Tag Archives: Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Backpacking Tebay lakes, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Backpacking near tebay lakes, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

hey Folks,

Here’s what happens when the guide lets someone else lead. Sergei, aka, Borat, was confident of his ability to lead us to our next campsite. he’d been in this area with me last year, and figured he knew the way. So I said ‘sure, you go on ahead’, we’ll follow you. We were aiming to stay on the southern side of this ridge, staying well below the crest, traversing around to our campsite. Sergei pushed higher and higher t every opportunity, and before ya know it, we came over the top, looking toward Tebay Lakes to the north of us. Jodee’s standing here, looking around asking herself “What The Heck?” and the rest of the group had collapsed on the ground.

🙂

Well, that’s not QUITE the truth, but Sergei did lead us up this ridge – and it was a pretty sweet spot to hang out for a while.

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Tana Glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Broken calving ice at the terminus of the Tana Glacier, near the Bagley Icefield, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Here’s another aerial photo I took, right before we landed at Ross Green Lake. This is the terminus of the Tana Glacier. This glacier sits just northwest of Mount St. Elias.

It used to be possible to hike from Ross Green Lake, east of here (to the left) across the glacier, and around to Iceberg Lake. As you can see from this photo, the Tana Glacier has become an array of crevasses – not something one can easily, or safely, hike across.

The route hasn’t been hiked in a few years. I wish I had an opportunity this trip to explore it a little more, and possibly find a new route across. It looked to me, from the air, like it was possible slightly to the north of here, but I can’t say without hiking it first, or at least a good look from the ground – from the air, in a place as vast as this, perspective is everything, and things are often not as they appear to be; the scale is so hard to gauge.

I like the story this photo tells – of the place of ice and water on rock, and how this stuff works. Look at the rock in the foreground, and the debris surrounding it, torn, cracked, splintered and shattered by power of the ice and a little gravity. In the background, you can clearly see a medial moraine, running down between the seam of 2 glaciers that run together off the great Bagley Icefield to create the Tana Glacier.

I did get to hike, one afternoon, down from our camp to the Tana Glacier and walk around it a bit. it’s amazing being on the ice. I’ll post some photos from that hike later.

Cheers

Carl

Hubbard Glacier Photo, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Hubbard Glacier and Disenchantment Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

hey Folks,

Well, this one is not from our last trip. This photo is of the Hubbard Glacier, from my trip in June down to SouthEast Alaska. The Hubbard is a well-known glacier, because it’s one of the most calvingest glaciers in the world. The Hubbard Glacier is over 70 miles long, reaching from it’s beginnings along the face of Mt. Logan, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, at Disenchantment Bay and the Russell Fjord. Lots of cruise ships pull in for a view, but because of the abundant icebergs in the bay, they keep their distance. Icebergs the size of a 10-story building frequently fall from the face of the Hubbard Glacier, not something one wants to be to close to.

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Hubbard Glacier photo and Disenchantment Bay, Alaska

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Disenchantment Bay and the Hubbard Glacier, near Yakutat, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

So ya can’t go to Yakutat without a trip up to get some Hubbard Glacier photos.

I wanted to do a flight-seeing trip to shoot this glacier, but the light wasn’t that great. And when the light was great, I was out at the beach. I need to get back down there and shoot some stuff of this glacier from the air to complement the images I got from lower down.

The Hubbard is one of the most visited glaciers in Wrangell-St. Elias – you can’t really do a book on Wrangell-St. Elias National Park without at least some photos from the Hubbard Glacier.

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Mount Saint Elias from Icy Bay, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Mount Saint Elias from Icy Bay, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska.
Mount Saint Elias from Icy Bay, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

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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Sea kayak, Taan Fjord, Icy Bay, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Sea kayak on the shore of Taan Fjord, Icy Bay, at sunset, with Mt. St. Elias, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska.
Sea Kayaking trip to Icy Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

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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Mount Saint Elias photo, Icy Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Nootka lupine cover an island in the Taan Fjord, Icy Bay. Mt. St. Elias rises in the background. Icy Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.
Nootka lupine cover an island in the Taan Fjord, Icy Bay. Mt. St. Elias rises in the background. Icy Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

As impressive a mountain as there is, in my opinion, Mount Saint Elias, as seen from Icy Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

The mountain is actually on the border of Alaska and the Yukon Territory, Canada, so it’s not only the 2nd highest mountain in the US, it’s also the 2nd highest mountain in Canada. Mt Logan, 25 miles to the north, is the highest mountain in Canada. The peak of Mount Saint Elias is a mere 10 miles from the shores of the Taan Fjord in Icy Bay, which means the vertical relief, which I spoke about yesterday, is huge.

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Oystercatcher, Icy bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Oystercatcher, Icy bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

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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Male Barrow’s Goldeneye, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Male Barrow’s Goldeneye, calling, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Guess who should be back tomorrow? Here’s a hint: you might get to see something besides birds on here real soon. Of course I’m writing this post 2 weeks in advance, so there’s a chance you might not, too. But by the time this goes online, I should be just about back from 2 weeks in ……?

I ain’t telling.

So here’s the male of the Barrow’s Goldeneye again. I liked this image because his bill is wide open and he’s looking at me. I had just moved slightly, where I was more visible to him, and it was as if the bird was saying ‘dude, I so TOTALLY see you’. This was one of the last images I made of this duck. What a cool bird.

Male Barrow’s Goldeneye, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Female Barrow’s Goldeneye, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

Female Barrows Goldeneye, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Here’s the female of the 2 Barrow’s Goldeneye ducks I photographed recently. I couldn’t have asked for a more co-operative pair. They were surprisingly tolerant. I didn’t have a blind setup or anything, just slowly and gingerly made my way around the pond, through the woods, hid behind a small bush, and waited for a few hours, and they gradually started coming over my way from time to time, where I could get some images.

It’s wild to see the different between the male and the female of the species. The male of the species, in breeding plumage, is way sharper looking than the drab female. This is pretty common in numerous species, but particularly birds.

Female Barrow’s Goldeneye, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Male Barrow’s Goldeneye, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska

Male Barrow’s Goldeneye, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Here’s the best of the duck opportunities I had. The Barrow’s goldeneye.

A male and a female were hanging out at this small pond, and I spent a number of hours there trying to get some images. ducks spend a lot of time floating around on ponds with their head tucked under the wings sleeping. ‘Dabbler’s” they’re called – well these ducks did more sleeping than dabbling.

Great Horned Owlets, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska

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Great Horned Owl chicks, perched on a spruce tree, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Yep, birds again.

Here are 2 of the 3 Great Horned Owl chicks I got to photograph recently.

I could never manage to find all 3 perched together. I did a a few images of some of them individually. I also never managed to find them in any kind of decent light, so had to shoot at the higher end of the ISO range on my camera – which is a total disaster. The D2x is terrible at higher ISOs (anything over 250, IMO), which makes life miserable late in the day for shooting wildlife – the best time, of course, to find wildlife.

So, these little guys are probably flying around the park now, racing each other through the boreal forest as they swoop, silently, down on the snowshoe hares that are really abundant right now.

Great Horned Owl chicks, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.
Cheers

Carl