Granite spires, tussock fields, grizzly bears, and a packraft finish down the Alatna River. What it's actually like to backpack the Arrigetch Peaks in Gates of the Arctic National Park.

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A trip report from our 2024 Canning River rafting trip in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. From the Marsh Fork put-in in the Brooks Range to the coastal plain on the Arctic Ocean.

The post Alaska Rafting Trips: Rafting the Canning River in ANWR appeared first on Expeditions Alaska.

Cougar, puma, mountain lion, panther, catamount, painter. That's six names for the same animal, and there are at least 40 more. Puma concolor has the largest range of any wild land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, and every culture that encountered it named it something different. Here's the real story behind the names, the genetics that collapsed 32 supposed subspecies into six, and what this cat actually does across two continents.

The post Cougar, Puma, Mountain Lion: It’s All the Same Cat appeared first on Expeditions Alaska.

The honest answer is: we don't know. Researchers have been at it for decades and the best they've got is a list of good guesses. But after watching 20 breaches in a single morning off Sitka, I've got some observations.

The post Why Do Humpback Whales Breach? appeared first on Expeditions Alaska.

Every year, thousands of humpback whales swim 3,000 miles from Hawaii to Alaska. They don't eat during the trip. They arrive hungry, and Alaska feeds them. Understanding why they come, and when, is the reason early spring offers something the summer crowds never see.

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Everything I've learned about wildlife photography in thirty years of fieldwork. Gear, settings, and technique matter. But the other ninety percent is fieldcraft, and that's what most guides leave out.

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Gates of the Arctic has no roads, no trails, and no services. At 8.4 million acres, getting there requires either a very long walk or a small plane. This is where packrafts shine.

The post Packrafting the Arctic: Float Trips in Gates of the Arctic and the Brooks Range appeared first on Expeditions Alaska.

Whale photography is humbling. You can have 30 years behind a lens and a camera that costs more than your truck, and a humpback whale will still make you look like an amateur. Here's what five seasons on the water in Southeast Alaska have actually taught me.

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In the mid-2000s I spent four months living in Futaleufu, Chile, working with a rafting and kayaking company, guiding, and doing photography; eating a LOT of carne asada. I spent a lot of time in the Andes backcountry around there. Never saw any pumas then. Not a track, not a kill, not a flash of […]

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You hear it before you see it. A hiss of air breaking the surface, then a ring of bubbles appears, 25 yards across, expanding outward in a near-perfect circle. The water inside the ring goes dark. Shadows rise. Boom. The surface explodes. Mouths the size of pickup trucks burst upward through the center of the […]

The post Bubble-Net Feeding: How Humpback Whales Hunt Together in Alaska appeared first on Expeditions Alaska.