The 49th State
It takes a lot of planning and patience to visit many of the locations featured in this gallery. Permits to visit McNeil River and Mikfit Creek are via a lottery and weighted for Alaska residents. The annual application deadline is March 1.
I’ve applied two dozen times and won twice.
Permits for The Walrus Islands State Game Sanctuary on Round Island are available each year after September 1 and are relatively easy to get. It is getting to the island that is difficult and expensive.
Most people who visit Katmai National Park either camp or stay at Brooks Lodge. It requires a float plane trip and once you get there access to the bear viewing platforms is limited.
Polar Bears are only in Kaktovik, AK for a month or two each Fall, depending on the ice floe and temperatures. There are a few commercial tours and you are required to have a local Native guide. A five-day trip will cost close to $10,000/person.
Access to the Denali National Park Road is only via school bus tours unless you qualify for a professional photography permit or win a slot in the annual four-day “Road Lottery” held each September. During those four days, winners of a lottery drawing are given a chance to purchase a single, day-long permit, allowing them to drive as much of the Denali Park Road as weather allows.(Currently, due to the ongoing Pretty Rocks landslide, the Road Lottery and Military Appreciation Day are suspended for the foreseeable future.)
The 49th State
It’s been 40 years (or perhaps more) since Walker Golder and I drove to Alaska on the Alaska Highway (ALCAN). Portions of the road were still tar and gravel at the time and I never did get all of the tar off of my truck. After a couple of weeks in Alaska, Walker had to fly back to North Carolina for work and my friend Brian Whittier took his place as I continued my first Alaskan experience. Walker went on to run Audubon’s North Carolina Coastal Islands Sanctuary and now is Executive Director of the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust. Brian, and his immediate and extended families, is still a close friend even though he lives more than 2,000 miles away. I reluctantly returned to Chapel Hill for the start of the Fall semester, but part of me never left Alaska and I’ve been back dozens of times since.
A photographer needs many things to successfully work in Alaska and, at times, it resembles working in a foreign country. There aren’t many roads and even the ones there are rarely provide easy access to wildlife. You need colleagues and friends who have planes, boats and residency, for you are, and always will be, an “outsider.” Fortunately, many people helped me, educated me and welcomed me.
I slept many nights on the couch in Leo and Dorothy Keeler’s camper as the one guest that their professional photography permit allowed in Denali National Park. They were leaders of the private, non-profit group Friends of McNeil River for a decade and introduced me to that group as well. They are two of the 40 founding members of the prestigious International League of Conservation Photographers and are now working to restore monarch butterfly populations across the country.
I also shared numerous journeys in southeast Alaska with Cynthia D’Vincent, the founder and director of the Intersea Foundation, on her boat Acania, collecting data on the social interactions of humpback whales. Cynthia is one of the people credited with discovering cooperative feeding behaviors in humpback whale populations.
During that time, I met Pete Devaris, the owner of Alaska Coastal Airlines in Juneau. Pete established, built and ran a grizzly bear viewing program in conjunction with the Koniag Native Corporation on Camp Island on Kodiak Island. It was a small operation where bear viewing was a priority and profit was secondary. Pete loved bears and knew every bear on the river. He had hired Scott Shelton to serve as guide, cook, boat captain and storyteller. The cabins were simple and efficient and the patrons were friendly and respectful. Pete and Scott let me come and go as I pleased and I spent parts of every summer at the sanctuary for many years thanks to financial support from Michael Hooker, then Chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Michael, his wife Carmen and I had traveled together on a General Alumni Association sponsored trip to Alaska and they fell in love with bears as well. Both Scott and Michael died at a young age and I only returned once to Camp Island after that. Pete is now an Aviation Safety Specialist for the Federal Aviation Administration in Anchorage and I see him and his lovely family whenever I’m in Alaska and he remains a source of inspiration for my Alaskan photography.
I worked mostly on educational media projects in Alaska. I’ve been to every stop on the Alaska Marine Highway and most stops on the Alaska Railroad, yet I’ve only seen a small fraction of the state. This slide show contains a few of my favorite places.
The 49th State
It’s been 40 years (or perhaps more) since Walker Golder and I drove to Alaska on the Alaska Highway (ALCAN). Portions of the road were still tar and gravel at the time and I never did get all of the tar off of my truck. After a couple of weeks in Alaska, Walker had to fly back to North Carolina for work and my friend Brian Whittier took his place as I continued my first Alaskan experience. Walker went on to run Audubon’s North Carolina Coastal Islands Sanctuary and now is Executive Director of the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust. Brian, and his immediate and extended families, is still a close friend even though he lives more than 2,000 miles away. I reluctantly returned to Chapel Hill for the start of the Fall semester, but part of me never left Alaska and I’ve been back dozens of times since.
A photographer needs many things to successfully work in Alaska and, at times, it resembles working in a foreign country. There aren’t many roads and even the ones there are rarely provide easy access to wildlife. You need colleagues and friends who have planes, boats and residency, for you are, and always will be, an “outsider.” Fortunately, many people helped me, educated me and welcomed me.
I slept many nights on the couch in Leo and Dorothy Keeler’s camper as the one guest that their professional photography permit allowed in Denali National Park. They were leaders of the private, non-profit group Friends of McNeil River for a decade and introduced me to that group as well. They are two of the 40 founding members of the prestigious International League of Conservation Photographers and are now working to restore monarch butterfly populations across the country.
I also shared numerous journeys in southeast Alaska with Cynthia D’Vincent, the founder and director of the Intersea Foundation, on her boat Acania, collecting data on the social interactions of humpback whales. Cynthia is one of the people credited with discovering cooperative feeding behaviors in humpback whale populations.
During that time, I met Pete Devaris, the owner of Alaska Coastal Airlines in Juneau. Pete established, built and ran a grizzly bear viewing program in conjunction with the Koniag Native Corporation on Camp Island on Kodiak Island. It was a small operation where bear viewing was a priority and profit was secondary. Pete loved bears and knew every bear on the river. He had hired Scott Shelton to serve as guide, cook, boat captain and storyteller. The cabins were simple and efficient and the patrons were friendly and respectful. Pete and Scott let me come and go as I pleased and I spent parts of every summer at the sanctuary for many years thanks to financial support from Michael Hooker, then Chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Michael, his wife Carmen and I had traveled together on a General Alumni Association sponsored trip to Alaska and they fell in love with bears as well. Both Scott and Michael died at a young age and I only returned once to Camp Island after that. Pete is now an Aviation Safety Specialist for the Federal Aviation Administration in Anchorage and I see him and his lovely family whenever I’m in Alaska and he remains a source of inspiration for my Alaskan photography.
I worked mostly on educational media projects in Alaska. I’ve been to every stop on the Alaska Marine Highway and most stops on the Alaska Railroad, yet I’ve only seen a small fraction of the state. This slide show contains a few of my favorite places.
