Parks, refuges, preserves & special places.
On Sunday, July 25, my eyes slowly opened at 4:00 AM. The temperature read 33 degrees. If you have spent any time in the outdoors in Alaska, such a chilly temperature in July is a telltale sign that the skies above are clear. I checked the sky (the first thing every landscape photographer does upon…
On the final evening of my Marsh fork/Canning river trip in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, after a wild and windy storm squall of rain passed through, the skies cleared to the north and that long sought after golden summer sunshine poured across the landscape. The mosquitoes however, were abusive. After setting up camp in…
I spent 11 days in July floating the Marsh fork of the Canning river, which is one of the many rivers flowing north out of the Brooks Range and into the Beaufort Sea. The Canning river marks the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is substantial in size at 19 million acres.…
I’ve had a canister of bear pepper spray for a long time and fortunately have never used it. Before replacing it with a new one, I decided to see what kind of spray range it retained. It functioned surprisingly well, although I did not test the efficacy of the solution. The new one came with…
This last June marked my second visit to the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, a monstrous 23 million acre area on Alaska’s north slope. It was originally set aside by president Harding as an emergency oil supply for the US Navy. The average person knows little about the region, and it is huge. Some consider…
A photographer’s schedule in June, in the arctic, is a complete function of weather and daylight. The blue cloudless skies become a curse, at least until about midnight when the warm wash of light drips across the landscape, and even then, some sort of cloud action helps grab some color in the sky. I unfortunately…
My blogging has been slim due to a 12 day river trip in the arctic, and now with time in the office I can play catch up on a few stories and photos worth sharing of my recent ventures…. Utukok Uplands, National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. While treading the homeland of grizzly bears, a shrewd and…
There is much to write about regarding my late June trip to the arctic, and little time to do so due to another scheduled photo trip in which I’ll float a river out of the Brooks range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. More about that upon my return. Looking back on the last week,…
My trip to the high western arctic unfolded broadly under the never setting sun. With a short turn around between another venture back to the arctic for a river trip, I’ll have some photos to share but little time to write. The birds nesting in the tundra region were continual companions in a very solitary…
The road that transects Denali National Park crosses 4 mountain passes and many river drainages. This is astonishing for a road that is only 90 miles long, and one of the reasons that majestic views are not lacking on that journey. And, this lends to photos of wildlife contextually placed in this wilderness mountain setting.…