Posts Tagged ‘Wrangell – St. Elias National Park’

Mt. Sanford

Monday, September 19th, 2011
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

Thursday, September 15th, 2011
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

Sunday, September 11th, 2011
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.  (more…)

Nizina Glacier photo, from above

Friday, August 19th, 2011
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

Monday, August 15th, 2011
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

Waterfall, Wrangell – St. Elias National Park

Thursday, August 11th, 2011
Waterfall and boreal spruce forest, Nizina River drainage, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

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Winter snowshoe and ski trip

Sunday, August 7th, 2011
Winter travel through the boreal forest, in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Hiking on snowshoes through the snow-covered taiga, white spruce forest in winter.

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Carl on Google Plus

Monday, August 1st, 2011
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 is here.

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!

Mount Bona and alpenglow

Sunday, July 31st, 2011
Mount Bona, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

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

Sunset over Skolai Pass

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
Sunset, Skolai Pass, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

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