Josh Andrews Photography

Journal

Alaska’s Lake Clark National Park & Preserve—A Closer Look

May 25 2008

In August of this past year, I went to Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska. It’s about 150 miles southwest of Anchorage, on the west side of the Cook Inlet on the north end of the Alaska Peninsula. The region is filled with diverse ecosystems, covers four million acres, and stretches from the Cook Inlet across the Chigmit Mountains into Alaska’s western interior. We did a lot aerial photography over the Alaska and Aleutian Ranges, which are an amazing, jagged (and at times terrifying) array of mountains and glaciers and include two active volcanoes (Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Iliamna). With no highway access points into the park, a 1 to 2 hour flight from Anchorage or surrounding areas is the only way to get in.

Aerial Photography

I stayed in Port Alsworth on Lake Clark, which is 50 miles long and (along with numerous lakes and river systems) is one of the largest sockeye salmon fishing grounds on the planet. The aerial images you’ve seen in my Alaska gallery were taken from both a Cessna 206 float plane and a 1940’s Stinson 10A. Water landings in the Cessna gave us greater access to the more remote areas in the park (they are all pretty remote though) as well as in Katmai National Park (directly south across Iliamna Lake, the largest lake in Alaska). The Stinson is a very small 2-seater with doors that open up, and stay up, for greater visibility. It’s amazing for photography, as long as you trust the seat belt. I’ve included some photos here of the Stinson to give you a sense of how close you are to your environment in one of these airplanes. In both the Cessna and the Stinson, you need a polarizing filter, an ultra-fast lens and an even faster shutter speed. Calm weather helps, but we didn’t get much of it.

The Revelations

We took the Cessna into the Revelation Mountains, which make up just part of the more than 52,000 square miles of the Alaska Range. The Revelations are a small, rugged and infrequently visited range with some of the world’s tallest granite spires and walls. Making up the furthest western extent of the Alaska Range, they are rarely visited due to both historically poor weather conditions and the relatively long flying time it takes to get there. The Revelations’ highest peak is Mount Hesperus, which reaches 9,828 feet. We spent a few hours over this range, climbing to 11,000 feet or so. There was quite a bit of turbulence and haze, and it made the photography pretty challenging. Here are a few images from that day. To be honest, it’s hard to convey the power that these mountains have.