I spent 11 days in July floating the Marsh fork of the Canning river, which is one of the many rivers flowing north out of the Brooks Range and into the Beaufort Sea. The Canning river marks the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is substantial in size at 19 million acres. It seems that all ventures in Alaska’s arctic tap into the extremes that even mid summer can offer. One moment you are wearing every piece of clothing you brought, and the next moment you are baking in hot sun along a tundra hillside. Plenty of rain fell during the trip, and in a heartbreaking way, pumped the normally beautifully aqua blue river to bank busting brown. When you see water flowing through dwarf fireweed, then you know it is high water! I did most of the trip in a little pack raft, what amazingly fun little water wizards.
For a change of pace, when flying in we had our gear dropped off down river, and our pilot gave us GPS coordinates to find the goods. It was a mild 14 mile hike in clouds and rain and we arrived to enjoy a clearing evening and pleasant sunset (I take that back, the sun does not set, but it did dip behind a mountain). We spent a few days at this camp spot as a base for day hikes. About 2:00am, while sipping on some Black Box red wine around our campfire, a lemming dashed across the gravel bar in front of us and jumped right into the swiftly moving river. I thought…little guy…you are toast, that current will sweep you downstream in an instant. I was wrong. That amazing little animal paddled itself right across the current with amazing alacrity. I’ve been commercial fishing in big seas and the waves to that little guy must have been the equivalent of 30 footers!
I took an amazingly few photos on the 11 day journey, and barely dented the batteries of my camera. But there were a few nuggets along the way and I’ll share more in upcoming posts. This frame is a single RAW exposure and I used split-graduated ND filters in Lightroom to balance the foreground and sky tonality. I included the original flat, RAW capture to show what a pre and post Lightroom tweak looks like for this scene.
Processed in Lightroom: Dwarf fireweed, Marsh fork of the Canning River, Brooks Range, Alaska. Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f2.8L, .5 sec @ f/22, ISO 50. I selected ISO 50 and the f/22 setting to maximize the shutter length which adds a little blur to the water. I forgot my Neutral Density filter pack, or I would have used a three stop ND instead. This was taken before the water turned brown and the river rose overflowing the banks.
Original RAW capture: Dwarf fireweed, Marsh fork of the Canning River, Brooks Range, Alaska. Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f2.8L, .5 sec @ f/22, ISO 50.
Hey Patrick
Awesome. I think you must’ve set out a day or so before us. We landed downstream from the upper most put in,on the morning of the 28th. I think we flew right over you, I saw a couple of folks in pack rafts down there. I had no idea you were in the area, would’ve been great to say hey.
Cheers
Carl
Carl,
We flew in on the 29th, so that put us one day behind you. However, we camped three nights at our put in spot, so we took our jolly old time doing day hikes along the way. Much of the rain was in the mountain country so you probably missed it. We also had a few crazy mosquito encounters, but were not plagued the whole trip. Dirk mentioned you were on the river, but I doubted we would catch you with our pace. It would have been a pleasure to meet in Alaska’s big scenery!
Hey Patrick
That’s wild .. I’ve never seen anyone in pack rafts on the river before, yet this last month both you guys and some other 2 people were pack rafting it. Cool – awesome little boats, aren’t they?
Dirk is awesome. He mentioned he was coming back out the following day, but didn’t mention with who. Did you start out up at the Upper Marsh Fork strip? We normally start out there, but water levels were so low we went downstream about 7 miles, just past Porcupine Creek.
The mosquitoes were about 75% less than most years – they can be heinous sometimes.
Pretty cool you saw a lemming though – there was a researcher out at the coast doing his PHD study on lemmings, and he managed to trap only one in the 6 weeks he spent there .. low year for the lemmings. I saw one, but not in the mtns.
We really didn’t get too much rain, but I could tell it had been big in the mtns behind us. The river drastically changed flow, color and level on day 4. It was about 3 or 4 more days before it turned clear again.
Cheers
Carl
Carl,
We put in near porcupine creek, but Dirk dropped us off up river for a hike down to the gear. So many great landscapes could have been had on that beautiful river, but the weather did not bend in our favor. We had a raft besides the pack rafts, just to carry all the burdensome gear of a few photographers. Well, and things like boxed wine, etc… I’m curious, did you seen any wildlife?
Hey Patrick,
We saw wildlife, yep. No bears though. Ya just gotta know where to head. 🙂
We didn’t have any wine.
Cheers
Carl
Ahh, I though it might have been the wine.