Glacier Porn
Bradford Washburn opened his first photo business in Valdez in 1936. It was from the tidal mudflats near town where he took his camera to the sky over mountains for the first time and framed glaciers and mountains, including the Shoup. The rest is history as far as his glacier photography and of course his mountaineering.
I get plenty of opportunity to track glaciers on foot. So a flight is a unique opportunity to shoot. I take these photos and further annotate them based on my topo’s for future references to interested parties.
As with most plane photography these days it’s all about the cleanest window on a Twin Otter. So getting anything like Washburns B+W’s is just not gonna happen even of they were clean an unscathed. It is one the most incredible daily commercial flights in the world, flying at 9000′ over the glaciated Chugach Range. And, after some minor surgery, it rekindled my soul this evening flying home.
Shoup Glacier…When I skied up this glacier in 1986 the lake was a glacier.
The Columbia Glacier revealing new earth this year as a un-named island pops out of the terminus.
Blackstone Bay
College Fjords – Harvard Gl on the left, Yale Gl on the right. The spine that splits them is the Dora Keen Range. Small glaciers pour in from the mountainsides. Ones on the right are named after men’s Ivy league colleges. Ones on the left for women’s institutes in east. The Harriman Expedition of 1899 explored the northern fjord complex. Their journal indicated they skied a bit and named most the major peaks and glaciers in the area.
Unknown Glacier
Knik Glacier west of Anchorage.
Sailboat at rest in Shoup Bay