I love the sense of scale this photo gives for the peak in the background. This is one of the peaks known as the 7 fingers, glacier-capped outcroppings towering above the tundra.
Hole in the Wall is a classic old glacial formation. Hole in the Wall sits at roughly 6,000 feet elevation, carved by ancient ice into this dramatic gap in the ridge. The moraine offers endless exploration among house-sized boulders and stunning alpine views. and a great place to walk and explore.
I’ve spent many a day wandering around on the moraine, awestruck at the magnificent jagged cliff faces soaring above me.
Hubbard Glacier calving chunks of ice into Russell Fjord, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the thumbnail to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
Here’s a photo from a trip to southeast Alaska I took, of the Hubbard Glacier calving into Russell Fjord at Gilbert Point, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, near Yakutat. To watch a 250′ high wall of ice crash into the ocean is simply awesome. And I mean awesome like ‘inspires awe’ … absolutely jaw-dropping stuff.
The Hubbard Glacier is one of the few advancing glaciers in Alaska right now, as most are retreating under the glare of warming climate; the cycles of glaciers that calve into the sea are also dependent upon dynamics of the sea floor, as well as other complicated elements.
The glaciers are often at various stages of a retreat-advance cycle, and the Hubbard is currently advancing. A decade or so ago it actually advanced across the very narrow neck of Russell Fjord, known as Gilbert Point, and blocked off the Fjord – drastically affecting the ecosystem there. Climate change is having a huge impact on the land here.
The pressure built up in the Fjord eventually pushed back, and the glacier washed out.
2 red fox (Vulpes vulpes) kits playing and fighting outside a den on the coastal plain, at sunset, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska.
Hey Folks,
Here is a photo from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge I took one evening, around 1am during our Canning River Rafting trip.
These red fox kits were playing just outside their den. I spent quite a bit of time, patiently trying to get close enough to photograph them. These foxes were pretty wary, and if I approached too quickly they’d duck down into their den. The interconnected network of burrows meant they could, and would, popup anywhere, often 50-60 yards away a few minutes later.
Climate Change and Arctic Wildlife
Red foxes appear to be moving further and further north with the warming climate; longer summers and less harsh weather in the winters means they’re able to survive where previously they didn’t.
The red fox is larger than their arctic cousins, the Arctic fox, and are (apparently) starting to cause quite a dent in the population of arctic fox, in some areas. Each year I’ve been to the coastal plain I have seen and photographed fewer arctic foxes than the year before. I’ve also seen more red foxes than previously. Wildlife Photography is an ever changing thing.
With the exception of the occasional Kenai Peninsula hike, all of these treks are off-trail, wilderness backpacking trips, and so there’s no easy way to get across the streams, creeks and rivers that meander through the mountains.
We’ve been spending decades guiding backpacking trips in Alaska, and done more than our fair share of river crossings. For a more thorough article on river crossing safety see here. This blog post will get you restarted, so read on below, but check out the more in depth article I linked above.
A few tips from your friendly Alaska guides that can be useful to heed.
10 Essential River Crossing Safety Tips
1. Cross Small Streams One Person at a Time
For smaller streams, I prefer to cross one person at a time. If by chance someone in the group does stumble, it means we have one wet person to deal with. Everyone else in the group is safe and secure on shore. Things unravel quickly in the backcountry, and that happens most often when something small goes wrong. One person stumbles, takes a dip, someone else reaches to grab them, they go down, knock their partner off balance, and all of a sudden bedlam results. That’s how people get hurt. It can also mean everyone gets wet gear. A much simpler problem to deal with is getting one person out of a creek, drying them off, and loaning them some warm, dry gear that another person in the group has in their pack. One person falling is a hassle – a group falling can be a disaster.
2. Unbuckle Your Pack Before Crossing
For anything over knee-high, unbuckle your hip belt and sternum strap on the backpack.
I thought this video might be both entertaining and useful to visitors to the website. Here, Andy Seeger shows off his fashion-sense and creative ingenuity with ‘Shower Cap Hat’ – a cheap workable solution to protecting your camera gear from bad weather on backpacking trips. Backpacking is ALL about compromise; weight, bulk and space, durability, multi-use, etc … these are things to consider when packing for your trip.
Rather than carry an expensive and heavier camera rain cover, a cheap plastic shower cap fits perfectly. it’s lightweight, packable, durable, light and easily available. What’s more, as Andy says, you can even get water with it. 🙂
Campsite in the Chugach Mountains, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Alaska.
Hey Folks
Here’s a short post with some tips for you on picking a campsite in the backcountry. Why a post about picking a campsite? I think it’s useful because many folks overlook this part of a trip, as most people are (typically) so used to backpacking and hiking on trails in the Lower 48 states that it doesn’t really occur to them until it’s time to set up a tent. And by then, it’s too late.
Your campsite is your home, albeit ever so temporarily, and it’s well worth taking a couple of steps toward setting up home for the evening in a setting that you enjoy. Backpacking all day with a heavy load through rugged but beautiful mountains is hard work, and an important part of the trip, to us, is enjoying a great campsite.
What Makes a Great Backcountry Campsite?
1. Low Impact Camping Principles
Firstly, it needs to be “low impact.” Essentially, low impact campsites are those that don’t leave undue stress on the landscape, or on other visitors to the park, both while you’re camped there and after you’re gone. There are a number of elements that are important, and I’ll stress a few of them here (this is not a comprehensive list).
Mountain Avens and Dwarf Fireweed, Hole in the Wall, Skolai Pass, Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Hey Folks,
It’s always nice when a magazine editor wants your photo for their story, and you get published.
But it’s WAY nicer when you get published in a magazine you enjoy, read and value. This image posted here is in the current edition of backpacker magazine, page 65 – full page vertical, which is nice. The image accompanies an article on backpacking “the Goat Trail”, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.
This was the first route I ever hiked in Wrangell-St. Elias, and definitely a favorite of mine, so having my image chosen to accompany the story represents much more than just another published photo and a check to me.
The Route
It’s also cool for me because a few of my friends are published in the same edition of the magazine. It’d be remiss of me not to mention Bret Edge, and Ron Niebrugge, all of whom are photographers I admire.
This short video was taken on the Skolai Pass Alaska Landscapes Phototour, fall 2009. We had a great trip, some great weather, some great people, and loads of fun. This particular afternoon we put in some miles hiking out along the Russell Glacier toward Mt Bona and Mt Churchill, to awesome peaks 16 000 and 15 000 feet high, respectively.
The Russell Glacier runs right up to the north face of Mount Bona, and inspiring sight.
We had a fantastic hike, enjoyed lunch on the high flat plateau, and then walked back toward camp at Chitistone Pass for the afternoon, and to shoot the evening light on the mountains.
I must say, we had a simply unbelievable evening, with gorgeous alpenglow on the mountain peaks. It was a lot of fun being in the right place at the right time for some photography. That doesn’t happen everyday, but when it does, it makes al those hours and miles worthwhile.
Camped by the Beaufort Sea, Arctic Ocean, at the mouth of the Canning and Staines River.
Hey Folks,
Here’s an image from our campsite on the Arctic Ocean, at the end of the Canning River float trip.
This trip is such a great multi-day raft trip and we can’t wait to get back on it. What makes this trip so special is that we go from the Brooks Mountain Range, starting almost on the Continental Divide, and run all the way out of the mountains, across the coastal plain to the coast, ending at the Arctic Ocean (UPDATE: due a changing landscape, we no longer paddle all the way to the ocean. We float out to the coastal plain, but stop and takeout a little ways short of the coastline. Carl, 2025).
It’s a potpourri of terrain and ecosystems, and really gives a sense of how enormous the place is. We probably cover close to 150 miles or so.
The bird life on the trip is quite incredible, waterfowl such as tundra swans and longtail ducks, loons, eiders and more. Golden eagles and Rough-legged hawks are commonly spotted, and snowy owls as well, from time to time. It’s definitely a bird lover’s treat.
School teacher Natalie keeps up with her reading on the Sanford Plateau backpacking trip, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.
We got an email about backpacking in Alaska. “Never done it, thought about it, and I’d really like to give it a try”. My response was “Well, you’re in the right place”. We mapped out a plan and Natalie came all the way up to Alaska for what was her first backpacking trip. Ever. Never been backpacking anywhere and here she was backpacking in Alaska. That’s some gumption.
Kudos to Natalie. And she crushed it.
We walked the Sanford Plateau in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in July 2009, and the weather was as good as it gets. After dinner up on the Plateau one evening, the sun going down to the north lit up the entire region. Mt. Drum, Mt. Zanetti, Mt. Wrangell, Mt. Sanford, all of them glowing. Four peaks over 12,000 feet, Sanford topping out above 16,000.
Natalie wanted some photos of her reading a book that she could show to her school students when she returned to teaching after the summer. I took a couple of her in front of Mt. Drum, and a few with the awesome west flank of Mt. Sanford as a backdrop. You can also see some of the glacial moraine in the valley below, a remnant of the receding Sanford Glacier.
Natalie wanted some photos of her reading a book she could show her students back home. I took a couple in front of Mt. Drum and a few with the west flank of Sanford as a backdrop. You can see the glacial moraine in the valley below, a remnant of the receding Sanford Glacier.
We hiked across the lower portion of the moraine and climbed up onto the plateau the following morning. It’s a steep climb, but so worth the effort. Once you’re up there, the walking is easy. Wide open tundra in every direction, and views that make you understand why people come backpacking in Alaska in the first place.
This trek was a first for Natalie, she’d never taken on quite a trip like a backpacking trip in Alaska before,
