alaska, travel, photography, skiing, and what not
Well, been a while again. After a year or so of barely using my DSLR, sold it and got the new GoPro Hero3+. Small, easy to use and I can definitely throw it in while fishing, surfing, skiing, boating, etc. in Alaska and don’t have to worry about ruining it. Tested it out last weekend and was surprised at the image quality while shooting stills. Had an amazing weekend surfing on the the North Gulf Coast enjoying good weather and some unusual summer swell.
Current weather at my house: 30 mph winds, 43 degrees and rain. Need to get out of here!
Early morning offshore fishing in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. Be there soon enough….
Last spring we took a trip to a remote part of the Pacific coastline in Panama for a week long surf trip. Amazing waves with absolutely nobody around. Great week with intermittent power, lots of hammock time, and sore arms from surfing so much.
Perhaps the most famous place to surf in Alaska is in the town of Yakutat. It is a small town right on the gulf in the shadow of Mt St Elias. A beautiful place that has awesome beaches, great steelhead runs, and very remote feel.
A few weeks back myself and few others had extra frequent flyer miles to burn and we booked a last minute trip to Yakutat for a long weekend. It is a quick flight from Anchorage to Yakutat and you can get some big old beater rentals at the airport. It took a while to figure out the tides and breaks but after that we had an amazing time with some killer waves. Probably some of the best I’ve ever had. The break called Graveyards wrapped all the way around the point into Yakutat Bay and broke shoulder high and left for 100+ yds on a nice sandy beach. It made for some big smiles at the end of the day. If you are interested, hit up Jack at Icy Waves Surf Shop – he’ll get you dialed in with rentals, surfboards, etc. Here are some photos… not much of actual surfing because everyone was in the water and not snapping photos.
Here are some from my buddy Thomas:
The snow has been painfully slow getting here this year. As of right now, I am only looking at a few inches of snow out my window. I went skiing once and it was a bit skinny. That said, I have been keeping busy and getting shape continuing to learn how to surf. Such an easy trip from Anchorage down to Seward and then out to the break. Suprisingly the past three trips have been sunny which is absolutely unheard of in South-Central Alaska. All of our surfing has been from a boat, so I don’t have many photos from the shore, however, here are a few from before and after the many surf sessions this fall. Probably not the best place to perfect my surfing, but probably one of the more scenic spots to surf in the world.
After a long week at work, a much needed reprieve came in the form of a last minute surf trip to Seward, AK to take advantage of a good swell and sun. What an amazing surf trip in the middle of October in Alaska. As a bonus, the northern lights were out and rocking the whole drive home.
If you ever find yourself wanting to go surfing in Alaska contact Scott Liska. He has a great setup and his pricing is probably some of lowest for boat charters anywhere. Anyhow, check out some of the photos from the day.
I know that is a strong statement and I’ve seen quite a few weird things up here in Alaska, however, Whittier is a weird little town. We had some time to kill on a stormy afternoon and we decided to head down to Whittier, AK to check it out. The winds were cooking down Turnagain Arm at about 75 knots and then the rain started. The weirdness begins when you get to a tunnel that goes 2.5 miles through a mountain before you arrive in Whittier. The tunnel is a single lane and it is shared between outgoing and incoming traffic along with the train. The town of Whittier has just under 200 residents and a majority live in the same building – a 12 story condominium that was once a military housing complex. On the other end of town sits the Buckner Building which is a cold war era Army building which is now abandoned. It was a very creepy place. All said, I can’t wait to go back when the weather is nice (if it ever clears up) and go skiing in the mountains or out on the waters of Prince William Sound.
No cars were involved this Labor Day weekend. What a nice feeling it was to take off in a small plane out of Anchorage and see everyone scrambling to get out of town for Labor Day Weekend. One stop and two hours later we touched down in Port Alsworth, AK – about 170 miles southeast of Anchorage. It is on the border of Lake Clark National Park. Our friends have a place on the lake there and we had a fantastic weekend fishing, eating, boating and enjoying to cool fall weather. What an amazing place that sees so few people. One weekend was not enough. You could spend years exploring this area and still not see everything. We’ll definitely have to go back. Some photos from the weekend:
stoltz project 