Skolai Images

Hey Folks,

Here’s a Pacific Loon image I got late one evening near the Canning River, on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, Alaska. This photo took me quite a while, and a lot of walking, to swing. I think it was nearly 2am when I clicked the shutter here. I’d been over near this pond earlier, but not able to get close. I ended up walking around for a long time, finding a few other birds to photograph, and then cam back by the loon pond. This loon and its mate were getting more and more comfortable with this strange tripod-toting creature wandering around, and finally came close enough for me to manage a few photos. I wish the light was a little brighter, and the wind not present, as the rippled effect on the water isn’t as nice as a calmer surface, but one takes what one can in the arctic. At least the wind kept the bugs at bay.

Section 1002, the coastal plain, of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the area hotly debated over with the proposals to drill for oil. I think the wildlife that live there, will be much better off if drilling and gas extraction aren’t allowed; I think we’ll be better off for it, too.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

As I don’t have anything new to post from the Skolai Trip I did last week, I’ll post a few more Muskox. This young calf was hanging around with his mom and the herd one afternoon, and it took quite a while before I got a decent opportunity to shoot a portrait of the calf. Muskox really protect their young well, mostly by hiding the calves behind the adults, and often keeping them in the thicker brush. Finally this calf ran out in the open, stopped and looked back, and I took this photo. You can see the Mosquitoes were plentiful up in the arctic this summer.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

Some of you may have read my recent piece on the proposals to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. You can read it here. For those of you who aren’t aware, another hot issue with proposals to drill is the off-shore sites, in the arctic ocean. We were keen to explore this possibility as well, as the testing we did on the coastal plain really showed how magical this arctic oil is. However, howling winds and chilly temperatures proved that off-shore drilling simply isn’t possible. Any deeper than this in the arctic ocean and nothing would be the same afterward. So we said “No”, to off-shore drilling.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

I just got back from a trip to Skolai Pass, in Wrangell - St. Elias, and we got SLAMMED by the weather. It was so ugly, I couldn’t help but feel bad for the people on the trip. I didn’t even take my camera out of the backpack the whole week. So I don’t have any images from this trip. That’s a first for me. Instead, I’ll post some more images from previous trips, including this one from our highly vaunted ANWR Drilling Trip earlier this month. I’m not going to say that this climbing around was my idea - and far be it for me to snitch, but I think you can tell from the looks of the 2 people with me that it was their responsibility - they literally forced me onto this pipeline for the photo. :)

Erika and Bob were great folks, and we had an excellent trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

Here’s a look at the effects of global warming on the arctic shoreline. The coastline here is disappearing, rapidly, due to the melting permafrost underneath. 2 years ago there was a reasonably wide swathe of sand along this shoreline. Now the shoreline has collapsed, and the sandy beach is gone.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks

Here’s another view of this little pond, this time without my ugly self cluttering up the photo. From the coastal plain in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Looks a whole lot nicer to me without a drilling pad in it.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

One evening I set out from camp to find a nice place to play the flute. This little pond was really cool, there weren’t too many bugs, and it had a peaceful reverie about it that I enjoyed. I ended up playing for an hour or more here. See what I mean - this coastal plain isn’t all as ugly and revolting as some people would have us believe.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

We all hear about how barren and ugly the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is. The coastal plain is a desolate wasteland, we’re told. Well, I don’t agree with that. I think it’s a beautiful place, and well worth our respect. Here is a field of Alaska Cotton Grass in full bloom along the coastal plain, east of the Canning River, in Section 1002, the section proposed to be opened for oil drilling. Trust me - the photos you see posted across websites and emails doing the rounds that suggest the place is ‘ugly’ are simply bad photos.
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Hey Folks,

By now, you’ve all heard the rumors, I’m sure. How the massive oil fields, despoiling the pristine earth lying deep beneath the frozen, barren tundra of the lonely coastal plains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (known by its acronym ANWR), could save our planet. How, if only those whacko enviro-freaks, who are bent on ruining the lives of countless hard-working patriotic Americans, have consistently and ruthlessly undertaken to bully the American Congress and the oil industry into submission, and not allow the oil and natural gas that is currently being wasted underground to be extracted and delivered to gas stations across America.

I’m sure you’ve read the facts, and seen how, if the estimated 10 billion barrels of ANWR oil could be drilled and refined, gasoline prices at the pump would plummet; but not just the gas prices, (more…)

Hey Folks,

So I just got back in from a nice long trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). I drove up to Fairbanks, picked up Bob and Erika, a lovely couple from Florida, and we headed on up the Dalton Highway, almost to Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay, where we met our pilot, picked up a raft, and flew in to the headwaters of the Upper Marsh Fork of the Canning River. It was quite an adventure, an their first time in the Refuge, so we all had a great time. I’ll tell you some more about it over the next week. Before we flew in though, we were told about a small herd of MuskOx just north of us, on the Sag river. With some time to kill, and gigabytes on the memory cards, we figured we’d go take some pictures. (more…)