Leon Turnbull Photography

Here’s another shot from my first sunset evening in Alaska, along the mudflats of the Turnagain Arm. This one is looking away from the sun, towards the mountains. Alaskan scenery is incredibly beautiful. Snow-capped mountains and glaciers are everywhere, and that includes right along the ocean. It just doesn’t get any better.

Another thing that is everywhere (apparently) are bears. But I did not see any! I was definitely disappointed about that. But apparently, I was very close to them. You wouldn’t expect grizzly bears to be wandering out on the mudflats. I sure wasn’t. Seeing grizzlies was the least of my worries as I was photographing the sunset here. Maybe it shouldn’t have been though. I read in the paper later that there were two grizzlies out wandering the mudflats one morning. It turned out that I was down in that area and within a couple miles of them on that very morning (two mornings after this sunset shot). But I saw nothing. I have extremely bad “luck” in seeing bears. I just never seem to see any when I am on vacation, no matter where I am. Now, I didn’t really want to encounter any up close whilst hiking, but I would have loved to get a nice good shot of a grizzly bear on this trip, and being in Alaska, I was sure to see some. But alas, it was not to be. Well, technically speaking I did see a black bear. But it was through some lady’s spotting scope that was looking way up on a mountain side. I looked through it and saw a small black ball moving across the mountain. I can’t even count that one.

This is McHugh Creek Falls, a small 20 ft. waterfall located along the roadside on the Turnagain Arm, south of Anchorage.

It is a nice little falls, and easy to get down to. Also, apparently it is very easy to lose your polarizer at. The first evening I was in Alaska and I lose my polarizer in the drink. Ugh! It was definitely not a good start to my trip. I use that filter a lot, especially when photographing waterfalls. It is very helpful to reduce glare on the water. In a way, it was not a huge loss though. I had already marked it for retirement, and had a new one ordered. But the new one had not yet arrived in time to come to Alaska, so I would be missing the old girl for the rest of the trip. Maybe the polarizer knew that it was about to be replaced and wanted to die a peaceful death, laying forever in the creeks of Alaska.

When I arrived in Anchorage, my initial plan was to go to sleep early and wake up for sunrise. The forecast was calling for rain that night, clearing up by the morning. That is not what happened. There was no rain that first night. In fact, it was quickly turning into a very pleasant evening, with fantastic scattered clouds all around. I knew it was going to be a spectacular sunset … somewhere. I made an executive decision to change the plan and stay up for sunset. I definitely made the correct decision. The next day, it rained all morning long.

Now the question was … where to go? I decided to go south of Anchorage and try to find a good spot along the Turnagain Arm. This is a very interesting area, which consists of rather interesting mud flats at low tide. It just happened to be low tide this evening too. There are many warning signs to stay off the mud flats. Why? I’m guessing it is because they are like quick sand and it is quite dangerous. I did see many footprints along them, so it might not really be all that bad, but I had no desire to get my only pair of running shoes all muddy, so I stayed off to the side. I definitely found the right spot for sunset. Any further along the Turnagain Arm, and I would have been away from the good light, from where the sun was setting in the north-west. I found a nice spot and waited.

The thing about this time of year in Alaska is that the sun rises awfully early (4:30AM), and sets awfully late (11:30PM). I found over the week that it is just too hard to get up that early for sunrise, and in fact, I did not get up early very much at all (I never got up for sunrise, but I did get up early a couple times, but only a couple times). It was much much easier to stay up late for sunset, then sleep in. They say that the winters in Alaska are awful and depressing because it is dark for much of the day. I may be wrong, but for photographers, I think that would be perfect. You could easily catch both sunrise and sunset in the winter without losing any sleep at all. In the summer, that is impossible to do. Even staying up for sunset is difficult unless you can sleep in the next day. So anyway, I stayed up late the first day I was there. I was tired from my flight, but not too tired that I could not stay up.

I was the only one out on the mudflats that evening. After the sun had set and I was leaving, I saw a couple guys come down, one carrying a big tripod and the other carrying a big video camera. They were going to video tape the sunset? They were in a hurry to catch some sunset light, but were complaining that there was no view at that location. I told them they had to get right down on the mudflats to see the sunset. There still was some decent color in the sky, but apparently they were too lazy to go down there. Oh well.

Here’s another one. I’m not sure which one I like better:

I prefer my waterfalls without the mosquitoes on top, thank you very much. I also prefer my waterfalls without the hordes of other hikers, and I definitely prefer my waterfalls with a decent view.

Well, I am back from my week long vacation to Alaska, and my first posting is Thunderbird Falls in Chugach State Park near Anchorage. As you may have gathered, it is certainly not the best waterfall I saw on the trip, but it is the first, and that is the only reason I am posting it first. I took tons and tons of photos on this trip, and it will probably take a couple months to go through them all. I saw quite a few waterfalls and quite a bit of wildlife on the trip, though not as much as I had hoped, for either of the two. Still though, it was a fabulous vacation and coming back to 100+ degrees in California was not too pleasing. Alaska is an incredibly beautiful state, kind of a cross between British Columbia, Oregon, and Hawaii. You may think that is odd for me to say that, but the scenery reminded me a lot of BC (with the towering snow-capped mountains, oceans, and swift, clean flowing rivers), and a couple hikes I went on reminded me a lot of Oregon (with the lush greenery), and another hike we went on reminded me a lot of hiking in Hawaii (hot and humid, but with beautiful green vegetation).

I was not too impressed with Thunderbird Falls, for the three reasons I mentioned above in the first paragraph. I did go back to it a second time though, in order to seek out better views (to no avail). I arrived in Anchorage in the early afternoon, had lunch, checked into my hotel, and went to REI to buy bear spray. My wife and kids were already in Alaska, but they were up at Nome for a wedding. Although I would have liked to visit Nome, my work only allowed me to take a one week vacation, so we decided that week would be better spent down at Homer, rather than up at Nome. However, I was able to go a bit early and stay in Anchorage for a couple nights before meeting my family at the airport. My plan was to hit the local waterfalls, as many as I could, and try to find some wildlife as well. Anchorage is not a big city, but it is a very difficult city to drive around in. It is very confusing, the signs are a mess, and there are many 1 way streets. Getting to REI was particularly crazy; even though it is surrounded by 4 streets, there is no way to drive to it on any of them. I suppose the locals have it all figured out, but it took me all of 3 days to get the hang of driving around this city.

My first stop was the ever popular Thunderbird Falls. I was surprised at the number of people hiking this trail. In fact, I was quite surprised at the number of people out hiking all weekend, even on trails that seemed to be not very interesting. It seems the Alaskans like to hike. Or maybe they were mostly tourists. I’m not too sure. Thunderbird Falls is one of the trails that really is not that interesting. Don’t get me wrong. It is a really nice waterfall, dropping impressively about 70 ft. on the Eklutna River. But there are just no good views of this waterfall. There is an overlook which had a totally obscured view of the falls. Then there is a trail going to the base of the falls, but it does not have a view either. To get a decent view, I had to scramble up a particularly slippery rocky slope that had a steep drop-off down into the river. The first time, I went up the wrong way, and could not get up where I wanted to. When I turned to go back down, I found that I was pretty much trapped. I could not go up or down. I had to slide on my bum back down the slippery slope very carefully, and hoping I could get a solid enough grip on the slippery rocks with my boots so I would not fall. I made it back down with only a muddy bum to show for it. I was not happy with my photos, so I returned again the next day looking for a better viewpoint. This photo was the result. I still was not happy with the viewpoint but I felt I could not get any higher vantage point safely. At least I did not get a muddy bum this time, but I did get quite a few mosquito bites. They were swarming around this spot as I took this shot. They jokingly say that mosquitoes are the state bird in Alaska. I guess they were perhaps twice the size of Californian mosquitoes, but somehow with a statement like that I was expecting them to be a heckuva lot bigger than they were. Either way, I didn’t want to stick around at this viewpoint too long.

I have a couple tidbits of news to share. First up, is that this photo of Yuba River Falls in Nevada City made the cover of this year’s annual Nevada County Gold Magazine. I was pretty excited about this, being that it is on the cover of the magazine. This is a free magazine that you can pick up at various locations if you live (or visit) Nevada County, so check it out if you are in the area. You can see their website here, but they have not yet updated it yet for this year’s issue).

Also, three of my photos are featured in a new book by Tony Greenfield, called “Waterfalls of British Columbia” (Beaver Falls, Wilson Falls, Cascade Falls). Check it out here.

Thirdly, my photo of Lower Deer Creek Falls was featured on the back cover of the annual report from the Western Rivers Conservancy, a great organization aiming to protect our rivers in the western U.S.A. You can check out their website here.