Tag Archives: Wrangell – St. Elias National Park

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 →

Nizina Glacier photo, from above

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Nizina Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

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

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

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

Carl on Google Plus

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Hiking in snow, Mt Jarvis, Wrangell-St. Elias, Alaska.

Backpacker hiking in snow near Mt Jarvis, Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I’ve signed up an account with Google Plus, and would like to invite all of you Google Plus users to ad me to your groups and lists there. I’ve only just started my account there, but it looks like a great network. There are some fantastic photographers on there, among some of my favorites; Guy Tal, Ron Niebrugge, Michael Gordon, Gary Crabbe Dan Mitchell, Jim Goldstein and a host of others; some really great images on there, so if you haven’t got an account yet, it might be worth checking it out, if for no other reason than to follow the work of folks like this.

My Google Plus page no longer exists.

Cheers

Carl

PS: Oh, and the photo above really has nothing to do with Google Plus; it’s from a hike I did last fall up to Mt Jarvis, and just happens to be a shot i like a lot. Of me, of course!