My Favorite Places Part II: Arctic Alaska

Flowers bloom on the bench above the Sagavanirktok River. 

Alaska’s North Slope is a broad, rolling, alluvial plain. It sweeps down out of the Brooks Range in a long, descending ramp to the cold and icy waters of the Arctic Ocean. It’s a huge area extending the width of the state and varying from 30 or 40 miles deep to a couple of hundred in the west. It isn’t an easy place to summarize in brief. Alaska’s Arctic is just too big, too diverse, too wild and varied, and, quite frankly, I haven’t seen near enough of it. 

Despite the increased pressure from oil and gas developers, the arctic is still a very big, and very wild place (at least for now). And thanks to a recent decision by the Department of the Interior, the biological heart of of the enormous NPRA, is now unlikely to be drilled in the near future.

I’ve had the chance to explore the arctic on a few occasions. I’ve visited the contested coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on a few trips and spent some time doing field work in oil fields, and driven the Haul Road. I haven’t yet made it out into the NPRA, (though that will change this summer when I lead a June float trip down the Kokolik River). Summer is clearly the best time to visit, and certainly the most hospitable, and all my experience there has taken place during the brief warm months of June, July, August and early September.

From a photographer’s standpoint it is not a place of dramatic vistas and rugged mountains. The mountains, when they are visible, are distant on the horizon, a world away from the rolling grasslands of the plains. Not unlike the Great Plains of the lower 48, it is a landscape easy to dismiss. Also, like the Great Plains, it is full of potential for those who don’t dismiss it so easily.

My favorite time of year in the Arctic is June. June is spring that far north, and the tundra is alive with nesting birds, blooming flowers, and migrating caribou. If bird photography is your thing, there is no other time of year that can compete. July can become so buggy that it can drive the most tolerant of individuals to the brink of insanity. August is beautiful, full of changing colors, and the first sunsets in months. September is full-on autumn and the cold encroaches rapidly. Polar Bears begin to congregate along the coast, particularly near the village of Kaktovik, and bear photography becomes the name of the game. By October, winter, and the accompanying darkness is settling in.

The Arctic is not a place easily appreciated from a distance. It is best to get out on the tundra. Spend, hours, or better yet, days. Sleep on it. Walk on it. Breathe in the dry odors of the grass, and dig your fingers into the soil to feel the lingering cold of winter. Take the time to appreciate the arctic for what it is, and you’ll learn a lot. Plus, you’ll come away with far better images.

This pair of Long-tailed Jaegers did not appreciate it when I stumbled too close to their nest. I snapped this shot over my shoulder with wide-angle as I backed away.

American Golden Plovers are a common species in dryer tundra. I found this bird, along the Haul Road last summer. I’d never before seen such a riot of colors in the wildflowers.

I photographed this Stilt Sandpiper beside a tundra pond, of which there are tens of thousands in the Arctic.

On my first trip to the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge, I photographed this male Rock Ptarmigan still bearing its (now dirty) winter plumage. This image was made on a gravel bar along the Canning River.

This is also a male Rock Ptarmigan. This bird was incredibly tolerant and allowed my clients and I to approach very close late one sunny night.

The coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is justifiably famous for its caribou. This band was part of the Central Arctic Herd. We woke up one afternoon after a long night of photography to thousands of caribou passing across the coastal plain, and splashing through the waters of the Canning River. This image was made within spitting distance of the Arctic Ocean looking South across the plains to the distant Brooks Range. 

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