Aug 18, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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Well, it does make coming down a whole lot faster and definitely a whole lot more fun, but that’s not why. The Arctic is covered by ribbons of creeks and rivers flowing fast and deep in many places. There’s one at the base of the mtn we’re going to climb so to get to that mtn, we need a boat to cross the creek. Actually, there were three boats in the back of that truck and a whole lot more. But this is just another good example of why I always work with biologists. What seems like a minor detail is in reality a biggie because without that boat, we weren’t getting to the mtn and our project. The details of planning from tent to pad to gear to just getting from point A to B are all so important to the success of a single click!
Photo captured by D3x, 18AF on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 18, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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This is the scene the next morning when we awoke. Typical Alaska fall skies, even though it’s August, they are gray if not falling on you. Knowing this, the one smart thing I did was take our bigger 4 men Kelty backpacking tent. The other tent is Jake’s two men. I took the larger tent because knowing it would be wet, I wanted space to hang and get clothes dry. Also need to have all gear in the tent and I wanted space to work. You can see the large Pelican we shipped up to AK, it contained the 200-400s, tents and other misc gear. Once thing new this trip were the new Therm-a-rest NeoAir pads. My old Therm-a-rest which is 28yrs old and still works great has one issue, a big issue when you camp by plane. And that is it takes up a whole lot of space! Well the new NeoAir rolls up smaller than a water bottle and inflates to nearly four inches tall! Jake & I didn’t think that once we used it, we could roll it up to the same small size but low and behold, we could and it did. Great find, thanks Kevin!
The other thing you might notice is the orange cord going around the tents. That’s an electric bear fence the biologists wanted to test since it was brand new. Working as we were and as the biologists do all over Alaska, these things have become quite popular and many swear by them. Even though there were no bears anywhere near us, it went up anyways. Was it tested you ask? Only by us silly humans who wanted to see if two D batteries actually but out any zap. It was like Homer, we couldn’t stop touching it and going ow, ow, ow, ow.
And that mountain behind you, that’s what we would be climbing shortly.
Photo captured by D3x, 18AF on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 18, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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I’ve received a whole bunch of correspondence asking where on the North Slope did I do to photograph Grizzly Bears. While they are there as you can see here, they are not really common or plentiful. Furthermore, they are interior bears and other than perhaps one or two prime Blueberry patches (and man where they good, did some grazing ourselves), interior bears don’t gather like the coastal griz do at salmon strong holds. Nope, I wasn’t up on the North Slope and in the Arctic for photograph Grizzly or Polar Bears. What we were working on? Ah, not yet, still gotta work up to it.
As far as this little family group, they were on the south side of Atigun Pass eating berries when we came up on them. Eagle eye Jake saw them on his side of the truck (everything was on his side) and brought everything to a halt. This photo was made through the truck cab, around the other two guys in the back seat to the bears. You could tell we were all a little jaded because after asking out loud a couple of biological questions and making some other comments, we drove off to let the bears munch away. Don’t get me wrong, darn cool to see but it wasn’t what we were after and still has a ways to drive. It does show though that even on such a long drive as the Haul Road, traveling with a camera and lens in your lap and ready to go is a must to make the most of every opportunity!
Photo captured by D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film.
Aug 17, 2010 | Landscape Photography
Seriously, when we pulled off the Haul Road and headed to the base of Slope Mtn which would be our home for the week, this is what greeted us as we stepped out of the truck. Now you could take this in one of three ways.
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The romantic way is that the rainbow is a sign of great things to come. Reality is that it’s fall on the North Slope and it always rains. Or that even if it does rain, there is something the end of the storm worth weathering the storm for. You’ll just have to hang around to see what this omen comes to mean for us.
Photo captured D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 17, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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If you’ve never been there and let’s face it, most of the sane planet hasn’t been, then you wouldn’t know just what a vast expanse it is above the Arctic Circle. Bringing back the immensity of the North Slope in a thumbnail on a blog is a challenge. Here’s my first attempt. To the right you see a little line heading off over the horizon. That’s the Alaska Pipeline, a pipe ten foot in diameter that is fifteen feet off the ground. If you get out your binoculars out and look on the horizon on the left, there’s a big rig moving up the highway. And lost behind those wicked clouds is the Brooks range. And this is just a ten mile vista of the landscape. Yeah, it’s just that huge!
Photo captured by D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 17, 2010 | Landscape Photography
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As Jake posted, we ventured north of the Arctic Circle this trip. The was Jake’s first but not last time to the far north. The Haul Road also known as the Dalton Highway is known by many now because of the History Channel’s series Ice Road Truckers. Our trip coincided with the start of fall on the North Slope and while there is no ice on the road, the truckers are still present. And just like our own home town where road work is crammed into the short summer season, the same is done on the Haul Road. So if our truck up the road wasn’t going to be long enough, we were stuck in a couple of construction zone stops. This is at the base of the infamous Atigun Pass north bound. You can see the road take off up the hill behind the trucks. Notice how steep that road is? The engineering of the Haul Road is amazing and that in itself can keep the mind busy while you truck up the road. Let the mind get beyond the road and the landscape easily lets you come up with another meaning for the Haul Road.
Photo captured by D3x, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film
PS…take a note of the road bed. Just as Jake mentioned, it’s a blatter breaker!
