Tessera

Lee Petersen

@leepetersen.bsky.social

Photographer writing Alaska hiking, travel, wildflower guides and other junk. Living in Fairbanks, Alaska. Lots of stuff here: http://lwpetersen.com/links

952 Posts1565 Follower 54 Folgt

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 13h ago

Some rare aurora from last November. The high red is atomic oxygen glowing far up in the atmosphere, which only fills the sky like this during a strong geomagnetic storm. Summer's going too fast, but we're only a couple weeks from aurora season. How it works: www.lwpetersen.com/science-and-...

A vertical aurora display fills the night sky with a rare high band of deep red above green curtains, streaking down toward snow-laden spruce trees. Stars show through the colored light, and a frost-covered bent tree stands silhouetted in the center foreground.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · yesterday

Summer day on the Black Rapids Glacier in the Alaska Range, McGinnis Peak on the right. This is known as the "Galloping Glacier," a surge-type glacier that last surged in 1936-1937, advancing 4 miles in just 4 months. www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-infor...

A wide mountain panorama on a debris-covered glacier. In the foreground, a pale boulder sits on gray glacier ice beside a turquoise meltwater pool and patches of old snow. Beyond, a rugged range of snow-streaked peaks rises under a blue sky with scattered white clouds.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2d ago

It was a windy night last night hiking to the summit of Mt. Prindle. So much fun, though! Didn't see another person the entire hike. Got back to the car one minute before midnight.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 4d ago

The front face of the Columbia Glacier, a wall of ice rising straight out of Prince William Sound. The Columbia has retreated more than 12 miles since the early 1980s, one of the fastest tidewater retreats on the planet.

$The towering front face of the Columbia Glacier rises directly from the grey-green water of Prince William Sound, filling nearly the entire frame. The ice wall is deeply fractured into vertical columns and blades, glowing pale blue in the shadows and white where sunlight hits, streaked in places with thin dark lines of rock debris. Small chunks of brash ice float on the calm water at its base. A sliver of hazy sky and one distant snowy peak show at the upper left.$

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 4d ago

Missing glaciers in the Rainbow Basin near the Canwell Glacier in the Alaska Range. I’ve been documenting the effects of climate change on our natural landscapes in this area of the Alaska Range. If you’d like to read about this trip, check out my latest post: lwpetersen.substack.com/p/just-going...

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 4d ago

Three hikes, two mountain ranges, 28 miles, 6,000 feet of gain, 38 hours, two hours of sleep. New post on Field Notes From the North: lwpetersen.substack.com/p/just-going...

$A girl in a peach beanie and grey hoody steps carefully down sunlit glacier ice in microspikes, a foam pad and water bottle strapped to her pack, her shadowed profile concentrated on the slope. Behind her, walls of fractured blue ice rise toward a dark rock peak, with brilliant white cloud and a patch of blue sky above and a nearly black storm cloud at left.$

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 4d ago

This cave no longer exists. I dubbed it "pretty cave," one of the glacier caves I've been documenting on the Canwell Glacier of the eastern Alaska Range for years, watching them form, shift, and collapse as the ice thins. I wrote about them in my recent post: lwpetersen.substack.com/p/three-days...

Inside a glacier cave, looking up and out toward the entrance. The ceiling and walls are glacial ice, the deep interior a dark teal that brightens toward the mouth into vivid, glowing turquoise and pale white where daylight pours through the thinner ice. The ice surface is rippled and fluted in smooth, wave-like lobes, glassy and translucent in places, streaked in others with fine lines of dark sediment and trapped debris. The cave floor is bare grey and brown glacial till, rock and gravel left by the melting ice, running across the bottom of the frame. To the right, the ice meets a rubble slope of dirt-crusted rock.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 4d ago

A bull caribou tearing across the tundra in Denali, antlers still in velvet. My wildlife gallery: photos.lwpetersen.com/Galleries/Al...

A bull caribou runs at full gallop across green summer tundra, all four legs extended mid-stride, mouth open and tongue out. Its large antlers are still covered in brown velvet. Small purple wildflowers dot the grass, and green willow brush fills the blurred background.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 5d ago

The downward-facing flower of one-flowered wintergreen (Moneses uniflora), seen from below. The angle shows the star-shaped stigma most flowers hide. Info in my Alaska Wildflower Guide: www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-wildf...

A single white flower of one-flowered wintergreen seen from below, nodding downward on a curved green stem. Five white petals spread around a green central ovary with a straight style and star-shaped stigma, ringed by curved stamens. The background is a soft brown-and-green blur of forest floor.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 6d ago

My latest Field Notes story from Hatcher Pass earlier this month. One of the most incredible, short, and difficult day hikes I've ever done. Read it here: lwpetersen.substack.com/p/getting-st...

A lone hiker in a green jacket stands on a rock outcrop between two patches of old snow, back to the camera, looking down the length of a mountain valley. Green and grey slopes fall away toward a braided creek and a distant road, and ridgeline after ridgeline of dark, snow-streaked peaks recede under low grey cloud, rain hazing the farthest ranges.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 6d ago

Extreme close-up of a female willow catkin blooming in Fairbanks in early spring, its dichotomous stigmas catching pollen. Part of a post I wrote a couple of years ago when I was getting more into macro photography: lwpetersen.substack.com/p/willow-mac...

A macro close-up of a female willow catkin, its branched reddish stigmas tipped with pale yellow rising from a green core wrapped in fine white hairs. The background dissolves into soft white and green blur.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 7d ago

My newest Field Notes post is loaded with photos and video, more than you can shake a stick at. A late-September speedhike up College Glacier before the Equinox, racing the daylight the whole way (and getting my first aurora of the season). Free to read: lwpetersen.substack.com/p/college-gl...

A small hanging glacier clings to a rocky cirque high in the mountains, its crevassed white-and-blue ice draped over dark bare rock. Above it rise steep, jagged peaks dusted with fresh snow, under a blue sky with light cloud.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · last wk.

Noctilucent clouds over the Alaska Range last Friday night. These form about 50 miles up, at the edge of space, and glow because they're still catching sunlight long after the ground has gone dark.

Wispy, pale electric-blue clouds with a fine rippled, streaked texture spread across a deep twilight sky. Below them sits a band of darker, silhouetted lower cloud, and along the bottom a row of black mountain peaks with patches of snow is barely lit against the last light.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · last wk.

New on Field Notes from the North: a day of wandering Denali's tundra in peak fall color, from Sable Pass toward the Teklanika. Bull moose, bears, and one very strange shuttle driver. (The back half is for paid subscribers) lwpetersen.substack.com/p/late-summe...

A broad tundra basin in full fall color, with red, orange, and gold shrubs surrounding a small blue pond. Beyond it, layered ridgelines recede toward a sharp, jagged peak, with low clouds and shafts of light raking across the higher mountains.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · last wk.

A partially snow-covered crevasse on the Worthington Glacier at Thompson Pass in the Chugach Mountains. This is exactly why lingering summer snow on a glacier is so dangerous. It bridges over open crevasses like this one and sometimes hides them completely. www.lwpetersen.com/definitions/...

A deep crevasse cuts across a broad white glacier surface, its interior glowing vivid blue where the ice is exposed beneath a partial covering of snow. Beyond the glacier, green lower slopes rise to a range of rugged, snow-streaked mountains under a bright blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · last wk.

Richardson's Brookfoam (Boykinia richardsonii) in the Rainbow Basin, Alaska Range. Also known as bear flower because it is a favorite food of grizzlies. It grows almost nowhere outside of Alaska and the Yukon. Info in my wildflower guide: www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-wildf...

Three tall flowering stalks of Richardson's brookfoam rise from a rosette of large, round, scalloped green leaves. Each reddish stem is topped with a cluster of small white five-petaled flowers with dark red centers. The plant grows among grass and lichen-covered rocks in alpine tundra, with a sunlit blurred background.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · last wk.

A double rainbow at sunset near Donnelly Creek Campground, on the north side of the Alaska Range. We spent the weekend hiking in the Deltas; this is what greeted us on the drive in Friday night. More photos to come.

A vivid double rainbow arcs across a pink and lavender sunset sky over a boreal landscape. Spruce trees line a low ridge in the middle distance, and a marshy pond in the foreground reflects the colored sky and the faint curve of the rainbow.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

More glacier caves in my latest on Field Notes from the North. This one was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, and it likely won't last the summer. lwpetersen.substack.com/p/late-summe... #alaska #hiking #glacier #glaciercave

A woman in a green rain jacket and white climbing helmet crouches low and grins at the camera as she emerges from beneath a thick overhang of blue glacier ice. Her hands are planted on a slope of loose gray gravel and rock, and a band of dark sediment runs through the ice above her.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

Aialik Glacier and plenty of wildlife. My latest post is live on Substack. lwpetersen.substack.com/p/late-summe...

The northern edge of Aialik Glacier's terminus, a jumbled wall of pale blue and white ice riven with crevasses and pinnacles, meeting dark wet bedrock on the right where the ice runs up against the fjord wall. Calm green-gray water fills the bottom of the frame under flat gray sky.

Three tall rock sea stacks rise from calm turquoise water, each topped with wind-shaped spruce and patches of green moss. Fog drifts across the forested cliffs behind them under a pale white sky.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

Inverted Reflection The treeline and sky mirrored in Ballaine Lake, Fairbanks, Alaska. photos.lwpetersen.com/Portfolio-Im... #alaska #reflection #fairbanks

An abstract nature image: a reflection of a black spruce treeline and dramatic cloudy sky in the rippled surface of Ballaine Lake, presented inverted so the reflection is upright, the pointed spruce stand up out of a band of bright green sedge, with towering white and gray clouds filling the space below them. Wind ripples blur the trees into soft vertical streaks.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

After months of low motivation to climb, I finally felt the pull again last night. Today I made quick work of a V7 on our new set, felt good to remember what that feels like. I wrote about that struggle in my latest post, glad to feel the drive coming back: open.substack.com/pub/lwpeters...

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

Grizzly eating soapberries (Shepherdia canadensis), a key, late-season food for them in Denali National Park. photos.lwpetersen.com/Galleries/Al... #alaska #wildlife #denali #bear

A blond-backed grizzly bear stands with its head lowered, feeding on the red berries of low soapberry shrubs in Denali National Park. Its thick fur shades from pale tan across the shoulders to dark brown on the legs and face, the animal surrounded by green foliage.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

Light on the mountains of the Alaska Range from the Loket Tributary to the Black Rapids Glacier. A small icefall pokes out from the snow on the mountains. Info about this surge-type glacier on my site: www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-infor... #alaska #glacier

A snow-covered basin in the Alaska Range under a deep blue morning sky, ringed by sharp snow-plastered peaks. A small icefall of blue seracs breaks through the snow at the center. A waning moon hangs above the ridgeline at left, and a faint single track crosses the smooth snow of the foreground.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

Sierra larkspur (Delphinium glaucum) - taken earlier tonight at Smith Lake in Fairbanks, Alaska. Info in my Alaska Wildflower Guide: www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-wildf... #alaska #bloomscrolling #wildflowers

Several deep blue-purple Sierra larkspur flowers along a slender reddish stem, set against a dark, soft-focus green background. Each flower has a backward-pointing spur and a fringed, paler center, the blooms nodding at different heights up the stalk.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

Caribou in fall colors, taken near Stony Hill in Denali National Park in early September. Prints and Wall Art in my Wildlife Gallery: photos.lwpetersen.com/Galleries/Al... #alaska #wildlife #denali #hiking #caribou #Denali #fallcolors

A caribou with tall branching antlers stands amid a dense sweep of autumn tundra near Stony Hill in Denali National Park. Its gray-brown coat and pale neck are framed by low shrubs turned brilliant red, orange, and gold, the animal partly hidden in the waist-high fall foliage under soft daylight.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

My latest Substack post touches on my passions of hiking and climbing and a forever struggle with depression and anxiety. lwpetersen.substack.com/p/day-one-in... #hiking #alaska #mentalhealth #depression #anxiety

Day One in Hatcher Pass

Anxiety and Depression Reflections a Year Later

lwpetersen.substack.com

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 2w ago

Bog wintergreen, also commonly known as liverleaf wintergreen (Pyrola asarifolia). Info in my Alaska Wildflower Guide: www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-wildf... #alaska #wildflowers #bloomscrolling

A slender pink-flowered spike of bog wintergreen rising against a dark, shadowed background. The nodding, cup-shaped flowers are deep pink with paler centers, arranged up a pale green stem, with unopened buds near the top. A second, softer-focus flowering stem and broad green leaves fill the lower left.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hiking to the end of the Harding Icefield Trail. In my latest post in Field Notes From The North: lwpetersen.substack.com/p/seward-and... #hiking #glacier #alaska

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 3w ago

A bit of pink variation on an arctic starflower (Lysimachia europaea) in Homer, Alaska. Info in my wildflower guide: www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-wildf... #alaska #wildflowers #bloomscrolling

Looking down on two arctic starflowers among oval green leaves and brown leaf litter. The nearer flower has seven pointed petals flushed pale pink, with a yellow-green center and slender yellow stamens; a second, whiter flower blooms above it, slightly out of focus in warm low light.

Lee Petersen @leepetersen.bsky.social · 3w ago

Moulin on the College Glacier in the Eastern Alaska Range. #glacier #alaska #hiking