The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

In this post, I am sharing my favorite high-country hike in Yosemite. On that rugged, but short Yosemite backcountry loop, you’ll reach the Sierra Crest, high above timberline, only a few hours after leaving your car, and enjoy a few days of solitude from there. You will roam cross-country – which is surprisingly easy here because you are above timberline, camp next to rarely visited lakes, and experience some of the most spectacular and varied mountain terrain in the park, concluding with the ascent of an extremely scenic peak.

To undertake this loop obviously requires some backpacking experience, as well as the skill to navigate cross-country in some class 2 terrain. The best time of the year is normally mid-to late summer, as snow can be a problem early in the season (not this year, though !). Despite backcountry quotas, I easily obtained a permit at the Tuolumne Meadows Wilderness Center on the morning of my start, in August. The loop can be done in three days. I hiked at a leisurely pace in four days (three nights). As an instance of taking my time, I arrived at the spot in the first image on the first afternoon. After sleeping at Upper McCabe Lake I climbed back the next day there, as the light is better in the morning, then explored the ridge up until the point where it turned to class 4, before backtracking and resuming the journey.

(click on map for larger version)

Take California Highway 120 (Tioga Pass Road) to about 2 miles east of the east entrance of Yosemite National Park, turn to Saddlebag Lake Road on north side, drive to the end and park at the Saddlebag Lake resort (10060 feet). From there go to the NW end of the lake, by hiking on either shore, or by a boat taxi, – which saves you 1.5 miles (every 1/2 hour, 7am-5pm).

Follow a trail heading towards Steelhead Lake skirting it on its East shore. The trail climbs and peters near the remains of the Hess mine, where a century ago miners toiled not too successfully for silver. For the next few days you’ll wander cross-country, and will share the mountains with only a few other hikers. Zig zag the steep slope, and soon you’ll straddle the Sierra crest, above 11,000 feet, with great views of North Peak and the enchanting Twenty Lakes Basin.

The other side consists of steep cliffs, but north of them, you’ll find a gully system that leads down to Upper McCabe Lake. At sunset, North Peak reflects beautifully in the lake.

Go around the lake clockwise. From its south shore, before reaching a small peninsula, you’ll see a pass between Sheep Peak and North Peak. Scramble up the talus and snowfields, then descend the gently slopping valley on the other side of the pass.

You’ll soon reach narrow Roosevelt Lake. Follow the east shore, then continue south.

After passing verdant meadows and clear streams, for the first time since the start of the trip, you’ll be passing below timberline and hiking in the forest. Track a contour line to reach Lower Young Lake, where you re-encounter people (I had met a single party around Upper McCabe Lake, and also Roosevelt Lake) as well as an established trail.

Follow it up to Upper Young Lake, after which it turns into an unmaintained climber’s trail. Continue up as you make your way back to the alpine world, arriving at the south slope of Mount Conness, passing on your way a high-altitude meadow doted with tarns.

Leave your backpack at the crest near the pass, and follow the class 2 trail to the summit (12,590 ft), first ascending a broad slope, then once on the plateau, following a thin ridge with a few exposed passages.

The highest peak in Sierra Nevada north of Tioga Pass Road, Mount Conness offers wonderful views of the high country granite domes, extending to Half-Dome, as well as a glimpse of the Northern Yosemite.

Back at the pass, descend steep slopes on the East side. The inclination is about 30 degrees and the slope is north facing, so in early season snow climbing gear (ice axe and/or crampons) may be useful, especially early in the day. Then follow the main drainage. When you reach the Carnegie Institute Experimental Station, you’ll see an established trail. You can either follow it to the Sawmill campground and then walk a mile up to road, or take a more direct off-trail shortcut to your car.

I planned this itinerary by just looking at a topo map, then confirming its feasibility at the wilderness center when I picked up the permit. Once you begin to venture out of the beaten path, you can create many itineraries as beautiful as this one. The possibilities in Yosemite are endless. Please share your favorite finds !

Part 6 of 6: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Check out my book: Spectacular Yosemite

For last winter’s trip to Alaska where I drove the Dalton Highway and photographed the Aurora Borealis, I didn’t pack light. I flew with two carry-on bags and two pieces of checked in luggage. In this post, I’ll discuss some of my equipment choices for that trip.

Clothing

I had a large assortment of hats and face covers (including a neoprene mask) as the head is the most critical body part to keep warm. For the upper body, in addition to the usual outdoor gear, I wore a vapor-barrier jacket and a down-filled parka (very effective when you are not moving much). Mine is the second warmest parka made by Feathered Friends (a Seattle-based company specializing in down gear). Warmer is always better, but this was adequate to -20F/-30F, the lowest temperatures we experienced on this trip. For the lower body, I brought thermals, synthetically-isolated pants, and shell pants, but this wasn’t sufficient as the wind tends to chill you at the junction of top and bottom. In my mountaineering days, I wore matching fleece and goretex bibs from The North Face but I couldn’t locate them and they don’t appear to be made anymore. I purchased in Fairbanks – great place to shop for arctic-grade gear – insulated, windproof bibs which made a big difference.

I brought the One Sport (now Millet) Everest boots – adequate for climbing Mt Everest as implied by the name – that had served me well almost two decades ago on Mt McKinley, but actually didn’t need them, which is as well, since they are quite rigid – too rigid to drive on a slippery road. Instead I wore Sorel Bear boots which are much more comfortable. On the coldest nights they were slightly marginal (OK with a foot warmer insole) so I next time I’ll buy the better Sorel Glacier boots as they can be found for $100, which is a surprisingly low price for -40F/C boots. Even for short hikes on snow, snowshoes were useful as the extreme cold keeps the Alaska snow deep.

The problem of keeping hands warm while maintaining sufficient dexterity remains unsolved. My massive mittens and gloves didn’t let me operate camera controls, so I ended up trying to work only with thinner gloves. Those would leave hands in pain, and useless from the cold after a few minutes out. I’d put them back in my pockets to warm them up, then repeat. Please let me know if you have found a better way to work. Maybe I will try to investigate electric liner gloves.

Camping

We slept in the car quite a few times, either because accommodations were not available nearby, or either because it was actually comfortable and convenient enough that we didn’t feel like spending money to get a room. The -25F rated Feathered Friends Peregrine sleeping bag kept me warm enough despite being two decades old. I supplemented it with a vapor barrier liner, as well as a fleece liner. Even for sleeping in the car, to have good insulation is essential. This was provided with a Thermarest Luxury, which uses proven closed-cell foam. In arctic weather, even if you don’t plan to sleep in the car, it would be a good idea to carry a sleeping bag in case you are stuck on the road.

It’s nice to be able to fix a hot meal while waiting for the aurora to appear. Although I didn’t expect it to work, I brought a butane stove because it is so tiny. Indeed, it provided almost no output – still wondering how come they are used in the Himalayas. We had two liquid-fuel stoves, a MSR Whisperlite and Dragonfly. The Whisperlite quit mysteriously in the middle of the trip. The Dragonfly provided much better output anyways. My friend’s two quart bottle worked better than my one-quart bottle to keep the water from freezing. He had the great idea to get insulated food jars, which are like small thermos. They keep foods and drinks warm for a few hours, whereas without them, your freeze-dried meal would get cold in the ten minutes it takes before it’s even ready to eat. Life in a freezer…

Photography

I carried most of the cameras, lenses, and electronics in one backpack and one shoulder bag. Fortunately in the US airlines do not weight carry-one because the total weight was close to 50 lbs.

I had my standard combination of wide, medium, and tele zooms and the 24 TSE, but most of the aurora photography was actually done with a single lens, the Canon 24mm f1.4L II. You want a wide-angle: further south, the aurora appears low on the horizon (in which cases the 50mm f1.4 or 85 f1.8 are useful) but at northern latitudes, during nice displays it fills up a large portion of the sky. You want a fast lens: shorter exposures reveal the shape and texture of aurora curtains, where longer exposures render them as a blur of color. In addition, like for other night sky photographs, a lens with a wide aperture will capture more stars, and allow the use of a lower ISO, therefore reducing digital noise. A 24mm f1.4 offers a great combination of wide angle and large aperture, letting in 4 times as much light as a f2.8 lens.

So why so much equipment ? On that trip, I was experimenting with shooting time-lapses (hence the motion-control dolly, which I packed in a ski bag for travel) as well as stereo (3D). Shooting stereo requires two exactly identical camera bodies and lenses. While a time-lapse is in progress, instead of doing nothing, which sounds like a pity when the aurora is dancing, I prefer to have a third camera to shoot stills. The 5D2s worked perfectly in temperatures down to -20F with battery life much less reduced than expected. So this seems to mean that cameras perform better in the cold than photographers – or at least photographers fingers !

Part 5 of 5: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

There are several hot springs around Fairbanks. They were discovered around the turn of the 19th century by miners seeking an escape from the cold. The most easily accessed is Chena Hot Springs, which is the terminus of its own highway (Chena Hot Springs Rd), 46 miles East of Fairbanks.

All water around Fairbanks is normally frozen solid, but the runoff of the hot springs provide water free of ice for those swans and ducks. Travelers can have the rare experience of soaking outdoors by temperatures well below 0F (-17C).

Arriving there in late afternoon, the light wasn’t great, with the pool in the shade and the sky and mountains quite bright. We had an hour waiting the more even light of dusk, with its interesting blue cast. We paid a small fee and jumped in the water (they rent towels and swimsuits). The water is plenty warm, but the tricky part is to get outside the building wearing nothing but a swimsuit. Fortunately, there are pools inside the bathhouse that one can use to store some heat, and the outside path (on the left of the picture) between the bathhouse and the outdoor pool is covered. After a few minutes, frost forms on your hair as it gets wet from the steam. Out of concern for condensation, I did not want to risk bringing the DSLR. I wished I had a waterproof camera to take pictures while soaking.

With air temperature that low, there was an abundance of steam coming from the pool. This, and the combination of twilight light and artificial light contributed to create unusual colors and atmosphere as the night fell.

A large resort is built around the hot springs, offering hotel-style as well as cabin accommodation. Despite the advertising, I think the displays of Northern Lights that can be seen while soaking in the springs must be rare, as the light surrounding the pool are quite bright. More generally, the light pollution caused by the resort probably makes it less than ideal for viewing the Northern Lights. Despite a predictions for a moderate (3) activity we saw nothing. However the resort offers a snowcoach ride up to the top of a surrounding mountain which is likely dark enough.

The hot water is also used to produce electricity, and to heat a number of greenhouses which provide fresh vegetable to the resort restaurant.

All the typical Alaskan activities are offered, including snowmobiling, scenic flights, a year-round ice sculpture museum housed in huge building refrigerated during the warm months.

The most interesting to watch and photograph were the dog sled rides. Those huskies zoom by you in no time. If you want to have a varied experience of Alaska in winter in full comfort, Chena Hot Springs would be a good choice.

Part 4 of 5: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

In South Korea, I had stayed at hostels and at a “love motel”. In the fishing village of Seongsang Ilchulbong, I was going to try a third category of accommodation, a “minbak”: room for rent in a private home. Arriving quite late after hiking Mt Halassan, disoriented after getting out of the bus, I called a taxi even though I knew that the Lonely Planet-listed minbak was only a few blocks away. It turned out to be full, but the driver motioned me by to follow an elderly women waiting nearby, who promptly and decisively proceeded to carry my tripod, talking to me volubly as if I could understand Korean. Since it was getting late, she suggested that I look for food, walking me to a restaurant. There, I pulled out a note written in Korean script which said that I am a vegetarian. For the first time since I arrived in Korea, I was out of luck: after some tricky exchanges, I understood that they had nothing but seafood. There were still a number of other open restaurants, but the result was the same. I went into a grocery, and bought a few bananas, crackers, and some tofu. When I came back, my host inspected the bag, and apparently concerned that this wasn’t a proper meal, insisted to sell me a bowl of pre-cooked noodles. We went upstairs and were going to prepare it, when her daughter came home. She didn’t know that I was a vegetarian and seemed concerned that my noodles weren’t tasty enough, so she exchanged them for something else, but I noticed in time that the wrapping had pictures of seafood. I ended up eating the original noodles, with my host peaking from time to time into the room to make sure everything was fine.

I woke up before dawn in order to climb the steep Ilchulbong plug volcano crater in time for sunrise at the top.

Despite the early hour, I wasn’t the only one with that idea, although it looks like I was the only foreigner there.

There was no sunrise. The morning was cloudy, so I decided to visit the caves.

I had visited lava tubes before, in Northern California and Hawaii, but Manjanggul – one of the world longest lava tube cave (13 km long) – was at a different scale, both in length and size.

The section open to the public is about 1km long, but takes more than half an hour to walk because of the rough floor (unlike the paved paths in US National Parks caves).

It finishes at a lava column of 7.6m high, which is the largest in the world.

I returned to Seongsang Ilchulbong in time to see more elderly women – and seafood. From what I read, Jeju Island is renown for its seafood, offering several delicacies not found anywhere else.

Seafood gathering is done by women, who unlike in most of Asia, are also head of family. “Haenyo” are the famous women divers of Jeju Island. They give a demonstration of their diving skills every day in a cove next to Ilchulbong.

They look so old, wrinkled, and bent, that it is amazing that they can free-dive down to a depth of 20m, using low-tech equipment and no tanks, holding their breath for up to two minutes. This is the last generation of those remarkable women divers, as their daughters prefer to work in less physically demanding jobs in the cities and tourism industry.

For my last night in Korea, I took the bus to the city of Seogwipo.

While on the upper slopes of Mt Hallasan were encrusted in rime ice, the seashore near Seogwipo had a tropical feeling, not unlike Hawaii.

In the morning, after seeing another waterfall, I hurried to visit Jeongbang Pokpo, only waterfall in Asia dropping into sea. After a brisk walk, a bus ride, two taxi rides, a domestic flight, a shuttle transfer, and the trans-pacific flight departing from Seoul in the afternoon, I arrived home.

More images of Jeju Island

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Watching a moonbow with your own eyes is an awesome experience. While the camera can capture colors that the eye doesn’t see (as explained in my previous blog post about moonbows), the way it works doesn’t capture the experience that well. A long moonlit exposure looks almost the same as a daylight exposure that one would be able to make with a strong neutral density filter. The image differs substantially only by the presence of stars in the sky, however on a full moon night, only the brightest stars are visible.

For this reason, I have found moonbows to be one of the subjects where a time-lapse movie is more compelling than a still image. The motion of the stars gives them a presence beyond sparse pinpoints. The displacement of the rainbow as the moon moves across the sky adds interest.

While with some effort it is sometimes possible to deal with the spray while making still images, in time-lapse photography one needs to take pictures continuously, for extended periods of time. This means no stopping even when spray is coming at you, and no downtime to wipe the lens. Under those circumstances, unless you can photograph from above the spray (as at Cascade Falls), the only way to get clear images is to use a rain deflector.

The rain deflector is not a piece of equipment you hear about in photography circles. It works by spinning a clear piece of glass in front of the lens at a high velocity (3000 rotations per minute). This creates a centrifugal effect and a vacuum effect which throws water out of the glass. It’s quite tricky to make because you want high velocity rotation, but you don’t want any vibration. There is only one commercially available spinning rain deflector, the Israel-made Spintec, imported in the US by InnoVision Optics, a company which sells highly specialized equipment to the movie industry. Not many units are sold, so they charge quite a premium for it – even a simple power cable costs $140.

After buying the deflector for $1725, you need to accessorize it, which isn’t as obvious as it seems. While one can mount it like a filter, I was wary of loading a lens with a relatively heavy accessory this way. Unless one uses a lens with a tripod mount, the weight would also be poorly distributed, certainly a potential source of vibration with long exposures. In addition, Steve Bumgardner (watch his behind the scenes video for “moonbows”) warned me that the filter mount can easily go out of alignment, causing a contact between the spinning glass and the lens. At 3000 RPM, this would instantly scratch the glass (a $300 custom Tiffen filter). Following his recommendations, I ended up mounting it using a movie-standard 15mm rod system based on the JAG35 baseplate. I replaced the stock rods with a pair of longer and lighter 9″ carbon fiber rods from Redrock Micro. Since all my cameras have quick-release plates, I added a B2 LLR II quick release clamp from Really Right Stuff. That clamp may look overkill, but I chose it because of its additional holes which I use to make sure that the assembly does not rotate out of alignment.

The deflector requires a 12V battery – a standard in the movie world – which isn’t included. You can buy ready-to-use cables for a variety of video batteries. Instead, I modified the power cable with stripped leads that comes standard. I attached it to a barrel jack (2.1mm x 5.5mm) compatible with two different batteries which serve other purposes as well. The Powerstream Universal lithium ion battery pack PST-MP3500 (also Tekkeon MP3450) offers 45WH, which is enough to run the rain deflector all night. In addition, its built-in multi-voltage capability means that I can also use it to power my cameras (the 5D2 and 5D3 require 7.5V) as well as other electronic devices. The battery sold by Dynamic Perception to power their Stage Zero dolly has a capability of 32WH, but being only a 12V battery, it is lighter (200g v 440g) and smaller.

Last, a rain cover is needed. For daytime use, it needs to be black, in order to block light from reflecting from the back of the filter. Its front opening has to be large enough to fit the rain deflector. Not too many rain covers satisfy both requirements. The Vortex Media Pro SLR Storm Jacket (medium size) worked for me.

I usually use the 16-35/2.8 lens with the rain deflector. By placing the front just a few millimeters away from the spinning glass, it is possible to zoom to 16mm without vignetting, although because of the mount flex I feel more comfortable with a bit more of a margin. The deflector itself weights about 750g. Mounting system and power add another 750g (using the lighter battery). The entire assembly remains light and small enough to be turned side ways (for verticals) and even used hand-held. I think that besides moonbows, it gives me the capability to work in a broad range of weather situations.

Besides producing a movie, using a time-lapse set-up is a convenient way to capture still images of variable phenomena. The first image below was created for a time-lapse. It was shot at 3am, so I was glad I didn’t have to be standing there all night in the cold. Instead, I could pick the best frame from the hundreds captured. The drawback is that for a time-lapse movie, you often want to frame wider in order to have latitude for moves, so you’d crop for the still image. For the second image, I didn’t really mean to produce a time-lapse movie. I was planning to shoot stills that night, but I just got too cold to hang around, so I set-up a time-lapse and went down to try to warm up. Both spots where the camera was placed were so wet that it would have been difficult even to take a still image without the rain deflector. The more mist, the better the rainbow, though ! Please let me know if you prefer original or cropped versions:

Original image for time-lapse movie

Cropped still image

Original image

Cropped still image

(click here if you don’t see link to vote)

A moonbow is a rainbow produced by moonlight, rather than direct sunlight. While observing a rainbow in the sky requires rare and unpredictable combination of conditions, it isn’t too difficult to predict the appearance of spray moonbows, which occur in the mist of waterfalls.

Yosemite moonbows have been known for some time. John Muir described the experience of seeing them. They’ve been photographed for at least 3 decades, but it’s only recently that they became a popular subject. Normally the light is too faint to excite the cone color receptors in human eyes, so they appear to the eye as a silvery arc. The camera has no trouble to capture the colors with a long exposure. However, during last May’s “supermoon” – which is the brightest one will see during our lifetime -, the light was bright enough to see the colors directly.

The moonbow is brightest on the night of a full moon, with the two days before and after the full moon also usable, making it a five day window per month when the water is flowing enough to produce mist. In Yosemite, this is usually April, May, and June, so this week-end will be your last chance for the year, even though this year it might not be great since the flow is already low due to small snowpack. Once you know when the moonbow rises on a given day, it is an easy matter to predict its timing for the other days: a moonbow will appear 50 minutes later each day from the same spot.

Any waterfall with a significant amount of mist front lit by the moon can produce a rainbow, but the easiest viewing is provided by Yosemite Falls. There are two classic locations for which Don Olson posts predictions, Lower Yosemite Fall seen from the bridge at its base, and Upper Yosemite Fall seen from Cook’s Meadow. Don’s predictions are for the base of the falls, where the mist is normally the thickest, but rainbows can appear higher at earlier times.

In recent years, the two “classic” locations have become extremely popular. On the week-end of May 5, 2012, there were hundreds of photographers at each location, and constant road traffic until mid-night, so expect a very “social” experience there ! While the meadow has plenty of room for people to spread out, the bridge is fairly cramped.

I avoided the crowds by moving to a spot much closer to Lower Fall, right against the cliff, which I had rediscovered (I’d seen it before in photos made by Carlton Watkins in the 19th century) in this great episode of Yosemite Nature Notes – a must-watch if you have any interest in Yosemite Moonbows. I like this view better than the classical one from the bridge because you get a glimpse of Upper Yosemite Fall in alignment. Needless to say, at that close range it was wet. Since the water comes from snowmelt, it was cold. The first night I made the mistake of wearing breathable-waterproof fabric. My top was the Alpinist jacket, the flagship Goretex shell from highly regarded Marmot and my bottom the PreCip pants, which although lighter, is still advertised as a waterproof rain pant. Soaked to the bone, exposed to the full force of the spray, I barely escaped hypothermia. Those fabrics are just not waterproof if constantly hit by water with any significant velocity. On subsequent nights, I wore rubber-coated fabrics, which despite partly suffering from de-lamination, actually kept me more dry.

On the night of Saturday, which I anticipated would be the most popular, I spent the night on the Yosemite Falls trail, away from the valley, to capture the moonbow on Upper Yosemite Fall and the iconic Half-Dome in the background. I was going to try a higher spot (see daytime view), but in the evening there was almost no wind. The upper part of the waterfall would have no mist and therefore no rainbow, so I set up at a slightly lower spot. It turned out that the wind picked up during the night, but I chose not to disturb the set-up for reasons which will be clear in the next post. The view isn’t as open, however, being closer to to the mist gave a double rainbow.

Using another set of cameras and tripod, I also photographed from the point where the trail turns the corner and you see Upper Yosemite Falls for the first time. Despite the very late hour – it was midnight, I was surprised to see quite a few folks up there, despite the 2 hour hike from the valley floor. It is well worth it, as Upper Yosemite Fall being so much taller than Lower Yosemite Fall, and plunging into an open bowl, produces a much more spectacular rainbow, which is much more impressive from here than from the distant meadow.

For those who’d like to try it yourself, here is some technical information.

• Gear You will need a camera capable of long exposures (a full-frame DSLR provides the best image quality) and a tripod, as the light is fairly faint. A way to lock the shutter for bulb exposures can be very useful. Even if you don’t shoot them wide-open, fast lenses will make it easier to see your composition.
• Exposure Light meters don’t work in such faint light, so you’ll have to use manual exposure. For a full moon, my basic is exposure is f/2.8, 30 seconds, ISO 640. With a locking cable release, you can try longer equivalent exposures either at lower ISO to minimize noise (such as f/2.8 45 seconds ISO 400, f/2.8 90 seconds ISO 200, f/2.8 3 minutes ISO 100) or at smaller apertures to improve lens resolution and depth of field (such as f/4 1 minute ISO 640, f/5.6 2 minutes ISO 640) or both. Don’t use too long of an exposure, though: above 5 minutes, some bands of color may merge together as the rainbow is moving during the exposure. With those exposure values, the image will look like a daytime shot – too bright to convey a night feeling, but you can darken it later, resulting in a less noisy image than one created directly with a night-like exposure. On the nights before and after full-moon, although it looks the same to the human eye, the light is actually significantly dimmer, so be sure to adjust exposure accordingly.
• Focus Autofocus doesn’t work in such faint light, and it is also quite difficult to focus manually. The best way to proceed is to focus the lens at infinity using the moon (or any other distant light source), and then tape your focus ring so that it doesn’t move. For instance I use my 24/1.4 lens almost exclusively for night photography, so I have tapped it semi-permanently with a wide patch of gaffer tape.
• Keeping the lens dry In many cases, you’ll be standing close to the rainbow-producing mist of the waterfall. The fine mist droplets do not ruin the images the same way as larger rain drops do, however they do add up. To get the clearest image, you’ll need to keep your lens dry. Bring plenty of lens tissue, and keep your lens cap on when not exposing. Remove it just before taking the picture. Once you feel the beginning of a breeze, which means more mist and a better rainbow, you’ll have a few seconds before the lens gets too wet. If you are standing very close to the mist – which yields the best rainbows – your lens will get wet instantly, so you’d need more sophisticated equipment that I’ll describe in the next post: using a rain deflector to photograph moonbows.

Good luck, and feel free to link to your own moonbow images !

View more Moonbow images

Winter lasts more than half of the year in Fairbanks. The snowpack is established by October and remains until May. From November to March, all the water is frozen solid.

Besides the fact that the month of March is the most favorable for photographing the Aurora in Alaska, another reason to visit Fairbanks at this time of the year is the ice carving competition called “Ice Alaska”, or formally “World Ice Art Championships”. If driving the Dalton Highway in winter is a bit more too adventurous, Ice Alaska, which takes place in Fairbanks, cannot be easier to attend.

The event takes place in a large open area, full of structures built of ice which form a family-friendly park. Kids – carted around by parents in sleds instead of strollers – climb animal-shaped sculptures and enjoy slides. There is also a building where you can buy some food and warm up for a while.

The main attraction for visitors, however, is the competition itself. Carving generally takes place around the first week of March, then prices are awarded and sculptures remain all the month. If you are there early in the month, you’ll see the teams working, whereas later in the month, you get to admire all the completed works.

I learned in the informational panels next to the sculptures that there is quite an international circuit for ice-carving artists. The most prestigious event of the circuit is the Fairbanks event. The Fairbanks ice is the best in the world for ice sculpture, because it is obtained from small pit ponds in which water is not subjected to currents (unlike rivers and lakes). This gives it a crystal clear purity since there are no bubbles or white streaks.

At night the character of the sculptures is dramatically improved by colored lights that help highlight the detail in three-dimensionality. An entrance ticket is valid for the whole day, so that it is easy to revisit in the evening if you arrived early. I suppose if you are lucky, you can see the Aurora dancing overhead, but we didn’t. (Low activity, 2).

The competition is divided into two categories, single-block and multi-block. The multi-block is certainly the most spectacular. 20 4-persons teams carve 12 blocks of ice measuring 4′ x 4′ x 3′. The resulting sculptures line up two sides of a large open area.

Multiblock lends itself to group of sculptures, but since ice artists can cut and piece ice in any way, so the resulting sculptures can be considerably larger than the block dimensions, such as this almost life-size locomotive. The sculptures are fenced, but you wouln’t want to stand beneath this one in any case !

The 2012 multiblock winner, “Prickly Reception” from Junichi Nakamura, Shinichi Sawamura, Satoru Mahoe and Takahiro Sueyosh, is a leopard stalking a crested porcupine carved with incredible intricacy.

In the single block competition, 40 2-person teams carve a single block of ice measuring 5′ x 8′ x 3′, and weighting nearly 8,000 pounds. The single-block sculptures were displayed in an easy-to miss wooded area next to the main space. The 2002 single-block winner is the mermaid sculpture “Treasure Hunt Blue Marine” from Junichi Nakamura and Victor Dagatan. I imagine that Victor Dagatan practices in a room-sized freezer (like another ice artist from Mexico to whom I talked) since he is from the Philippines.

If you enjoy cold weather, besides the Aurora, this unusual event is another good reason to visit Fairbanks in March. Here is the official Ice Alaska website. Be sure to bring a tripod for photographing the sculptures at night !

See more images of Fairbanks and Ice Alaska

Part 3 of 5: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

The Dalton Highway has the reputation of being one of the most dangerous roads in the world. It is one of the northernmost roads, crossing well into the Arctic, and reaching the highest road point in Alaska that is maintained throughout the year, Atigun Pass. Then there is the extreme remoteness. Along its 414 miles there are services only at one place in winter: Coldfoot (population 13). The 240 mile stretch north of Coldfoot is the longest in North America without services. The Dalton Highway was not designed for personal vehicles, but rather as an industrial road for trucks. It was built in 1974 to support the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and Trans-Alaska pipeline. For the first twenty years it was closed to public traffic. Those speeding 18 wheelers can add to the hazards of the road. In summer, gravel flies and windshield damage is likely.

In winter, temperatures become extreme, creating hazardous road conditions. The Wikitravel article on the Dalton Highway warns: “travel from late September through early May is frigid and lethally cold during the heart of winter. Temperatures below -40ºF (-40ºC) are very common and temperatures as low as -60ºF (-57ºC) are certainly possible–before factoring in windchill. The record low windchill in Deadhorse was -102ºF(-74ºC) on February 28, 1989! A chart record of windchill at ARCO’s facility in Prudhoe Bay on 1/13/1975 shows -128. Such temperatures are lethal in less than 1 minute if not prepared for such temperature. Unless experienced with polar temperatures and gear, DO NOT attempt to traverse the highway between November and March! “.

-32F temperature north of Atigun Pass on a sunny day

Why would someone want to drive the Dalton Highway ? It is the only road in the US (and one of only two in North America) which cross the Arctic Circle, providing access to unique landscapes of the far north. In winter, this is one of the best places in the continent for observing the northern lights. At these latitudes, the Aurora is high above you, illuminating the whole landscape, instead of being low on the horizon. In this post, I’ll detail my experience of driving the Dalton Highway in winter and provide some practical information.

Fairbanks is the place to rent a vehicle. A local company specializes in renting cars equipped for the Dalton Highway, however their vehicles were too small for sleeping two, so we rented a full size SUV at the airport. Because the temperatures in Fairbanks are more frigid than in Anchorage (further south and situated on the ocean), all rental cars are better winterized. Amongst other things, they are equipped with a block-engine warmer. This prevents your engine from freezing solid when the temperatures dip below -20F. When parking overnight in the city you connect the warmer to an electrical plug using an extension cord. Such plugs are commonly found in hotel parking lots, near park meters on the street, or even on the Denali National Park visitor center parking lot.

However, when in the wilderness, there are no electric plugs, so to keep the engine – and yourself – from freezing overnight, your only solution is to start your engine every few hours and let it run some. To do that, you’d need to carry extra gas. We were disappointed that our SUV did not have any roof bars that we could use to strap gas containers. Fumes makes it unhealthy to carry gas in the car, so this limited our options for staying overnight. In order to prevent fuel from freezing, we used an additive called “Heet”, which apparently is quite popular since it was sold out at the Fairbanks Wall-Mart.

Having read that the road surface is rough enough that two rim-mounted spare tires are recommended, I found it surprisingly smooth. Possibly that was the benefit of driving on ice. On the flipside, ice made the road pretty slick and we could feel that we were often only a small margin from loosing control of the car. Because of that, we tried to avoid driving in the state of exhaustion which would have resulted from staying up all night for the aurora. Although our SUV was equipped with what would be considered winter tires in California, an Alaskan told us that those were summer tires by his standards.

Cell phone coverage is not available along the Dalton Highway, but the SPOT satellite messenger worked. We also carried a CB radio to communicate with the truckers, but have not found it useful. Although it costs a bit for a heavy truck to stop and restart, in the far north people seem to look for each other. When we got stuck on a shoulder, the first truck who passed by rescued us. In normal conditions, there is enough truck traffic along the Dalton Highway that the wait wouldn’t be that long. However, severe weather or snow drifts could close the road for days in winter. We carried sleeping bags rated for -30F, as well as several days of non-perishable food, and two liquid-fuel stoves (butane/propane stove are useless in those temperatures). One of them quit working during the trip. Personal-size thermos allowed us to prepare hot food and drinks. Without them, they would get cold without a few minutes. Larger thermos bottles kept water from freezing. We bought in Fairbanks a spare battery (returned after the trip), shovel and tow rope – which turned out to be the most used emergency gear.

The Dalton Highway starts about 80 miles north of Fairbanks. In winter, the last gas station before Coldfoot is in Fox at junction of Eliott and Steese Highways just outside of Fairbanks. Until Coldfoot, the landscape is dominated by rolling hills of boreal forest. The first landmark is the long bridge across the 2000 mile-long Yukon River, which surprisingly features a wooden road surface (mile 56).

At mile 115, you cross the Arctic circle. This sign is found next to a pullout east of the highway.

The only services between Fox and Deadhorse are found in Coldfoot (mile 175), which has a truck stop with gas, a restaurant, and a payphone which can be used with a calling card. Their motel, the Slate Creek Inn is expensive and uninviting. The better choices for accommodations are in the historic community of Wiseman (mile 188): Arctic Getaway Bed and Breakfast (we stayed there: friendly owners, cozy cabin, reasonable rates, satellite internet during breakfast) and Boreal Lodge.

The most spectacular section is from Coldfoot to a few dozen miles north of Atigun Pass (mile 244), where the Dalton Highway crosses the Brooks Range. Since we could not carry enough gas to stay overnight north of Atigun Pass, we visited that section as a day out of Wiseman. We avoided driving the Atigun Pass at night as the pass is quite steep. It would have helped there to have better tires or chains. Further north, the landscape turns to flatter tundra terrain that we did not explore on that trip.

Thanks to good weather, our first drive up the Dalton Highway in winter turned out to be uneventful, however we came back with more respect for this harsh and inhospitable environment.

See more images of the Dalton Highway, images of Wiseman

Additional information

• Alaska Geographic visitor guide repository: has current 24-page BLM guide.
• Lonely Planet’s guide to the Dalton Highway
• Wikitravel guide to the Dalton Highway
• Winterscapes Of The Alaskan Arctic by Ben Hattenbach

Part 2 of 5: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Last winter, I traveled from March 12 to March 23 with my friend Regis Vincent to Alaska to seek the Aurora Borealis, also called Northern Lights. Since this was my first attempt, I sought to maximize chances of seeing the Aurora:

• Auroral activity is strongest slightly above the Polar Circle, which in North America is most easily accessed from Fairbanks, served by an international airport.
• Auroral activity follows a long-term cycle of about a dozen years, peaking in 2012-2013. Within the year, the peak usually takes place during the two equinoxes.
• March has generally much clearer weather than September in Alaska.
• While a bright moon provides illumination and color, it can potentially interfere with sky photography and overwhelm a faint aurora by lowering its contrast. Our stay coincided with the fourth moon phase (from half to new moon).

In order to remain mobile and keep an option to drive to wherever the weather is clear, I planned a road trip rather than a wilderness expedition.

This post is centered around my experience. Subsequent posts will detail logistical and technical aspects, which aren’t simple. At the end of this post, I also provide links to articles written by other photographers that give a great introduction to aurora photography.

Since I am a (adopted) Californian, the first night we decided to work not too far from Fairbanks as a “warm up”. If some cold weather equipment turned out to be inadequate, we could easily gear up. We initially planned to photograph at the Twelve Mile Summit (milepost 85.5 on the Steese Highway), which offers a great view over snowy mountains, but it was just too windy to stay outside for any extended period of time, let alone attempt night photography. Snowplow operators recommended we go back promptly because the snowdrift threatened to block the road, which was closed a bit further, at Eagle Summit.

We drove down to a large pullout. As it was our first night in Alaska, we were excited to see the green band of light of the Aurora show up, but it was rather low on the horizon. My friend shivered during the night. As we drove back to Fairbanks, the aurora got brighter in the rear view mirror, putting on a much better show. We stopped many times to photograph, getting to a hotel only a few hours before dawn. Low (2).

We spent the morning shopping the numerous outdoor stores in Fairbanks, a better way to gear up, since they have polar-grade gear in abundance to try. I bought thick insulated, windproof bibs for less than $100, and my friend got a better sleeping bag. The next two days were to be at level 4 according to the UAF Geophysical Institute Aurora Forecast. The higher activity levels give a chance to see the aurora far south of the Arctic Circle while with lower activity levels, the activity is confined around the Arctic Circle. To take advantage of the opportunity, we drove south on the Parks Highway, hoping to catch activity above Denali National Park. The afternoon was cloudy, with just a bit of color appearing at sunset.

As a landscape photographer, even in shots where most of the interest is in the sky, I look for significant land features to include. Although our first night at the South Denali Viewpoint (milepost 135.2mi of Parks Highway), the aurora did show up, it was behind a dense cloud cover so we saw only a glow. Moderate (3). The next day, the clouds cleared up. At night, the aurora made a spectacular appearance above Denali and the Alaska Range, about forty miles away. Active (4).

Despite going to sleep (in the car, parked quite close to the highway since the pull-out was snowed-in) quite late, I got up to photograph the sunrise over the seldom-visible Mountain.

We drove back to Fairbanks, then went back to the Steese Highway. Since the next day we planned a long drive, we contented ourselves with observing the aurora from Cleary Summit. The scenery there consists mostly of meadows and rows of trees, but less than half an hour from Fairbanks, relatively high and free of light pollution, with a large parking area, the spot is popular with locals for aurora watching (larger version of the panoramic image). Active (4).

In order to get to the center of the aurora action, further north, we tacked the famous Dalton, the northernmost highway in the US, and its most isolated (more on it in a future blog post). There is only one place for services, midway of 414 miles of road, at Coldfoot. After refueling there, we arrived in Wiseman at dusk. During the whole afternoon, the weather had been cloudy.

The weather forecast called for light snow at night, so we were actually looking forward to a night of sleep, but after cooking dinner, we noticed that the sky was clearing. While the mountains of the Alaska Range range were distant, here we were at the base of the Brooks Range mountains (northernmost in the world). As we looked for an interesting mountain as a foreground, we found prominent Mount Sukakpak (milepost 207 of Dalton Highway). Active (4).

North of Wiseman, the road was solid ice. From what I read, it’s actually nicer than in summer, when gravel flies. The Dalton Highway, built to support the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and Trans-Alaska pipeline, is traversed daily by more than a hundred 18 wheelers trucks, and only partly paved.

Although this year I didn’t set foot into Gates of the Arctic National Park proper, I managed to find a good view over the mountains that form the eastern boundary of the park. The Aurora was there again, for a sixth consecutive night. Active (4). It had been a remarkably favorable week.

Resources

Here is a list of articles, all by photographers with great Alaskan aurora work, that I have found particularly useful:

• How to photograph the aurora borealis by Carl Donohue
• How to photograph the northern lights with a digital camera by Patrick Endres
• Hunting The Great Alaskan Aurora by Ben Hattenbach

Thanks for you help, and also special thanks to Rolf Hicker, another photographer with great aurora images from Alaska and the Yukon.

For aurora forecasts, I’ve relied mostly on the UAF Geophysical Institute Aurora Forecast which is easy to use and can even be accessed through dedicated iOS App, Android App and mailing list. During the first few days of our trip, the server was down due to volume of requests, but the mailing list was working. Here are a number of other forecast sites:

• Aggregate forecasts
• OVATION Auroral Forecast from NOAA
• NOAA POES satellite measurement
• AuroraMAX from Canadian Space Agency
• spaceweather.com news about Sun-Earth environment
• solarham.com solar cycle and radio VHF aurora on Tweeter @solarham
• AK Community Aurora notification page on FB on Tweeter: @auroranotify

Part 1 of 5: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

While Earth Day has been internationally celebrated for more than forty years, National Parks Week is a relatively recent initiative from the US National Park Service.

It has been argued that the National Parks are “America’s best idea” – recently in the Ken Burns film with that title. That idea first came to fruition with the creation of Yellowstone National Park (1872). Because at that time there was no state that could take care of such a vast land, Yellowstone National Park was placed in the custody of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which have continued to run the National Parks since, creating the National Park Service to that effect.

National Park Week (April 21-29) is a good time to visit, since the National Park Service is waiving all entrance fees. Personally, I always renew my annual National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands pass. Given the number of National Parks visit I do each year, it is a bargain at $80, but even if I did only a few annual visits, I’d still get it to support the system. Besides free entrance, this is a perfect time to consider how fortunate we are for the Park Service and for the nearly 400 lands and monuments that have been added since to the system.

This year, my images are associated with two products whose release coincides with National Park Week.

Fotopedia has just launched bersion 2.0 of Fotopedia National Parks app for iPad and iPhone with 3000+ of my images of the National Parks. Compared with version 1 (description here), there are notable improvements:

• several hundred new images
• high resolution images sized for the new iPad Retina display
• thematic stories updated every day in magazine-like format

To celebrate National Park week, the App is free. Download it on iTunes. Here are a few mentions of the App in the press: USA Today, LA Times, Forbes.

MapQuest has just launched MapQuest National Parks, a web-based guide with information on activities, wildlife and history, and some video commentary by park rangers. Each of the 58 entries opens with one of my panoramic images, and there is also an a series of posts featuring my comments on some favorite images. Here is a mention in Huffington Post.