Arctic fox and oil barrels on the coastal plain, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Please click on the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

Excuse my rant; but, this is my blog, and I’m about to wander in the mtns for a while. Before I go, I need to speak out.

I read earlier today of ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s latest comments about the current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. She states “Radical environmentalists: you are damaging the planet with your efforts to lock up safer drilling areas”.

Her basic premise is that the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is the work and responsibility of “extreme environmentalists”. Let’s disregard, for now, the fact that she’s been a proponent of offshore drilling for years now (including her 2008 run for VP where she repeatedly claimed that Drill Baby, Drill “also means safely tapping into our offshore sources, safely, environmentally safe”. In her own words, whilst debating then-Senator Joe Biden she stammered “You even called drilling — safe, environmentally-friendly drilling offshore — as raping the outer continental shelf. There — with new technology, with tiny footprints even on land, it is safe to drill and we need to do more of that“.

“friendly”? If it weren’t so sad it would be farcical; what the hell is “friendly” about extracting crude oil from beneath the ocean? Makes me wonder what kind of “friends” some of these people keep.  If one of my friends came over to the house and started drilling a hole 20 000′ into the lawn I’d say they’re outta their mind.

I’ve no problem with a discussion of the collective responsibility owned by our society. I hopefully made that clear in my earlier post here. But I won’t absolve the oil industry of their responsibility, nor the clowns who would reduce a discussion of the energy policy of the world’s largest energy consumer to a 3-word bumper-sticker slogan: “Drill Here, Drill Now”  of theirs, which is the intent of Palin’s outburst. Sarah Palin’s remarks, along with this childish assessment from Ted Nugent is not an honest critique of any social construct at all. In fact, it’s nothing more than the opposite of that; an attempt to divert attention from the direct and very palpable targets of hella-oil, political corruption and bumper-sticker political campaigns to a somewhat more nebulous, transparent target. That is intolerable.

Continue reading →

A Tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico

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Hiker playing Native American Indian flute on the arctic coastal plain, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska.
Playing a Native American Indian flute on the arctic coastal plain, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska. Please click on the image to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

I’ve been wanting to write for the last week about the current Gulf Oil disaster, but haven’t really been quite sure what to say. There are simply so many tangents to this mess that I’ve not known where to start. The deaths of 11 people seem, unfortunately, to fade into the melée of concern about big oil, political ineptness, poisoned ecosystems, fathomless litigations, ad infinitum. The web we weave seems larger than the spread of oil.

It makes sense, to me, to start at home. The reality is that this catastrophe stares us right in the eyeball. The mirror reflects our own lives – I drive a car, I love my gore-tex and silnylon tents, my synthetic-fill jacket, my polycarbonate cameras. I eat fresh bananas and whole grain breads shipped here from afar. My computer was flown directly from Shanghai, China. The world I live in is a fossil fuel world. That world includes crude oil belching from the ocean floor into the Gulf of Mexico, and on to Gaia knows where.

So I bear responsibility in this mess; I want cheap gasoline, cheap oil. I complained about the soaring gasoline prices just 2 years ago. I failed to demand that the federal government not exempt BP from an environmental impact study. I failed to demand that Minerals Management Services mandate a remote-control shut-off switch on all drilling operations. I failed to demand that the oil industry follow the strictest, safest procedures possible.

Continue reading →

The Baker River and Bob Marley

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Waterfalls, Baker River, Rio Baker, Patagonia, Chile.
Waterfalls, Baker River, Rio Baker, Patagonia, Chile. Click the thumbnail to see a larger version.

Hey Folks

“How many rivers do we have to cross, Before we can talk to the boss, eh?” – Bob Marley, “Burnin and Lootin'”.

Today, Feb 6th, 2010, is the 65th anniversary of Bob Marley’s birthday. Bob is one of my highest musical heroes, and this tune, of all his great songs, is probably the one that I love the most. So, in honor of the great Bob Marley, go a listen to his classic ‘Redemption Song‘ that I recorded a few years back with my friend Steve on vocals.

I thought this photo would be a fitting accompaniment. This photo is of the waterfall on the Baker River, beginning of a series of Class 5 and Class 6 rapids through an unbelievable canyon.

Continue reading →

Photo sale to the CIA

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Winter snowshoeing, boreal forest, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Winter snowshoeing, boreal forest, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

All photo sales are unique, but this one was pretty weird. My phone rings around 5:30am, I kinda half open my eyes, clasp for the phone, miss, knock it off the table beside my bed, try to catch it, bang my head on the guitar standing against the wall, drop the phone, and it crashes to the floor. My go-to response in this situation is pretty simple; I curse. It’s a sin, I know, but it’s a hard habit to break. So I curse again, and then pick up the phone.

Surprisingly, the person on the other end of the phone is still there. I gurgle a quick greeting;

“hello, this is Carl.”

“hello, this is special agent ——– ………. “

Continue reading →

The Vertical World of the St. Elias Mountains

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Vertical frame of a steep wall of the St. Elias mountain Range, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Fluting and deep power on the St. Elias mountains. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Few people realize just how special these mountains are. Everyone knows Denali, of course, and the Himalayas, but the St. Elias Mountains just don’t seem to have caught the public eye like those others. I suspect it’s because they’re full of “seconds.” Mount St. Elias is the second highest mountain in both the US and Canada. Mount Logan is the second highest mountain in North America. We live in a culture of competition where there often isn’t a prize for second place, but that suits me fine. It just means when I go visit, there’s hardly anyone around.

From Sea Level to Eighteen Thousand Feet

Part of what makes Mount St. Elias so commanding is its proximity to the coast. The mountain rises right from the beach to over 18,000 feet. From shore to summit, it is only 2,000 feet shy of its more well-known brother in the Alaska Range, Denali. Because the summit is only 10 miles from the tidewater of Icy Bay, it has as great a vertical relief as any mountain on earth, including the highest peaks in the Himalayas.

Continue reading →

Is Facebook the online version of Walmart?

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A beaver (Castor canadensis) hauling willow back to his lodge, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Beaver, (Castor canadensis), hauling willow back to his lodge for the winter, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

You undoubtedly heard the news; today’s bling is Social Networking. You need to be on Facebook and you need to Tweet (loud and often). You need people to Digg your Flickrworld, you need to be Linked In, Hooked Up and Decked Out. You need to do this because you can’t afford not to, because everyone else is doing it, and because if you want to get ahead in life, to succeed, you need to do what everyone else is doing. Right?

It’s true, so I jumped right in. In the last few months I’ve opened the pages of Facebook and Tweeted my first Tweet, and just this week started a Flickr photo account. Additionally, my guiding business, Expeditions Alaska, is now Linked In. Social networking, I’ve been instructed, is the key to my future success and now, after wrapping up a summer of hiking and backpacking in the mountains, I’m giving it a shot.

It’s an interesting and somewhat challenging process. You don’t need me to write about the ways in which successful folks engage this ‘social networking’, as this has been covered elsewhere far more effectively than I might manage. The topic here is the pervasive, engulfing nature of such sites as Twitter and Facebook, etc. According to their stats page Facebook has more than 300 million active users (irony of the term ‘users’ duly noted).

Continue reading →

Environmental Discourse – a rant

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Trash bottles and construction equipment on construction site, Marietta, Atlanta, Georgia

Trash bottles and construction equipment on construction site, Marietta, Atlanta, Georgia

Hey Folks,

A word (or rant) about ‘pragmatists’.

How often do we hear people cloak their position in this language, smother their position and use the veil of ‘realism’ as a cover for rationale? The phrase “well, sure, that’s too bad, but we need to be pragmatic .. “ is so often merely an attempt to preserve the status quo. Rather than reach a little further, push a little harder, get a little creative, or honestly examine ourselves and the lives we lead, we fall back on language like “realistic” and “pragmatic” – neither of which solve a problem, and, ironically, express a position often seated on neither pragmatism or realism.

Conversations around environmental issues seem to invoke this veil all too often; “we’d love to leave the caribou alone, and let them roam on the coastal plain, but we need to be practical – realistically, we need oil.” An entire platform was built around this excuse for an unwillingness to change that supporters labelled “Wise Use” – it’s nonsense.

Continue reading →

Orcas Killing Sea Otters

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Orca attacking a sea otter pup in Kasitsna Bay, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Here’s an interesting thought; there’s been a lot of discussion in Alaska on wolf and other wildlife management, particularly ‘predator management’ (aren’t ALL animals not predators of some creatures, and prey of others?), and this raises the issue of orcas (Orcinus orca) and northern sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni). In more recent times, for various reasons, it appears that orcas have begun preying more heavily on northern sea otters in the Southwestern part of the otters’ range – South Central Alaska out across the Aleutian Islands. Orcas, “Wolves of the Sea”, appear to be extirpating the sea otter within this Distinct Population Segment (DPS), and this sea otter DPS is now listed as threatened on the Endangered Species Act. So, what of it? Should the ‘wildlife authorities’ fire up the choppers, Cessnas and Supercubs, hire a sniper or 2, and begin an aerial ‘predator control’ program?

Continue reading →