My 10 Favorite Shots Of 2018

I’m officially making it a tradition: here are my 10 favorite Alaska images from 2018, in no particular order. Thanks for following my photography adventures in 2018—I look forward to taking many new shots in 2019!

1. Devils Thumb Aurora

I camped overnight on a mountain ridge with a couple friends to catch the aurora over this rock outcropping in the Alaska Range called Devils Thumb. The aurora danced for a few hours that night as we watched from a couple thousand feet above the Richardson Highway. Read my blog post about this adventure.

2. Canwell Glacier Cave

This ice cave has been around for several years now hidden in the moraine of Canwell Glacier. It has become increasingly difficult to access over time but it never disappoints. The ice near the entrance is a beautiful translucent aquamarine color and the cave extends into total darkness after several twists and turns. Read more about my trip to this ice cave here.

3. Torchlight Aurora

Campfires are a great way to light the foreground in an aurora shot on a moonless night, but there’s no wood to burn on most of Alaska’s mountainous terrain (tree line is roughly 3000 feet in Alaska) so I carried supplies to make a torch on top of Donnelly Dome for this shot. I would like to try a shot like this again on a more rugged mountain. Read more about this adventure here.

4. Pass To Wood River

The highlight of my summer was hiking nearly 130 miles from Black Rapids to Healy across the eastern Alaska Range. This is my favorite shot from the trip because you can tell we’re in the middle of a rugged, off-trail backcountry expedition by studying the details and terrain without any narrative. Read about this traverse here.

5. Twenty Below Doghouse Portrait

I loved how the light was catching this sled dog’s face framed by the doghouse opening on this frigid morning in Interior Alaska. The frozen dog spit helps convey how cold it was at the time, nearly twenty degrees (°F) below zero.

6. Eastern Alaska Range Sunrise

I’ve taken many selfie shots on a timer like this one but I don’t think I’ve ever looked so awesome. I hiked up a mountain ridge overnight to catch this 3 a.m. sunrise in the eastern Alaska Range near Black Rapids, and after sunrise I hiked all the way to the ridgeline above the Jarvis Glacier canyon. Hands down my favorite day spent in the mountains last summer. Read more about this adventure here.

7. Onemile Creek Frozen Waterfall

I made a couple trips to this frozen waterfall in the spring. A little scrambling will get you behind the ice, which glows like an electric blue curtain. Read about this waterfall here.

8. Pioneer Peak Sunrise With Denali

I hiked overnight along the Pioneer Peak-Austin Helmers Trail for this sunrise shot of Pioneer Peak with Denali in the background. I mainly wanted to hike the trail, but I planned this shot in Google Earth beforehand and it came out fairly nice. It says “Palmer, Alaska” without being too obvious.

9. Hidden Alpine Lake

There’s a trail on the Kenail Peninsula that doesn’t see much traffic even though it leads to beautiful views in no time. My brother and I made an excursion from the trail to visit this pristine alpine lake and another two lakes feeding it from above. We had just hiked the Reed Lakes Trail in Hatcher Pass which was flooded with people, so it was nice to have scenery like this all to ourselves.

10. Donnelly Lake Reflection

I camped overnight at Donnelly Lake to shoot the aurora and wound up with relatively calm water the next morning, which made for some nice reflection shots of the Hayes Range. This wasn’t the sharpest reflection I photographed but it features my tent, which hints that this isn’t Wonder Lake or Reflection Pond in Denali National Park, though the terrain might look similar.

Click here to see my favorite images from 2017.

Onemile Creek Frozen Waterfall

Looking up from an opening behind a frozen waterfall along Onemile Creek in the Alaska Range, near Black Rapids.

I've stumbled across several waterfalls in the backcountry of the Alaska Range, but I usually only spy them from a distance because they are either too far out of my way to visit or else located in inaccessible cliffs. Last winter, I found a couple photogenic frozen waterfalls while skiing up an unnamed creek just north of Black Rapids along the Richardson Highway. That creek is actually mislabeled "One Mile Creek" by a highway sign, while the real Onemile Creek lies to the south, flowing down through a narrow cut in the mountains. I spotted a large waterfall glinting in the afternoon sun along Onemile Creek from the highway a few years ago but it wasn't until I found the waterfalls along the faux "One Mile Creek" that I finally decided to pay the real Onemile Creek a visit.    

Frozen waterfall along the "faux" One Mile Creek.

The blue ice behind the Onemile Creek waterfall. Bring a wide angle, squat down and look up!

While "One Mile Creek" featured a few steep pitches and some other hazards that would make it an inappropriate adventure for the inexperienced, the route to the base of the Onemile Creek waterfall makes for a rugged but relatively easy snowshoe. That being said, if you aren't planning on ice climbing, you will have to do some steep scrambling to get over the lower two falls to reach the more impressive upper fall.

I made an initial scouting trip to the waterfall with a friend on a mostly cloudy afternoon in late March. We slogged through deep snow up the hillside above the waterfall where we had a great view overlooking the Delta River valley. When we descended to the base of the upper fall, there appeared to be an opening behind the ice on either side about halfway up. The opening on the left was guarded by rocky cliffs, and while it looked possible to scramble up the cliffs without a rope, I decided it would be too risky with the loose snow covering the rock. I walked up the steep snow slope to the opening on the right and was pleased to find a tall curtain of translucent blue ice when I stuck my head inside. There wasn't much space to maneuver, but there were still plenty of interesting angles to explore. Before leaving, I noted the time and the position of the sun in the sky and estimated that I could catch the sun fully illuminating the waterfall if I returned on a clear day around 6-7 p.m. 

I returned to the waterfall a couple weeks later on a beautiful spring day with another group of friends. We could see the ice of the waterfall gleaming in the late afternoon sun when we parked along the highway, and we passed several moose on the way to it. The snow on the cliffs to the left of the upper fall had melted away, so I psyched myself up for a dangerous scramble and made like a Dall sheep up the cliffs to the opening I had yet to explore. Once inside, I found it was a little deeper than the other opening but not as tall. The shapes in the ice itself were not quite as striking, but the glow was still captivating and the view peering out from the opening was more interesting.

Late afternoon/early evening sun shining on the OnemIle Creek waterfall. There are small openings behind the waterfall on either side.

Closeup of a plant clinging to the cliffs behind the ice of the Onemile Creek waterfall.

The "floor" inside the opening consisted of thin, murky ice with water underneath. The ice wasn't going to hold my weight so I did my best to position my tripod on it and compose my shots while crouched on the adjacent rocks. After shooting the blue ice for a while, I turned around and realized the sun was shining directly inside the opening. The view was rather unique and I knew it wouldn't last very long, so I attempted to capture it by pointing the camera in my direction and ducking while the camera took the picture. It took several tries to get the focus and composition right, but I didn't realize until later that my backpack was silhouetted at the bottom of the frame in all the shots. Luckily, I was able to save one or two images by cropping a little tighter than I normally prefer. 

The early evening sun shines behind the frozen Onemile Creek waterfall.

In May I might try to catch this waterfall as it "opens up". There's certainly plenty of water flowing beneath the surface of the waterfall already, but in a matter of weeks that water should be flowing over the top while the ice to the sides continues to slowly melt. Looking forward to a summer stroll to the waterfall as well! (Update: I did see water flowing over the ice in May as I passed by on the highway, but when I returned a couple days later with my camera the water had disappeared under the ice. Maybe next year...)  

Want to see this waterfall? Check out my Black Rapids Tours winter offerings.