AUWPS 5 - Spencer Glacier · Placer River · Winner Creek

Natural Habitat:

[W]e'll explore the area's scenic splendor on a gentle float trip down the Placer River into Spencer Lake, choked with icebergs, before returning to Girdwood for the evening.

We took a rainy morning hike into the temperate rainforest on the bottom end of the Winner Creek Trail before traveling to Spencer Lake for our float trip through the glacial lake of the Spencer Glacier, a piedmont glacier near Girdwood.

After being rowed through the icebergs on the lake, we rafted down the Placer River to our rendezvous with the Alaska Railroad train that brought us back to our Magic Bus.

Back at the Alyeska Resort, a few of us intrepid souls did a downhill shuttle hike of the entire Winner Creek Trail, which included a white-knuckle canyon crossing involving the use of a hand tram. We scrambled around on some slippery rocks in hopes of catching a water-flow long exposure. And a ground squirrel wanted to show us his ability to nom.

Alyeska - Winner Creek - Spencer Glacier



Placer River Rafting Videoclip Montage
COMING SOON

AUWPS 4 - Kantishna to Girdwood via Wasilla

Natural Habitat:

Depart Denali by rail on a journey through Alaska’s rugged interior, over Broad Pass and along the Susitna River. Photograph panoramic landscapes from the train as vistas of endless wild country unfurl in every direction. 

From Anchorage we drive south to Alyeska Resort, Alaska’s premier ski area, where a host of exciting summer activities is offered. Set in a lush glacial valley in the Chugach Range, Alyeska offers nature and luxury in tandem. 

Explore the northernmost temperate rain forest in North America surrounding our lodge, or board the tram to the summit, where you may choose to dine at Seven Glaciers, a 5-star restaurant with views of the ice-bound peaks and Turnagain Arm far below.

It takes a few hours to navigate Denali's Park Road from Kantishna to the park entrance. From there, we motored to the train depot and boarded the southbound Alaska Railroad train, heading toward Wasilla. We were Gold-Starring it in a dome car while the landscapes rolled by.

From Wasilla, we jumped back onto our Magic Bus with our trusty driver, Dot. We motored down to Girdwood and the Alyeska Resort.

Kantishna to Girdwood

AUWPS 3 + Optional Denali Flightseeing

Though I hadn't made a proper reservation on my own, I was able to get in on a flight seeing tour after dinner, thanks to John at North Face Lodge. In general, flightseeing is not cheap, long, or luxuriously comfortable. And you don't want to miss it when it's available.

Our Kantisha Air Taxi pilot flew us around Denali's Wickersham Wall. We also got great views of the glaciers below Denali's north face. You get a vivid three-dimensional sense of the mountainous terrain from the air: you're moving inside the landscape.

I shot the Nikon D800E with the Nikon AF-S 24-70mm at f/4, 1/1000th and auto-ISO. I also used a polarizer (to saturate colors and to reduce window reflections. If I were to do it again, I'd dare to jump to f/5.6 as the ISO never got out of half with available light at f/4. But remember, I needed to keep the shutter fast (shooting from a moving vehicle rife with vibration), and I was casting out half my light using a polarizer. But I wouldn't want to be without the polarizer for reflection elimination and sky deepening. Photography is an unending series of compromises!

Denali Flightseeing Stills (You are definitely going to want to click into full screen on this slide show!)


Denali Flightseeing Videoclip Montage
COMING SOON

AUWPS 3 - Eielson Area and Denali Sunset

TUNDRA PICNIC with the NatHab travelers. Photo by Eric Rock. [And hey! No jokes about the length of the bus: none of North Face Lodge's busses are as long as a standard school bus.]

The overnight weather cleared the air and we awoke to our first sights of Denali from the lodge. Clouds overtook it during breakfast, but this was typical (we were told), and there was reason to hope The Great One would reappear in the evening.

Today's foray took us to points further east along the park road, to the Eielson Visitor Center and beyond. We came across caribou and ground squirrels in addition to arctic flowers and birds. We lunched just off the Park Road: Tundra Picnic.

When we returned, we were set to go two miles up the road to get reflection shots of the still-visible Mt. McKinley. I was so buzzed from the flight seeing (see next post) that when I loaded up for the road trip, I remembered all my photo gear—including tripod—except my camera. Our kind NatHab guide, Eric, let me shoot his Olympus OM-D. What a guy!

Upon our return to the lodge, I was possessed to trudge across the spongy tundra ("spunjra") and commune with the mosquitos so as to acquire a Moon Over Denali shot. Sometimes you put in a great deal of effort to be rewarded with a stunning keeper. This was not one of those times.

Eielson Area and Denali Sunset

AUWPS 2 - Kantishna and the Wonder Lake Area

Natural Habitat:

Denali National Park, larger than the state of Massachusetts, is one of the world’s great wilderness preserves. Denali, which means 'The Great One,' is the native Athabascan name for Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America at 20,320 feet. Its icy summit towers over the tundra and taiga below the provides habitat for grizzlies, wolves, moose and caribou.  

Every photographer who travels to Alaska wants photos of the elusive mountain, and we position you for the best odds of getting them. From our historic lodge base 90 miles inside the park, we are much closer to the peak than most visitors, especially those on organized tours, ever get.  

Here we have time and space to encounter and photograph the wilderness, away from hordes of other people. Hiking, nature walks, biking, fishing and optional flightseeing—a must for photographers—are available.  

The climate and environment of Alaska's interior at this latitude is harsh much of the year, and it takes a vast amount of habitat to sustain animals—wildlife encounters thus tend to be fleeting, though always thrilling!

North Face Lodge offers guests strenuous hikes, moderate hikes, and forays each day. Our merry band of photo tourists stuck to the forays, where our bus motored us out to various points of interest and we piled out for short hikes from there. Today we stayed "close" to the lodge: the western length of the road to Kantishna. Before departing for the day, you pack a lunch from a prep table at the lodge.

We had occasion to walk on tundra today. Wow—not what I was expecting. Like walking on a mattress, except you really never know where your feet are as they descend into to wet underbrush. But that bounciness. So strange. Our eagle-eyed guide spotted a wood frog—the kind that can be frozen into a deathlike trance and then be thawed back into life. We also shot some colorful flora and not-so-charismatic medi-fauna. Generally a relaxing day.

Kantishna and Wonder Lake Area



Upon returning to the lodge, we enjoyed a delicious dinner while a thunderstorm seemed to be coming in. Several of us set up cameras looking east, toward the storm. But the lightning fizzled, so we came away empty-handed. If you wish to avoid empty-handedness, do not take up photography.

Hard lesson of the day: Apple stopped Camera Raw updates for users of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion between the release of the Nikon D810 and the D750. These releases were weeks apart. But I cannot open/see files from the D750 I rented as a second/backup body on my Mountain Lion powered MacBook Pro (2012). I'm not keen to "advance" into the post-Jobs, California-themed OS's considering the devastation wrought upon the once-proud QuickTime and even prouder Keynote. I'll need to buy a new Mac before I'm forced into Yosemite/El Capitan. (And I have to keep my 2008 MBP to access my old Canvas files… but I digress.) Nikon's raw files are not "beyond" the computational prowess of Mountain Lion, this is just Apple trying to force users into the latest OS by forcing obsolescence on older OS's.

AUWPS 1 - Fairbanks to Kantishna (Deep inside Denali)

We ambled out of Fairbanks' Springhill Suites and into our bus motor coach to Denali. The air was still hazy with smoke as we motored down the (George) Parks Highway (AK-3). Our first stop was in the wee town of Nenana, where the Nenana River flows into the Tanana River. (Rivers known by their native names end in "na", an Athabaskan suffix for "river".)

Nenana holds the annual Ice Classic betting pool wherein one can purchase bids on the date when the winter ice on the Tanana finally breaks up, allowing the river to flow freely. A large, four-legged "tripod" is placed at the midpoint of the river and is tethered to a clock. When the structure sinks, the time/date is recorded. Winners (with the correct date) can walk away with significant sums of money.

Our next stop was in Healy, sometimes known as Glitter Gulch. It's a border town outside Denali National Park with accommodations for a sizable number of travelers. Seemed larger than Zion's Springdale and much larger than the area around Ruby's outside Bryce. We lunched at a The Grande Denali Lodge. Amusing road signs on the switchback road up to the lodge and spectacular views once there.

Then it was into Denali and onto a bus bound for our Kantishna accommodations: The North Face Lodge. No, it's not affiliated with the outerwear company; it has a view of Mt. McKinley's (Denali's) north face when there is visibility.



We saw many things along the way, including a wolf who posed beside the road. Wolf sitings are rare, and this one appeared at Mile 7 (of 90), well before the pavement turned to dirt. We learned a new word from our driver/guide: the washboard sections of the graded dirt road were referred to as "stutter bumps". We arrived at North Face after 8pm. It was a long day of travel.

Fairbanks to Kantishna


After all the guests left the lodge building and were nestled in their rooms, I set up a time-lapse to record the weather overnight. It was Alaska in the summer, so it wouldn't be dark for too long between midnight and 3am. Unpredictable microclimate! And look for an early-rising member or our NatHab troupe: half of "Team Swede".

Kantishna North Face Overnight Time Lapse

AUWPS 0 - Fairbanks and The Museum of the North

AUWPS: Alaska Ultimate Wildlife Photo Safari



Day -1: I flew Alaska Airlines from Sacramento to Fairbanks with a stop in Seattle. Alaska Airlines is good on legroom and adjustable headrests, but lousy on boarding: as a infrequent non-elite flyer sitting in a row numbered 5-19, I always boarded last. People needing extra time, first class, active service military, elite milage club members, rows 20-35 (or whatever the highest row number was)—all were on board before me. There was always a good chance that there would be no overhead luggage space left by the time I boarded. And I was not keen to gate-check my photo gear.

Despite a long delay in Seattle, Natural Habitat's guide was at the airport in Fairbanks to transfer participants to our hotel. Unexpectedly nice! Somewhat unnerving though, was the smoke in the air. Alaska was very much on fire. And in that much uninhabited wild space, fires are left to burn themselves out.

Day 0: A few of us early arrivals took advantage of Eric's (our guide) offer to drop us off at the University of Alaska/Fairbanks' Museum of the North. Quite a place! The architecture is modern; some say it looks like a while whale. Eric refers to it lovingly as The Beluganheim.

Day 0 - The Museum of the North

Upon returning to town, we enjoyed lunch at The Crepery, a highly rated crêpe restaurant across the street from our hotel. It was the #1 restaurant in Fairbanks, according to TripAdvisor.

Day 1: We gathered for a pre-departure briefing before breaking bread for dinner at The Springhill Suites' restaurant, Lavelle's Bistro. It was our first official bonding experience: couple from California, a couple from Colorado, a pair of active birders from Sweden, two vacationing NatHab'ers from Boulder, a Peruvian, and me.

Natural Habitat's Alaska Ultimate Wildlife Photo Safari / June 26, 2015 Departure was officially underway. Each running of this trip, like snowflakes, is unique. The subsequent posts serve only to chronicle what I remember of the trip I was on. YMMV!

Alaska Ultimate Wildlife Photo Safari

This summer's travel adventure will be Natural Habitat's “Alaska Ultimate Wildlife Photo Safari". I've had this trip in the works for more than a year now. When I couldn't get a space on Joseph Van Os's 2014 Spitsbergen Island/Svalbard Archipelago trip, I tried hitching onto this one. But they were all booked up, too. So I put in a reservation for the 2015 trip before moving on to scheming my Grand Tour of Southern Africa, 2014.

Anyway, check out the itinerary to see why I was willing to put a deposit on this photo sojourn 15 months in advance.

Ultimate Alaska Wildlife Photo Safari

A small-group Alaska photography adventure to the state’s best wildlife spots!

Day 1: Fairbanks, Alaska
Our Alaska photography adventure begins in Fairbanks, Alaska's thriving "second city" that retains its frontier flavor with pioneer saloons, paddlewheelers and mining camps on the edge of town. This evening, we meet the rest of our small group and our Expedition Leader, who is not just an expert naturalist but an accomplished nature photographer, specializing in Alaska's legendary wildlife. [Springhill Suites]

Days 2-4: Denali – Kantishna 
Denali National Park, larger than the state of Massachusetts, is one of the world’s great wilderness preserves. Denali, which means 'The Great One,' is the native Athabascan name for Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America at 20,320 feet. Its icy summit towers over the tundra and taiga below the provides habitat for grizzlies, wolves, moose and caribou. Every photographer who travels to Alaska wants photos of the elusive mountain, and we position you for the best odds of getting them. From our historic lodge base 90 miles inside the park, we are much closer to the peak than most visitors, especially those on organized tours, ever get. Here we have time and space to encounter and photograph the wilderness, away from hordes of other people. Hiking, nature walks, biking, fishing and optional flightseeing—a must for photographers—are available.

The climate and environment of Alaska's interior at this latitude is harsh much of the year, and it takes a vast amount of habitat to sustain animals—wildlife encounters thus tend to be fleeting, though always thrilling! [North Face Lodge]

Days 5 & 6: Denali / Girdwood 
Depart Denali by rail on a journey through Alaska’s rugged interior, over Broad Pass and along the Susitna River. Photograph panoramic landscapes from the train as vistas of endless wild country unfurl in every direction. From Anchorage we drive south to Alyeska Resort, Alaska’s premier ski area, where a host of exciting summer activities is offered. Set in a lush glacial valley in the Chugach Range, Alyeska offers nature and luxury in tandem. Explore the northernmost temperate rain forest in North America surrounding our lodge, or board the tram to the summit, where you may choose to dine at Seven Glaciers, a 5-star restaurant with views of the ice-bound peaks and Turnagain Arm far below. On Day 6 we'll explore the area's scenic splendor on a gentle float trip down the Placer River into Spencer Lake, choked with icebergs, before returning to Girdwood for the evening.

Day 7: Fox Island 
Fox Island, a private island bordering Kenai Fjords National Park, reveals the pristine side of Alaska most visitors miss. The region is famed for sea kayaking, and an easy paddling trip will unveil some of the fjord estuary system's prolific wildlife. Keep your camera handy during paddling breaks to capture possible shots of Steller sea lions, sea otters, harbor seals and black bears wandering ashore. [Kenai Fjords Wilderness Lodge]

Day 8: Kenai Fjords – Private Cruise
Iconic images of Alaska are on display today as we board a private charter boat for a cruise through a realm where the Ice Age still lingers. Our small boat allows us to approach wildlife at intimate range, and Kenai Fjords National Park provides unparalleled opportunities for photographing marine life including orcas, Dall's porpoise, a large colony of puffins and myriad other seabirds. Mighty tidewater glaciers grind their way to the sea's edge, and we may be fortunate to capture exciting images of icebergs calving with a huge splash. The water is filled with floating bits of ice, often tinged blue, and we'll be able to get plenty of classic Alaskan shots. Following our all-day outing, our boat returns us to Fox Island for a final night.

Day 9: Fox Island / Seward
After a final morning of photographing the wild environs of Fox Island, we transfer back to Seward. This afternoon we tour the Alaska SeaLife Center on Resurrection Bay. Visitors to Alaska’s only public aquarium and ocean wildlife rescue center find a "window on the sea," enjoying close encounters with puffins, octopus, sea lions and other creatures while peering over the shoulders of marine biologists studying Alaska’s rich and diverse sea life. We spend the night in Seward, surrounded by some of Alaska's most majestic peaks. [Breeze Inn]

Day 10: Kenai Peninsula / Anchorage
The mountain ranges of the Kenai Peninsula rise one after another on our drive to Anchorage, each offering a more enticing photo than the last. Time permitting, we’ll stop at Exit Glacier for a chance to get close-up shots of this active river of ice. We spend the night in Anchorage. [Historic Anchorage Hotel]

Days 11 & 12: Katmai National Park - Brooks Falls 
It's hard to imagine that anything could top all we've experienced so far, but for most wildlife photographers, today is the ultimate highlight of our Alaskan adventure. Katmai National Park is home to the world’s largest population of brown bears, and it takes some effort to get here. We fly by small plane to King Salmon, then by float plane to world-renowned Brooks Lodge, one of the best places to view these coastal grizzlies in their natural habitat. From the safety of platforms built over Brooks Falls, we photograph this classic spectacle up close, as the bears fish vigorously for salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Every photographer dreams of that iconic shot, 'freezing time' as a salmon leaps from the boiling falls into the waiting jaws of a giant brown bear—and our Expedition Leader is by your side with tips to help you achieve this compelling image!

Day 13: Katmai / Anchorage 
After one more chance to photograph the fishing bears of Katmai, we return to Anchorage this afternoon. We celebrate our Alaskan adventure at a farewell dinner with our Expedition Leader.  [Historic Anchorage Hotel]

Day 14: Anchorage / Home 
Today, our Alaska photo safari comes to a close as we transfer to the airport for flights home.

My 2015 Alaska Trip Google Map of the lodging and destinations.