Hey Folks,
After paddling back from the island I wrote about the other day, the light got warmer. The lupine weren’t as impressive back in this area, but still pretty cool. My tent wasn’t quite as close as this photo implies, but this was pretty much the view out my tent door for the night. Suh-weet!
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Hey Folks,
So here’s the beginning of where this trip gets fun.
This is one of the last photos I took this particular evening. The day had turned into a gorgeous afternoon, and I had a blast. A nice supper round the corner from this point, with this view of Mt. St. Elias over the Taan Fjord of Icy Bay is pretty hard to beat.
As the light got nicer and nicer, I was puttering around trying to make some photos. It makes for a long day here in the Alaska summer – this one here was close to midnight. My last 3 shots of the day were this one, a vertical composition of the same scene, and then a landscape image of this area without the boat.
Then I went to bed.
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Hey Folks,
So why go to Icy Bay?
Well, firstly because it’s such an amazing place. The scenery is superb – National Geographic list Icy Bay as one of the world’s top 10 treasures.
Secondly, I’m working on a book on Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Icy Bay is in the park.
Thirdly, I hadn’t been there before. 4th, the natural history of the place is so unique. Icy Bay is a relatively new place, with the recent retreat of 3 glaciers, the Guyot, the Tindall and the Yahtse, there are now 4 fjords, filled with the cool waters of the northern Pacific Ocean.
When the area was first explored by European ships 150-200 years ago, Icy Bay didn’t even exist. John Muir, the great naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, visited the area a little over 100 years ago, and Icy Bay didn’t exist.
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Hey Folks,
Here’s another photo of Mt. St. Elias, taken from the same flight as my previous 2 posts. I’ll post a couple more on this series of aerial photos of Wrangell St. Elias National Park over the next few days. Mt. St. Elias stands 18,008 feet (5,489 metres), and rises almost from the coastal shoreline of Taan Fjord in Icy Bay.
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