Public lands come in many shapes, including the giant oval dome that is Great Sitkin Mountain in the central Aleutian Islands 26 miles east of Adak. Rising to 5,709 feet, Great Sitkin (Sitх̑naх̑ in Aleutian) is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, managed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It is also within the federally designated Aleutian Islands Wilderness.
Geoff Carroll worked as a biologist for 50 years studying whales, muskoxen, and caribou near his home in Utqiagvik. While he’s originally from Wyoming, he has spent most of his life exploring the Arctic and learning about its animals, its people, and its rhythms. In fact, his research on bowhead whales helped protect the tradition that defines America’s northernmost people.
Holding my breath camera ready, I crouched by a ledge of lichen-crusted shale. Around me stretched an expanse of wind-scraped tundra hills grooved with caribou trails, marked here and there by the bleached bones of wolf kills, grizzly scat, and the hoofprints of muskoxen. But my focus just then wasn’t on that limitless landscape and the unseen, outsized creatures that roamed it, but on a cleft in the nearby rock.
I’m “whale challenged.” Allow me to explain. Though I’ve photographed numerous whales of all species—and even pet a few friendly gray whales in Baja—most of the time, I have zero idea what I’m looking at when I see them.
There are many places to get a great shot of the highest mountain in North America—and not all of them are in Denali National Park. On a clear day, you can spot the towering snow-capped dome from Anchorage. Talkeetna affords a backside view along a picturesque river. Flightseeing provides exceptional close-ups. But going to the park delivers some choice locations for creative composition.
An Alaska Wolf’s Final Journey On the peaks above the Coleen and Sheenjek Rivers, where patches of bare ground dotted the south-facing hillsides and meltwater plunged toward both…
Carving your own slice of wilderness Standing on the bank of an arctic river, you gaze down into water so clear you can see char ghosting at the…
How they came to be by Jonathan B. Jarvis & T. Destry Jarvis The following excerpts from National Parks Forever: Fifty Years of Fighting and a Case for…
The snowshoe hare If you’ve invested any time in nature documentaries, you’ve undoubtedly come across this image: Alaska’s snowy paradise, the boreal forest. Everything appears serene until, perhaps…