My 10 Favorite Shots of 2021

During 2021, I retired my Canon 5D Mark IV and upgraded to mirrorless, investing in several new camera bodies and lenses from both Sony and Canon. The aurora came out of its 11-year solar cycle slump and danced frequently throughout the year. I took what may be the first ever shot of a packrafter in front of Denali on the McKinley River. I also finally returned to Trident Glacier to to take all the photos of that area I wish I could have during my 2018 traverse from Black Rapids to Healy. And my guiding business kept me quite busy through much of the winter and fall seasons. Here are my favorite shots from the year, in no particular order.

1. Canwell Glacier Ice Cave

Last summer I found a new ice cave in the middle of Canwell Glacier that glowed beautifully. I guided several customers there in July, August, and September so I got to watch it change slowly as it melted over the summer. (Check my hiking tours page for more info.) I like this particular shot because of the pattern of cracks in the ice and the vivid blue color.

2. Snow & Fall Colors

Winter arrived early in Delta Junction last year. In fact, it arrived before fall was over. Heavy snow fell in September and it never fully melted. This created a unique opportunity to photograph fall foliage with snow. I took this shot with my Sony FE 135mm f/1.8 GM lens, which excels at macro shots of larger objects and has quickly become one of my favorite landscape lenses, even if most would consider it a portrait lens.

3. Packrafting the McKinley River

You’d think a shot like this would have been done before, but as far as I can tell it hasn’t. The McKinley River provides sweeping views of Denali and the Alaska Range, but prospective paddlers will have trouble finding any information about the river and lugging a raft there is a complicated endeavor. I took this shot after crossing Muldrow Glacier and floating from near the toe of the glacier to the McKinley Bar Trail. You can read more about that adventure here.

4. Donnelly Dome Aurora

I carried a new Sony a7S III camera up Donnelly Dome with a gimbal to practice shooting aurora video near the end of aurora season in mid-April. My buddy Brian came with me and we were treated to an amazing show on the climb up. The aurora was a bit lackluster while we were on top of the mountain, but it lit up briefly just as we started back down. You can watch video from this night here.

5. Mount Moffit Sunset Selfie

While photographing sunset high on a ridge above Trident Glacier, I saw the small rock pedestal in this photo still being hit by the sun after the other surrounding rocks had fallen into the shadows. I raced to set up this selfie shot and somehow accidentally set my aperture to f/18, but the shot still looks sharp, diffraction notwithstanding. That’s Mount Moffit viewed from the northeast with a spectacular icefall running below. Read more about this photography expedition here.

6. 40 Below Aurora

I don’t know the exact temperature when I took this photo, but it was no warmer than -35°F. Absolutely bonechilling. I remember having to walk briskly up and down the snowy road I was parked along a few times to stay warm. I was guiding another photographer and our camera batteries kept dying every 20 minutes or so. But when the aurora suddenly began erupting I forgot about the cold and immediately dove into thigh-high powder snow to capture this display unimpeded by trees and without the road in the frame. I didn’t have time to extend the legs on my tripod or attempt to find solid footing for it, so my camera was less than a foot above the surface of the snow with most of the tripod buried in snow. I was shooting with a 35mm lens so the trees in the foreground are a bit out-of-focus but I don’t feel like that matters with such an amazing aurora. If I were shooting wider those curves in the aurora just wouldn’t look as stunning.

7. Black Rapids Glacier

For a couple years now I’ve been taking a handful of customers in good shape with plenty of hiking experience to Black Rapids Glacier. One of my customers in March was my former coworker Gary. We enjoyed absolutely perfect weather that day, and the surface of the frozen lake in front of the glacier was mostly exposed. I feel like I’m on another planet when I’m hiking around Black Rapids Glacier, and I feel like this shot captures some of that otherworldly feeling. See my winter tours page for tour info.

8. Mount Moffit Sunrise Selfie

Similar to shot #5 above, this aspect shows Mount Moffit at sunrise viewed from the north. A handful of climbers may recognize Moffit’s “Entropy Wall” in this shot. I love the staggering size of Moffit and could spend an entire summer taking different shots like this. In hindsight, I wish I had placed the tripod a bit higher up so I would have contrasted better against the shadowy area on the mountain, but I can’t recall if that was even possible with the cliff bands out of frame to the right.

9. Mount Hayes Sunset

After taking some nice reflection shots of the Alaska Range at Donnelly Lake before sunset, I was winding over the hills above the lake looking for a nice spot to camp away from the wretched mosquitoes. I saw Mount Hayes peeking through the trees and took this shot handheld on a whim. I ended up liking it more than the tripod shots I took beside the water. The trees in the foreground add some depth to the image and frame the mountain nicely.

10. G3 Aurora

On the night of November 3, 2021 a powerful solar storm hit Earth causing one of the best aurora displays I’ve ever seen, and definitely the best one I’ve seen in several years. I was busy shooting video during some of the craziest moments, but when the aurora was less intense and moving more slowly I focused on taking photos. The color in the aurora was really amazing that night. You can see the video I shot from that night on YouTube here.

Black Rapids Glacier January 2018

The entrance to a spacious, crumbling ice cave in the moraine of Black Rapids Glacier.

Forrest just before he plunged his foot into slush.

I continued my tradition of hiking to Black Rapids Glacier in January last Saturday. My adventure buddy Forrest accompanied me and we arrived at the Delta River shortly before sunrise under cloudy skies and light snow. We crossed the river ice just upstream of an unfrozen section, then started hiking up the unnamed creek that flows from the glacier. Recent strong winds and warm weather had wiped out most of the snow along the creek so we were able to walk without skis or snowshoes on a thin layer of fresh snow, avoiding several areas where the surface ice had collapsed. With the temperature around 0 °F (-18 °C) and the breeze at our backs, the hike in was a lot more enjoyable than the worst case conditions we were expecting. About halfway to the glacier we stopped to attach Microspikes to our boots to keep from slipping and it was almost as easy as walking on solid ground after that. Blue ice eventually came into view, and we steered toward the rightmost side of the glacier moraine.   

We walked along a street-sized gap between giant blocks of glacier ice until we turned down a sidewalk-sized wedge in one of the blocks, post-holing through a rotten mixture of snow and debris. Forrest unwittingly stuck his boot in slush at one point, but luckily avoided getting any water inside. (Such mishaps always remind me of "To Build A Fire", but I don't think you'll ever catch me attempting something like this in -50 °F.) We climbed up a snow ramp at the end of the wedge and continued over the moraine into a large, flat depression—surely a frozen glacial lake. While crossing the middle of the lake we heard the ice creak beneath our feet, so we quickly hugged the perimeter to avoid taking an unexpected dip. After marveling at the details in the glacier ice encircling the lake, we climbed over the rim on the far side and worked our way back to the creek, continuing farther upstream beside the moraine. We passed a few ice formations that looked vaguely familiar from last winter and plenty of new ones.

After a short time, we hopped back onto the moraine and followed a sizable meltwater channel into a spacious ice cave. The cave wasn't very deep, but it was tall and featured a lot of crumbling ice. As soon as the sun starts shining on the cave in February and melting the ice again, the large rocks looming precariously above the entrance will become quite dangerous as they start sliding off. Even without the ice melting, one side of the cave interior looked rather unstable and dangerous, but we were content to hang out on the other side for a bit while we ate lunch and sheltered from the breeze.   

Crossing the frozen glacial lake.

The interior of the ice cave. In the melting season, water presumably runs around the pieces of collapsed ice and into the gap under the ice in the back of the cave.

Due to January's short daylight hours, we began our return after exiting the cave. The clouds began thinning and the snow stopped falling, and the surrounding mountains that had been cloaked all day soon emerged, including Mt. Silvertip across the Delta River. We walked with our masks and goggles covering our faces, but the cold breeze still managed to bite my face from time to time. With less than a mile to go we came across a fresh set of wolf tracks, which paralleled our old tracks for a lengthy distance until they disappeared into the brush beside the creek. The river finally came into sight and we crossed it just after sunset. I felt comfortably warm most of the day, but I was happy to turn on the seat warmer and pull off my frozen face mask after we started driving back to Delta Junction.

I will explore Black Rapids Glacier again later in February when I have more daylight and (hopefully) warmer weather. The glacier really is a photographer's playground and it isn't that hard to reach, so I'm lucky few other people venture out there. 

For tips on photographing ice caves, read my post How to Photograph An Ice Cave.
Interested in visiting Black Rapids Glacier or seeing an ice cave? I offer guided winter tours. More information.