Over the Noatak

Canon 5D iii, Canon 24-105 f4L IS, ISO 400, f8.0, 105mm, 1/640th sec, handheld.

This August, for the third year in a row, I guided a canoe trip down the Noatak River in Gates of the Arctic National Park for Arctic Wild. Every year has been different. Two summers ago, the weather was endless blue skies, a rarity in the western Brooks Range. Last summer, I spent 17 days on the river, and in that time we saw 4 days of sun. The wind blew fiercely, the rain lashed our tents for days on end. This year, it was mix, and every day was different, just how I like it. Tim (pictured in the image above) was the second guide on the trip. The two of us were fortunate to have a great group of clients who were also enthusiastic hikers. We spent a lot of time high on the mountains above the river, climbing peaks and following ridges.

The day I made this image, we took the longest hike of the trip. Above the upper Noatak sits one of the few glaciated peaks of the western Brooks Range. Oyukak is a 7,192 ft mountain. It rises a thousand or more feet above the surrounding peaks, and its dome-like summit is covered in thick, blue, glacial ice. From the first time I saw that mountain, I wanted to climb it. An attempt from the river, is a daunting task requiring a hike of some 15 miles with 5500+ feet of climbing. With no real hope of reaching the summit, this year, our group headed up. As expected, we didn’t make the top. But a small subset of us did achieve the summit ridge from which we could admire the last 1500 feet of the mountain, and the no-longer-distant glaciers of the uppermost dome. Next time, I’ll start a couple of hours earlier and, by God, I will stand atop that ice. Who wants to go? Arctic Wild is taking bookings for next year’s trip right now.

Some thoughts on the image: Getting up high changes things photographically. The sky gets bigger, the valley smaller, the peaks more abundant. Compositions change with a need to show the enormity of the landscape. When I noticed Tim atop a small rock outcrop, I saw a great opportunity to provide some perspective. Even at 105mm Tim is tiny in the frame, the ridge he stands on angles out to the right, providing a sense of continuation, the background is mountains and clouds, still sharp due to my distance from Tim and the f8.0 aperture. They provide a sense of the wide-open space below. I cropped to a panorama because it emphasizes the sense of distance and space and eliminates distracting foreground and sky. What are your thoughts? Feel free to share.

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