Arrigetch Peaks, Gates of the Arctic National Park
8 Replies
Tag Archives: Landscapes
Nizina Glacier photo, from above
Ice and dirt patterns, Nizina 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,
A view from above; looking down on to the Nizina Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.
Bob and I hiked around on the Nizina Glacier all afternoon, exploring the expansive icy landscape. Good times indeed, and a myriad different (temporary) photo opportunities. I say “temporary” because many of them were gone the following week when acres of the glacier calved from the main glacier into the lake, fractured, up-ended and disappeared down river. I flew over the Glacier maybe a week after our hike and much of the area we had traversed was gone. Cool stuff.
Glaciers are incredibly dynamic landscapes, and always a blast to explore, travel and photograph. As such they can be a dangerous place to navigate, but so can the streets of Anchorage (especially if you’re on a bicycle); caution is required, certainly, but glaciers are a fascinating subject.
Cheers
Carl
Waterfall photo
Waterfall and sedimentary cliff walls, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. To view a larger version of this photo, please click on the image above.
Hey Folks,
OK OK OK .. another waterfall photo. What can I say? Generally when I visit Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, we do a fly-in backpacking trip, meaning we take a bush plane flight out to the backcountry, and backpack from there. The flights are amazing, and give an incredible view of this landscape, but they’re also a bit of a tease; every flight I make I see different scenes and valleys and peaks and drainages and think to myself how much I’d love to visit this one or that.
One of the big ones on that list is waterfalls; we fly by dozens of them, every summer, and I think how nice it’d be to get a chance to shoot some of them sometime. Once we land, up high in the subalpine, we rarely visit such waterfalls at all, as we tend to hike where the water accumulates, rather than down lower where the water has collected into larger waterways, creating larger waterfalls. So when I got a chance to shoot a couple this spring, I jumped at it.
This is another angle of the waterfall I posted a photo of last month. I spent a bit of time at this waterfall, trying to find some angle that lent itself to a pleasing image. it was a lot harder to do than might appear; there was an incredible volume of fallen rock and debris in the river channel below the falls, and the small pool into which the falls tumble wasn’t visible from many angles at all; meaning the bottom of the falls would disappear in virtually every shot. This angle was one of my favorites, giving an intimate look at this stream of water shooting down from above.
Like so many of the landscape features in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, this waterfall is officially ‘unnamed’; what do you think might be an appropriate name for this waterfall?
Cheers
Carl
Mount Bona and alpenglow
Russell Glacier and Mount Bona and Mount Churchill, alpenglow at sunset, and an array of wildflowers in 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 an oldie but a goodie; well, not really an ‘oldie’ in the sense of a photo I took a long time ago, but a recent version of a favorite scene of mine; Mt. Bona, Mt. Churchill, the University Peaks and the Russell Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. I shot a very similar composition to this a few years ago on a Skolai Pass Photo Tour in the fall.
We very nearly didn’t get this scene last week. After a long backpack (made even longer by twice running a grizzly sow with her 3 cubs) we made camp and had a well – deserved supper. Tired, I watched as the light started to get better in the late evening, and thought it might be worth a hike a little further over toward this scene. In part because I wanted to shoot the alpenglow, but also because I wasn’t sure if the weather would hold until the next day, and I so wanted the 2 people on the trip to get to see this view while it was clear; I convinced one of the folks to join me for a walk, and we headed off toward the glacier.
When we arrived, the sun was still well up, and the light not nearly so warm. We made some photos, scouted out possible compositions, and waited around for the evening light; instead, the light faded; distant clouds behind us blocked the fading sun from the mountains, and the light dimmed. I thought it might be worth heading back toward camp in the hope of maybe catching some colorful clouds at sunset. We walked about 10 minutes in that direction and starting shooting some images in that area. I turned and saw the light in this direction start to glow again, and knew it would be a good idea to head back.
I had to hustle back got back just in time to catch the last of the alpenglow. Having already been here earlier, I knew exactly the foreground I wanted, which lens and composition I wanted, and this shot was merely a matter of pointing and shooting.
I guess in some ways this scene isn’t anything new, as I’ve shot almost from this very spot before; but it’s not a bad place to spend a nice afternoon, and even make some photos all the same.
Cheers
Carl
Waterfall and sunset at Skolai Pass
A waterfall, known as Roane Falls, glows in the light of a colorful sunset. Near Chitistone Pass, looking toward Skolai Pass, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
Roane Falls near Chitistone Pass, is a little known, and even less photographed, waterfall in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. This is another image from the same sunset in the previous image here.
We were on a hiking trip in the area last week, and were treated to some gorgeous weather (along with the obligatory nasty weather as well); Â The days were well spent walking, talking, eating, and tooling around on the tundra, exploring a glacier, watching wildlife and enjoying this spectacular place. Skolai Pass in the summer is about as grand a place as I know of.
So you won’t find Roane Waterfall on a map, but longtime readers of this blog might remember how it got it’s name. If not, use the search function in the sidebar here and dig around a little. 🙂 This waterfall has appeared on this blog before!
I shot this with multiple exposures, then blended them together in the computer using a combination of the automated HDR tool in Photoshop (CS4) and also manually masking layers of the original frames. I find the HDR program often adds a funky look to the colors, particularly in the foreground, that I can’t seem to properly correct.
I added very little saturation to the sky at all; in fact, I left the waterfalls a little earlier than I should’ve because the sky got even more intense after I moved up the hillside to the location of the previous photo linked above.
Folks often ask whether I bring a tripod on my backpacking trips for photography, due the extra weight and ‘stuff’ factor; I can’t remember the last time I did not bring a tripod on a backpacking trip. Though I don’t always use it for every photo I take, it’s a critical part of my photography; when the light and moments provide the most spectacular opportunities, they almost always require a tripod. There’s be no way I could’ve made an image like this one without the three-legged camera holder.
Cheers
Carl
Sunset over Skolai Pass
Sunset over the University Range
Sunset over the University Range and Chitistone River, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
A shot from a recent hike down the Chitistone Canyon; this frame looks south toward the University Mountain Range and the Chitistone Glacier. We’d hiked across the Goat Trail, a series of steep scree slopes that require a little attention, and made camp on a nice little plateau high above the Chitistone River. Dinner on the hillside and an evening with a spectacular view made a great end to a great day’s hiking.
The trip was a blast. We had good weather for the bulk of it, which cleared the way for great big views. We saw all the major mountains in the area, including the massive Mt. Bona and Mt Churchill, the Grand Parapet and the Twaharpies. We also saw a gaggle of grizzly bears (7 total, including a sow with 3 spring cubs), a fox, ground squirrels, golden eagles, ravens, ptarmigans, Dall sheep, mountain goats, and myriad ground nesting migratory birds.
Flowers were in full bloom and we had a good time with the guide book reviewing images and identifying as many as we could. Verna Pratts’s great guidebook on Alaska wildflowers is a great reference. For the most part we figured all of them, but a couple of mystery flowers had us all scratching our heads.
Mostly though, we hiked, napped, looked around, joked and chattered our way through a truly wonderful landscape; mountains and glaciers piled on top of mountains and glaciers. Good times indeed. And I’m heading back to the area this week for more of the same.
Cheers
Carl
Mount Saint Elias Photo
Mount Saint Elias, 18 008′ high, catches the last of the sun’s rays for the day, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska – aerial photo. The rocky islands, or outcroppings, in the foreground are called Nunataks. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks
Mount Saint Elias is possibly one of the great unsung heroes of American mountains, possibly all the world. Towering 18 008′ tall, the mountain rises right from sea level to its lofty summit. The Saint Elias coastal range are the world’s tallest coastal mountains, and Mount Saint Elias is their crown jewel. It’s also the crown jewel of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, the nation’s largest national park, and finest preserve of wildness and wilderness.
From the north, Mount Saint Elias is bordered by the Bagley Icefield, largest non polar icefield in North America at nearly 130 miles long. There is simply no end to the superlatives for this massif.
This photo is from the end of an amazing flight-seeing trip to the Saint Elias range. Absolutely jaw-dropping stuff. We didn’t arrive back to the landing strip until dark; super was late this night. But the chance to be in the presence of such magnificence is a treat to be savored as long as possible. I was pretty glad to have had the opportunity.
Mount Saint Elias is the 2nd tallest mountain in the nation, the 2nd tallest mountain in Canada (it sits right on the border). I’d be surprised if more than the smallest fraction of visitors to the region ever even see the mountain, however, simply because so few people make the trip. It’s not a roadside venture at all. But oh wow, oh so worth it.
Cheers
Carl
Mount Sanford Photo
Black and white photo of Mount Sanford, one of the highest peaks in the Wrangell Mountains, at dawn, from a small frozen kettle pond. Winter snow creates patterns on the frozen lake. Mt. Sanford, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the thumbnail above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
Here’s an image of Mount Sanford, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, I took a while ago, that I converted to black and white in photoshop. I shot this after the alpenglow had faded, and the sun rose high enough in the sky to light up not just Mount Sanford’s massive peak, but the entire floor of the Copper River Basin.
It’s very easy to be tempted to pack up and head off after the alpenglow on a mountain wanes; I often find the light immediately following the alpenglow to be  unappealing to me. The sky has a weird yellowish tint to it, and the contrast between the dark, shaded foreground and the brightly lit peak is too great to really photograph well; for me, anyway. Continue reading
The Wrangell Mountains
Willow Lake and the Wrangell Mountains, wintertime, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska. From left to right, Mt Drum, Mt Sanford, Mt Zanetti, Mt Wrangell. Â Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks
Well, maybe not all of them, but some of the stars, for sure.
Mt Drum, Mt Sanford, Mt Zanetti and Mt Wrangell, viewed from Willow Lake, along the Richardson Highway. It’s not always this clear, however, and so many of the people who drive by this scene have no idea what they’re missing. Perhaps more amazingly, when it IS clear, some people drive right by without so much as a glance.
Cheers
Carl