The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

Glacier Bay National Park encompasses fifteen tidewater glaciers that calve icebergs into a vast, Y-shaped marine fjord on the Southeast coast of Alaska. Two hundred years ago, the fjord was still a solid sheet of nearly a mile of ice, but it now includes plant communities ranging from mature spruce and hemlock rainforests, to thinly vegetated areas just recently deglaciated. We reached our destination, a grassy flat near the mouth of McBride Inlet at two in the morning. This was the first day of the ten-day kayak trip. Arnd and I started to paddle at dawn, stopping only to cook dinner on a beach downstream, so the camp would not have bear-attracting smells. After setting up camp, I retreated to my tent, but couldn’t fall asleep. I felt so excited by the possibilities, energized by the lingering half-light of the Alaskan summer. I wandered around the tidal flats until I saw this translucent iceberg lying more than a hundred feet away in the water.

Glacier Bay National Park is centered around the Y-shaped fjord of the same name on the Southeast coast of Alaska. The Bay is sheltered from the ocean by the Fairweather range, the tallest coastal range in the world. Only two hundred years ago, when Captain George Vancouver sailed by its mouth, he saw a solid sheet of nearly a mile of ice. One century later, the glaciers had shrunk back 65 miles, the fastest glacier retreat on record. Southeast Alaska weather is notoriously difficult. Ansel Adams visited in September and didn’t get far because of the rain. The only three well-known images from his visit are a field of grass in the rain, and two close-ups, one of grasses, and the other of a leaf. Since I intended to reach the glaciers for which Glacier Bay is named, and which are its main attraction, I timed my visit for the spring, when the weather is the most favorable. I chose to arrive in May rather than June to see more ice in the fjords, as well as fewer cruise ships.

The only access to Glacier Bay National Park is either by boat or by air. Since I arrived before the main tourist season, Alaska Airlines had not yet started its flights into Gustavus, Glacier Bay’s airport. I flew into Juneau with my two “body bags”, huge army-issued duffel bags that were each large enough to house my wife, and loaded with 70lbs of gear. Fortunately, back in 2001, the airlines did not charge extra for that kind of luggage! I then boarded a short commuter flight for Gustavus, and from there a shuttle to the National Park visitor center, where my partner for this trip was waiting.

I had met Arnd Pralle, a German researcher in physics, after giving a slide show for CHAOS, the UC Berkeley student outdoor club. During the presentation, I mentioned that I was heading for Glacier Bay in a month. Arnd introduced him afterward to ask if he could join. I was glad to have his company because I had no experience paddling a kayak at that point. I had only taken an afternoon clinic in Santa Cruz so that I could tell the concessionaire that I had received instruction – they wouldn’t rent me a kayak for a solo expedition otherwise. Arnd was neither a seasoned kayaker, but he had plenty of experience as a yacht skipper, which would prove useful as the marine environment of the Bay is extremely dynamic, with some of the highest tides – and strongest tidal currents – that I had seen.

The vast majority of visitors to Glacier Bay see the park from a cruise ship. However, from the high deck, one can take only distant images, which do not show a real connection to the land. Moreover, cruise ships are not allowed into the wild Muir Inlet. With a kayak, we hoped to be able to experience the vastness of the bay through a low waterline, observe closely wildlife thanks to our quiet vessel, cross narrow channels and iceberg-chocked passageways not accessible to boats, paddle and land as close to the glaciers as possible, and camp on isolated beaches. The glaciers are at least 50 miles away from the visitor center, but fortunately, the Park operates a day tour boat that can drop off and pickup kayakers. The dropoff points – which change each year – are still a long way from the glaciers, but at least, we wouldn’t have to paddle the lower Bay.

Because of a persistent drizzle, the daybreak felt dark and gloomy. After loading our double kayak onto the tour boat, we gathered our gear into large clear plastic bags to protect it from the rain. Upon dropoff, we stuffed it back into the double kayak. Although one cannot load a large item, such as a large backpack, it is surprising how much you can fit on board if you proceed with a method: food for almost two weeks in bear canisters, a tent each, and three camera systems (35mm for each of us, plus my large format).

Starting to paddle in the late morning, we took our first stop only at dinner time, cooking there so that our final camp would not have bear-attracting smells. We initially expected to stop when it would get dark, but at those latitudes, it doesn’t get dark. We kept paddling, taking advantage of the advancing tide, and of a break in the rain. One more hour, then one more hour … This took us to our destination, a grassy flat near the mouth of McBride Inlet, at 2am. I had spotted that area on the map as a place with great photographic potential because it was located next to a narrow inlet in which the McBride Glacier calves. Besides the direct view of the front of the glacier, I thought that the icebergs originating from the Mc Bride Glacier would likely be stranded in great numbers on the flats near the narrow outlet channel of the inlet – were, by the way, the tidal currents are too strong for paddling.

By the time we had finished setting up camp, it was 3am. It was now a bit too dark to see if my planning was right, but the reflection of the moon over the Muir Inlet was beautiful. After taking a few images, I retreated to my tent. However, I couldn’t go to sleep despite the long day of effort. I felt excited by possibilities and energized by the clear sky and the lingering half-light of the Alaskan summer, that I could see growing brighter outside. The world felt so beautiful and just invited exploration. After being awake for almost 24 hours in this intensely wild and pristine place, I felt myself in a curious state of heightened awareness. I wandered around the tidal flats until I saw a translucent iceberg lying more than a hundred feet away in water. However, the water was very shallow, and I understood that with the fast rate at which the tide was receding, if I waited, it would be totally out of the water. I left my camera bag on the mud, and wadded into the water with just the camera mounted on a tripod, the focusing loupe and dark cloth around my neck, and a film holder in my pocket.

After sleeping in the morning, we would find more great views near the glacier, but those first few images of the trip remain my favorites.

View more images of Glacier Bay National Park
View more images of Mc Bride Inlet

I had a great month in Asia, but I was now feeling eager to get back home. The flight to San Francisco was scheduled as an inconvenient 3.40AM departure from Ho Chi Minh City airport, with a 5 hour stopover in Beijing. When I showed up at the airport at 2.30AM, no activity was taking place. Checking the departure board, I didn’t even see any flight between midnight and 7AM. Outside the terminal, two Chinese men were spreading on a bench. They barely spoke any Vietnamese or English, but after comparing tickets, we concluded that we were on the same flight, which had been delayed until 7.15AM. Since they had checked out from their hotel, they had nowhere to go, with the terminal closed to passengers, but at least I could take the taxi back to my auntie’s house in central Saigon to catch a few hours of sleep.

After less than three hours of flight, the plane from Air China made its final approach. A large city emerged from the haze. The flight was supposed to be direct to Beijing. It could have been Beijing, except that even with my patchy knowledge of Chinese geography, I knew that it was too short of a flight. The airline made no announcements in English, however the attendants told us to exit the plane with our luggage. After a month spent in temperatures upwards of 90 degrees, the outside air felt cold. Despite the temperature in Saigon, I had taken a sweatshirt for the flight, but it was far from enough when I exited the plane to step onto the tarmac. I read the name of the airport, Shenzhen, on the side of the bus.

Inside the terminal, several hundred people were lining up for immigration control. At first, the airline staff had us follow them in a special line, but after some waiting, we were re-directed into the regular line. I began commiserating with a vivacious middle-age woman who was standing in line next to me. It turned out that Tina – this was her name – was also flying to San Francisco. Once we made our way to the booths, the officers did not process us, but instead told us to go and sit in a waiting area with not enough seats, while they would process all the travelers behind us. Only when the line was empty, hundreds of passengers later, did they look at the transit passengers. It wasn’t a casual look: an officer took a good ten minutes examining carefully every page of my passport. I noticed that I was given an additional day in the country. After that we were told to hurry up, since the plane had been waiting for us.

When we made our final approach to Beijing, it was past the boarding time for the next flight segment, but the flight attendant said “no problem”. However, as Tina and I got out of the gate, there was not a single sign (at least in English) pointing to the international connecting flights. The best we could do was to wander towards the baggage claim area. From there, we eventually found a sign for domestic connecting flights, and at last an English-speaking person who could point us to the train leading to the international departure terminal. By the time we got there, our plane had departed. We were told to return to the main terminal, and after some paperwork, to wait for a mini-bus to take us to a hotel for the night – without our checked luggage. Fortunately, we were amongst the first to get on that minibus, since the airline had crammed several more passengers than the number of seats !

After being assigned the room, when I showed up in the lobby for dinner, an hostess asked “delayed flight ?”, and pointed me to a huge dinning room with a small buffet set-up. Missed flights seem to be a frequent problem, maybe due to fact that China requires a visa even for transit passengers. Since I had no problems on my previous trips connecting through Taipei or Seoul, I made a mental note to avoid flights connecting on mainland China in the future.

But for now I had the morning there, and I wanted to make sure to forget the inconvenience and take advantage of the opportunity offered by the “free” stopover. I began plotting a quick visit to the city for the next day. Tina and I found out that we were both Vietnamese, and living just a few miles apart in San Jose. We decided to travel together. My roommate, a man serving with the US Army in Germany, was eager to join us, but since his flight departed mid-day, he preferred not to take the chance. Our flight was in the afternoon, with the shuttle scheduled to take us to the airport at 1PM, so we would have the entire morning. Curiously, although internet was available, the hotel did not provide Wi-Fi. I was glad I had a notebook with a ethernet socket, rather than just the iPad. After downloading the PDF chapter for Beijing from Lonely Planet for $5, I figured it out quickly where to go. The problem would be to get there, be sure to get back in time not to miss our flight for a second time, and, last but not least, how to cope with the 15 degrees F (-9 C) temperature using just a thin sweatshirt. The hotel was located near the airport, therefore an hour from central Beijing, far from any businesses. Although they were nice – in a direct, frank way – only a handful of the staff could speak English.

To make an already long story short, as you can see on this page of pictures of Beijing, we managed to visit both the historic and contemporary centers of the Chinese universe, the Forbidden City and Tianamen Square, and I even squeezed in a few street photographs !

Since there was so little time, it was important to work efficiently and make every image count. Because of my large format work, people sometimes see me as a contemplative photographer, but my extensive experience at locating the “best spot” helped me find varied compositions without wasting time on shots that wouln’t be interesting. I made sure to tell a complete story, including the vastness of the ceremonial courtyards as well as the intricate architectural details, the timeless atmosphere of the ancient palaces, as well as the throngs of Chinese tourists. Although the guidebook advised that several visits are needed to see everything in the Forbidden City, in just one hour, I walked almost the entire half-mile length of the palace, and photographed a good fraction of its main structures that I had researched the night before – not to mention souvenir shots for Tina. Since this was quintessential architectural work, I used the superb 24 TSE-II tilt-shift lens, handheld, for many of the images, resulting in precise images without convergence which to me are more faithful than the vast majority of photographs taken in that place. We were running most of the time, but would you have been able to tell by looking at the pictures ?

One of the most recently designated National Parks, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park preserves the most dramatic section of the canyon of the Gunnison River in Colorado.

Unlike other canyons in the Southwest which were carved into soft rock, extremely hard metamorphic rock form the walls of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Combined with the steep descent of the Gunnison River (43 feet per mile, versus 8 feet per mile for the Colorado in the Grand Canyon), this has created a canyon with a unique combination of depth (2000 feet) and narrowness (1200 feet from the two rims, 40 feet at the river at the narrowest point).

Both rims of the Black Canyon feature numerous overlooks, each with their own character. After touring them, my favorites were either those with rectilinear views of the Canyon which help show its depth, or those close to the Painted Wall, the highest cliff in Colorado, 2250 feet high. In early May, on the less developped North Rim, I just saw a few other visitors.

Although I am used to exposure on sheer cliffs, standing at the edge often made me feel slightly dizzy. Such is the verticality of the canyon. Each of those overlooks were spectacular, but I also wanted to experience that verticality more directly by hiking down to the river and to look for a more unusual view. The Park Service warns that hiking the inner canyon is a wilderness experience, with “extremely difficult, steep, and unmarked routes”. They require a wilderness use permit even for day trips. Since the North Rim Ranger Station was still closed for the season, I just filled-up a self-registration form.

After parking at the Balanced Rock Overlook, I found the descent for the Long Draw route walking northeast to the bend in the road. Past a small area of trees at the rim, the gully to the river became quickly very steep with a vertical drop of 1800 feet in only a mile. Although there was no trail, the route was obvious, as it followed the narrow gully. However, because the terrain was rather treacherous, with loose rock and a few short ledges to downclimb, it took me an hour and half to cover the short distance.

The canyon is so deep and narrow that the sun reaches the bottom only during a short window of time around noon. For most of the day, the walls remain in the shade, which make the canyon look “black”. I made only a few stops for photos, as I planned to take more time on the way up, and try not to miss the window of light. The walls kept looming above more and more, and the sound of the river grew louder.

I reached the swiftly-moving river. The feeling of wilderness was intense, as I hadn’t seen anyone since leaving the road. The position, next to the roaring river, below the towering cliffs, was awe-inspiring. Yet although I had chosen the Long Draw route (without speaking to a ranger) because it looked like it went down into one of the narrowest parts of the canyon, I couldn’t find a composition that conveyed this sense of a very narrow and deep gorge. I thought that this was because from where I was standing, the opposite canyon walls did not overlap enough, but the terrain limited the possibilities to move around. Instead, I emphasized the river in my photographs, both upstream and downstream, trying compositions with and without the sky.

On this hike, I was using for the first time a lighter and smaller Gitzo series 1 tripod, instead of the series 2 that I normally carry. Although it provided adequate support even for the 5×7 camera, I wasn’t too pleased about its shorter height and smaller footprint. It turns out this was the last time I would use it. Getting ready for the hike up, I strapped the tripod to my backpack and shouldered it. The tripod flew instantly down into the raging rapids. Being shorter than the one I normally use, it wasn’t well secured with my normal strap. I didn’t even think for a moment about trying to retrieve it.

It happened so fast I didn’t have time to regret the expensive piece of equipment. However I regretted not being able to photograph some of the compositions I had spotted on the way down. I was eager to get back to my car – and the other tripod, without which my heavy large format camera was useless. Climbing up without stopping, I made it back in less time than it took me to go down.

From a photography point of view, the hike was not as successful as I had hoped, but I was happy to have experienced the inner canyon. As a few ray of lights began to shine from holes in the dark storm clouds, I hurried back to the Narrows Views overlook. The river, so mighty just two hours ago, now looked so small viewed from the rim.

View more images of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
View more River Level images of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

I wish everyone a year 2011 full of happiness, health, and success. My sincere thanks for your continuing readership and interest in my photography.

I’ve done quite a few trips to Florida in the past. Each time I concentrated on natural locations in South Florida. They are certainly exceptional, but represent only a portion of what the state has to offer. On my last trip to Florida, this October, I remedied this unbalance by visited mostly cities. I went to some unique sights, including the oldest city in the United States, St Augustine, the largest collection of Art Deco architecture in the world in Miami Beach, not to mention the world largest and most visited theme park, Disney World in Orlando. It was enough of a challenge not to loose the kids in the crowds there, but I still managed to squeeze in some images. If you like to photograph fireworks, this is the place to go. They are fired each night, the pyrotechnics are some of the best I have seen, and the illuminated castle with changing colors makes a beautiful and unique foreground. Check my page of photos of Orlando to see some examples.

Haleakala National Park, on the island of Maui, Hawaii, like Hawaii Volcanoes National Park encompasses terrain ranging from the ocean shore to the summit of a high volcano, created by the same hot spot that generated the Big Island of Hawaii.

The difference is that while the volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii exhibits plenty of activity, the fire has left Maui for a few centuries, as the Pacific plate carrying the Hawaiian islands has moved it away from the hot spot. In that relatively short amount of time, vegetation has taken root on the slopes and down to the Pacific, creating a tropical paradise, whereas the coastline near the Chain of Craters road stays absolutely bare. At the summit, erosion has carved the summit of the volcano into a grandiose crater – 3000 feet deep, 7.5 miles long, 2.5 miles wide – full of interesting shapes and colors, whereas the summit of Mauna Loa remains just a gentle slope.

Unlike the Mauna Loa summit, which requires a difficult hike, you drive to the Haleakala Crater (which despite its name was not created by an eruption). The road, route 378, has the distinction of being one of steepest in the world, rising from 2000 feet to above 10,000 feet in about 20 miles. Since it takes at least one hour and half to drive the 40 miles from Kahului, and I wasn’t too eager to get up at 3 in the morning, I chose to stay at the National Park Service campground. At 6,800 feet, the first-come, first-served campground, located in the delightful Hosmer eucalyptus grove, provides fresher air than the coastal locations.

The next day, I arrived at the visitor center almost an hour before sunrise. Some light already illuminated the sky, growing brighter quickly, as it took on wonderful hues. The crater felt immense, and lunar-like, but looked quite dark.

Although the actual temperature stayed probably slightly above freezing, it felt much colder with the fierce wind blowing. Fortunately, I had packed for this “tropical vacation” a fleece jacket, a mountaineering-grade shell, and gloves. Almost a hundred people already huddled near the visitor center to seek protection from the wind. I left them by hiking half a mile to the summit of White Hill. Since I had slept at high elevation the night before, I was well acclimatized and did not feel the effect of hiking in the thin air.

Everybody wants to experience a sunrise on the “House of the Sun”, but in fact the light is quite difficult at that time. When I looked directly east, the contrast between the sky and the portion of the crater beneath, backlit and shaded by a ridge, was too extreme to yield a good photograph even with the aid of a graduated neutral filter – which also caused a lot of flare. Instead, I pointed my camera north, creating a image all about the contrast between the brilliant pre-dawn sky, the rim beginning the receive some light, and the rest of the crater is in darkness.

Although they were difficult to see at that time, I noticed within the crater some interesting color patterns created by the ash flows that looked promising. In the morning, I did more exploration around the crater, planning for my next sunrise shot a few miles down the road, from Kalahaku, where I would on the distinctive cinder cones within the crater – with a more favorable light direction. At mid-day, I returned to the White Hill. The direct, bright light revealed the bright ash colors that the pre-dawn light had only hinted too. The image was all about those colors and patterns. I then found more of those colors by hiking down a portion of the Sliding Sands Trail in the afternoon, when the light on the crater is actually better. On that winter day, I was lucky that the view remained clear all day, as clouds often roll in as early as mid-morning.

View more images of Haleakala National Park
View more images of Haleakala Crater

Last summer, Fotopedia.com, the first collaborative photo encyclopedia, launched its first application for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, Fotopedia Heritage, a electronic photo book of World Heritage Sites.

The application functions like an almost unlimited coffee-table book, showcasing images in an attractive format, with many smart features including tags, interactive maps, descriptions, favorites, and suggestions, all taking advantage of the new capacities of the Apple mobile devices.

As there are more than 900 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 150 countries, the collaboration mechanisms of Fotopedia allowed to gather more than 25,000 images, selected collectively by the Fotopedia community. The exceptional breath of the collection had the flipside that the quality of the photography was not always consistent, despite a great curating effort. This was because the curators had to pick exclusively from Creative Commons images with no restrictions, mostly by amateur photographers, either contributed directly to Fotopedia or imported from other photo sharing sites such as Flickr.

This winter, Fotopedia has released its second application, Fotopedia National Parks, a electronic photo book of US National Parks. The format is the same as Fotopedia Heritage, but unlike it, Fotopedia National Parks uses images from only one photographer: me.

I am very pleased and honored that Fotopedia has chosen to showcase my work in their first “Pro” App – a paid ($4.99) application featuring professional photography. As readers of this blog are familiar with my work in the National Parks, I will not discuss it.

Instead, I will point out to reasons why the application Fotopedia National Parks is worth having, even though the same images are publicly available for free viewing on this website.

First, the application is a great way to view images:

• The photographs are presented in much higher resolution (1024 pix) than by default on the website (550 pix). They are full page, with a simple tap hiding or showing the information. Because of their size, the application needs a internet connection (storing all images would be prohibitive in terms of file size), but I have found it to load fast.
• The touch screen interface is much nicer than the web navigation using arrows. It is similar to the native iPad/iPod/iPhone photo albums, that everybody in my family, from my 5 year old son to my 80+ year old auntie in Vietnam found intuitive and fun to browse.
• Computer screens can vary in quality and suffer from bad calibration, whereas the Ipad screen shows vibrant colors in a way which is the same for each device.
• Since this is a book rather than an image catalog, images have been edited for redundancy, so you do not see variations of the same image (for instance a horizontal and a vertical).

The application also have neat features not available on the website:

• The photographs are keyed to a Google-style interactive map which makes it easy to explore by location. That map benefits from the superb touch screen interface which allows you to pan, zoom in and out with your fingers. Moreover, it shows you different markers depending on your level of detail. Look at the US map from a higher level to see where each park is located. Zoom in or call the map from a lower level and see the area where each photo was taken within a park.
• Several features such as favorites, suggestions, and counter make it a breeze to keep track of destinations.
• The application includes the ability to easily set images as wallpaper (something for which a $25 subscription is required for a computer, using a more complex mechanism, although it gives access to more images in a variety of resolutions), and share images.
• Images can be viewed in a slide-show mode.
• A short, but informative introduction to each park is provided.

Considering that there are photo Apps that cost the same and more, but show only a few dozen images, Fotopedia National Parks is a great value !

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, on the Big Island of Hawaii, is the place where the past and present volcanic island activity can be observed. It is the easiest place in the world to come close to a active volcano.

The entire island was created by the Mauna Loa volcano, which now towers 13700 feet above sea level (the world highest peak on an island) and 42000 below the sea, making its total height above the ocean floor the largest of any mountain on earth.

What makes the park one of the most dynamic places on earth is the other volcano, Kilauea. It is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, erupting continuously for thirty years. Unlike other dangerous volcanoes such as Merapi in Indonesia (in the vicinity of which I had actually planned to travel in November 2010… that is until I learned about the deadly eruption), the Hawaii volcanoes do not have an explosive eruption. Instead, they spew a fluid and slow moving flow of molten lava, which makes them the most approachable of any volcanoes on earth.

Most of the relatively accessible live lava flows in the park have taken place on the coastal plain lying past the Chain of Craters Road. In fact, lava flows have buried the very end of this road, and rangers direct visitors to a makeshift parking area.

On my first visit, in January 2001, the closest flows required a hike of about 4 miles from the end of the Chains of Craters road. While this doesn’t seem that much, my fiancee and I soon found out that hiking on a recently formed hardened lava field was tough work, in the tropical heat and humidity. You hike cross-country on a very chaotic terrain with unpredictable obstacles, and lava can be very sharp !

During the day, the red glow of the lava is almost invisible. Molten lava looks a metallic grey which isn’t that different from freshly hardened lava, while old lava is more dark. By the time we got to the flow, since the hike had taken so much longer than we had planned, the night had fallen for a while. The glow of the flow was very bright in the dark, but the rest of the landscape was pitch black, which did not provide for particularly interesting images. Although it was sure heavy to lug around, I did not even bother to set up the large format camera.

On the way back, we were startled and quite frightened to notice that the red light underfoot indicated that lava was actually flowing beneath some of the spots that we had previously crossed by daylight. Where we thought that the lava had long hardened, the flow was still live beneath our feet. We made some long detours, and did not go to bed until a few hours before dawn. We decided against making another attempt on the same trip. This was supposed to be a tropical vacation !

The volcanic activity is constantly changing, so depending on timing there can be no flow at all in the park, or in the best case, the flow can form a spectacular ocean entry close to the road. For a year and half, I monitored the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory website, the best place to get accurate information about the Kilauea eruption.

When I returned, in the summer of 2002, the flow was only a fifteen minute hike from the end of the Chain of Craters road, making it possible for to return multiple times to catch the best conditions at dusk and at dawn. As the lava was oozing very slowy, I was able to get close enough to feel my skin burning, and compose images with a wide-angle lens, as I witnessed the creation of a new layer of land in front of my eyes.

View more images of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

View more images of live lava flows

It’s been a month since I arrived in Vietnam. In the evening, I remark again, on the street where I am staying, a construction field of the size of exactly one townhouse width, between two standing houses. The ground is covered with rubble from a recently demolished building. This is a site that I have already photographed a few weeks ago. Back then, the street vendors active in the area had watched me, wondering what I could be taken a picture of. After seeing the photo on the LCD, they commented that although this a ugly sight, the picture is beautiful. I had felt so rewarded by the appreciation of the men and women of the street.

Today, among the rubble, a small group of workers are sitting around a tiny plastic table, apparently eating. Although I have decided for my last day in Saigon not to make any photographs, the scene is so visually striking that I cannot help but stop to have an extended stare. The construction workers notice me, and motion for me to join them. A plastic chair is pulled.

They are in fact having rounds of shots. The liquor is quite strong. As I am quite sensitive to alcohol, after three rounds, I manage to excuse myself. In the while, most passing tourists stop to snap a photo of the scene. Everybody seems to be happy that I can speak Vietnamese with them. I am given warm accolades and even kisses as I announce that I’ll most likely be back in half a year.

Of the Lonely Planet list of “top ten” experiences in Vietnam, I was missing the round of drinks in a bar. I guess this will do. What I liked so much here is being an inside outsider, or maybe an outside insider ?

Kenai Fjords National Park, like many other Alaskan parks, is a place of superlatives. Its centerpiece, the Harding field, is the largest ice field in North America, covering more than half of the park. At some places, the thickness exceeds a mile.

Unlike other Alaska parks, one section of the park can be easily reached. After my extended backcountry adventure in Gates of the Arctic National Park, the complicated logistics of Denali National Park, not to mention Wrangell St Elias, I was feeling ready for a easier trip.

I drove the Exit Glacier Road just a few miles out of the town of Seward. Although the signs there pointed out to winter travel by snowmobiles and skis, in September, it looked like the snow season was still far way, making access through the 9 mile, well paved road, a breeze. From the Nature Center, a half-mile, flat trail (also paved !) lead through a cottonwood forest to a panoramic vista of Exit Glacier. Along the trail signs indicated the date at which the front of the glacier reached that particular position. I was surprised to see how recent those dates were, even though the ice looked quite a distance away.

From the glacier viewpoint, the trail branched to two areas of that offer a closer view of the glacier. The trail to the Edge of the Glacier took me near walls of ice. After the sun had disappeared, in the late afternoon, the soft light helped reveal the delicate shades of blue of the ice.

I returned early in the morning the next day, easily hiking the short distance in the dark. I stopped at a small glacial pond that I had spotted the day before, thinking that it would provide interesting reflections when the first rays of sun would hit the front of the glacier. I was pleased to see that it was now frozen with delicately textured ice on its surface adding more interest to the image as two types of ice temporary existed together.

View more images of Kenai Fjords National Park
View more images of Exit Glacier