Alaska

The Last Frontier

By Ellie Pritts

July 9^th, 2015

never-ending sunsets

It’s about 1 a.m and my leg is asleep (again) from sleeping like a pretzel on the plane. Bleary eyed, I look out the window for the first time in hours and I’m amazed. We’re in what seems to be perpetual twilight. The land below is covered in ice and the light is the most ethereal blue. It looks like we are over another planet. And still, this is the darkest sky I’ll see for several days.

Journey to denali

In search of a more authentic Alaskan experience, we found a listing for an “Alaskan Bush Cabin” in the remote wilderness near Denali. The listing warned this wasn’t the sort of place for the faint of heart. There was no electricity or running water, and the nearest road was an intense 5 mile hike away.

We arrived at our cabin via float plane, which was a spectacular experience in itself. We were greeted by our host and guide, Mike Sloan. He showed us our cabin and prepped us with proper rain gear and boots for our first hike.

Mike's cabin was a short walk away from ours.

Mike leading the way on our first hike, gun and machete in tow.

The terrain was pretty different than I imagined. Everything was lush and green and very, very wet. We climbed higher and higher until we were on top of a vast expanse, sparsely dotted with trees and low bushes. The first wildlife we spotted was a very large black bear, followed by a moose. We climbed further to be on higher ground and out of the way of the bear, who watched with giant binoculars.

Grizzly Scare

I really can’t stress enough how great of a guide Mike was. He was ever watchful and prepared for anything. He spotted the black bear way before I would have, and minutes later he spotted a giant grizzly bear in our vicinity. We briefly took a look through the binoculars before he said we needed to move, quickly. We had to stay well in front of the bear’s path, crossing ridge to ridge with no idea if the grizzly might have beat us there. It was a pretty humbling experience to say the least.

Gold rush

One of the coolest things I saw in Alaska was the abandoned Independence Mine. On the scenic route to this historic site, we saw several signs warning people against panning for gold on their property. With each one we passed, I wondered to myself whether people really were still searching for gold up here. Low and behold, we stumbled across a man patiently sifting through buckets of sand and dirt in this beautiful river. He said he’d only found “a few flakes” that day.

Independence Mine

At it’s peak, Independence Mine employed over 200 people and unearthed about 35,000 ounces of gold (worth about $17,208,000 today!) The mine shut down for good in 1951 and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Anyone can visit the crumbling remnants of this once booming mining town.

Let's talk shop

All of these photos were taken on a Fuji X-T1 with a 10-24 mm lens. As I mentioned in my Further Future post, I’m on the market for a mirrorless camera. I had fallen in love with the Fuji X-100T but I want to test out as many as possible before making a final decision. A few people have asked how I’m doing this so I wanted to mention to BorrowLenses.com. They rock!

I had high hopes for the X-T1 but overall I was not as impressed with it as I’d hoped. The image quality is pretty great, but the battery life and some of the controls were big hassles. I was initially impressed with the swivel display on the back, but quickly learned that it sucked the battery dry even faster.

Overall I’d say the X-T1 is a great camera for someone who doesn’t shoot for hours or days on end. I also found it to be pretty loud, which would not be ideal for shooting at certain shows.

Above: Mickey standing tall at Summit Lake.

Below: an abandoned earth station!

Matanuska Glacier

I’d never seen a glacier in real life before, so a trip to Matanuska was a must. I’d expected a field of grass with a giant mass of ice plopped in the middle, like you’d be able to just walk up to the edge of it and touch it. I have no idea why I had that image in my head.
I was wrong.

Muck city

The Matanuska Glacier flows about a foot a day. We approached it from the terminus side, meaning we had to traverse through crazy sticky muck fields made out of glacial silt. This stuff is no joke, and you could easily get hurt or even killed by its quicksand-like qualities. Luckily we only lost a shoe.

Below: the lovely Talkeetna river as seen at around 10 p.m

to talkeetna and beyond

Talkeetna was sort of our home base for this trip. After our time in the wilderness, we had a pretty strenuous but absolutely breathtaking 5 mile hike out to civilization. We spent the following night recuperating at Mike’s other cabin in Talkeetna and checked what the town had to offer. It’s super cute and everything I imagined a small Alaskan town to be.