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Tongass_National Geographic magazine_7/2007 131 images Created 1 Apr 2021

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  • A couple watches competitors and wait for their turn to use the "misery whip, " a two person cutting saw that typically has a 4-12 foot blade and was used to fell tall Sitka spruce, hemlock and cedar trees in the region's logging heyday. Competition is fierce as loggers are timed to see who can cut through a log the fastest. The logging show on Prince of Wales island is not a tourist event, but a chance for locals to come together and show off their skills.
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  • Clearing fog slowly dissipates above islands and the reflective, quiet waters in Sitka Sound. Alexander Archipelago has around 1,100 islands, which are actually the tops of a submerged section of the Coast Ranges in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A juvenile grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) frolics  while his mother fishes for salmon at Pack Creek on Admiralty Island. The creek runs through an open intertidal meadow before spilling into the ocean. It has the highest concentration of brown bears in Southeast Alaska. Young brown bears begin life on their own when they are approximately two years old.
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  • Tourists are drawn to the beauty of Alaska and its glaciers, and some come for the ultimate and most unlikely experience—donning crampons for their wedding on ice.<br />
If the weather cooperates, couples can arrange for a limousine pickup from a cruise ship to the airport for a helicopter flight onto a glacier. They had a traditional ceremony with tuxedo and white wedding dress and extra touches including wedding cake, music, and flowers.<br />
The groom pops the cork on a bottle of champagne provided by the planner who married this couple on the Mendenhall Glacier.
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  • Researchers who study brown bears navigate by boat through driving rain on the Unuk River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. This is the "dry season," and the region receives more than two hundred inches of rain each year.<br />
Brown bears or grizzlies are prevalent in the Tongass, so there is interest in study of their behavior and range. A decline in the lower 48 states has heightened management concern and an increased interest in habitat-related studies in Alaska. <br />
Results show brown bears avoid clearcuts and are more often found in riparian old growth, wetland, and alpine/subalpine habitat because of more nutritious foraging and better cover.<br />
<br />
The Unuk Study Area is part of Misty Fiords National Monument and classified as wilderness. Because of this, no helicopters are allowed, making primary access by boat since no roads exist. Located 100 km northeast of Ketchikan, the Unuk River, which means “Dream River” in the native Tlingit language, flows from the Canadian border to salt water. Although much of the main river channel is too deep and glacial for bears to fish, the river contains several clear tributaries with spawning salmon.
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  • Drivers of four-wheeling, off-road vehicles compete while sliding through a slippery race course of muck at a weekend mud bogging contest on Prince of Wales Island. Competitors try to beat the clock as they drive through a water-logged muddy course.
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  • Rain did not stop the celebrations of dancing and singing that followed a historic totem raising ceremony on Prince of Wales Island.<br />
Generations of Tlingit and Haida Native Alaskans retain strong cultural ties with the natural world reflected in their totem art depicting whales and bears.
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  • The Taku River flows out of the Coastal Range in British Columbia to 100 miles northeast of Juneau, Alaska. <br />
A world-class wilderness, the Taku River watershed contains some of the richest wildlife habitat in North America and is teeming with grizzlies, wolves, Stone’s sheep, moose, woodland caribou, migratory birds, and abundant populations of salmon.  The Taku is southeast Alaska’s top salmon-producing river with nearly 2 million wild salmon returning to the river annually.
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  • More than 5,000 miles of roads are carved into the remote landscape to clear-cut large swatches of forests on Chichagof Island. An aerial picture after a winter snow reveals the patchwork on lower reaches of the mountains where logging traditionally occurs. <br />
Taxpayer money has subsidized the timber industry since 1980. Tongass National Forest timber management has cost U.S. taxpayers roughly one billion dollars, making it the largest money loser in the entire national forest system.
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  • Cody, a timber faller, works alone in the woods at Winter Harbor on Prince of Wales Island. It’s dangerous work, and fallers listen for others’ saws between cuts to make sure a buddy isn't injured. Following his father’s example, Cody wanted to be a timber faller since he was a kid. He got his first chain saw when he was nine and has been working since he turned seventeen.<br />
  He leaves home at 5 a.m. driving an hour to the work site. Carrying a heavy chain saw, he walks with the grace of a ballet dancer on a maze of fallen trees. His shoes, called corks that cost as much as $750, have metal-spiked soles so he is stable on fallen trees.<br />
  Loggers and fishermen rank in the top two spots for most dangerous jobs. Both are common lines of work for people in the Alaskan outdoors. Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking fatal occupational injuries in 1980, there were 4,547 fatal work injuries in 2010, and fatality rates of some occupations remain alarmingly high.
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  • A tranquilized brown bear (Ursus arctos) creates a problem for Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife researchers. They darted a 16-year-old male in Kingsburg Creek tributary of the Unuk River while studying the grizzly bear range and habitat in southeast Alaska near the Canadian border. <br />
The 600-pound males slipped down the edge of a muddy embankment and was too heavy to move. With only a short time to work before the bear is revived, the two men took their research notes and then quickly built the bear a nest of branches so he wouldn’t fall into the creek upon waking.<br />
Brown bears decline in the range and numbers in the lower 48 states heightened management concern in habitat-related studies. It is believed that brown bears avoid clearcuts and are more often found in riparian old growth, wetlands, and alpine/subalpine habitat because of more nutritious foraging and better cover.
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  • Old growth hemlock, spruce trees and a 100- foot waterfall create a wilderness refuge for a lone hiker on central Chichagof Island.
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  • The Logger of the Year winner hugs his girlfriend in red boots to celebrate after he won in the annual logging show held in Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island. The Southeast Alaskan competition is the “real thing”—not a tourist show—where loggers, former loggers, and “wannabe” loggers compete, climbing trees and sawing timber.
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  • Fog-draped forest wilderness and rugged mountains are typical in Southeast Alaska where the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest receives an average of 200 inches of precipitation a year.
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  • Cruise ships dock at Ketchikan's harbor, while another waits its' turn. In spite of the 200 inches of rain the region receives every year, nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops and as many as 500 a year. The Inside Passage is a network of channels between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
The former logging town of Ketchikan, now relies on tourism. Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
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  • A waterfall flows from a melting glacier in the Stikine icefields near Devils Thumb. The Stikine Icecap which straddles Alaska and British Columbia is known to climbers for its technically demanding and dangerous peaks and spires of granite.
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  • Equiped with crampons and emergency equipment, a hiker crawls through a blue ice tunnel formed in the Mendenhall Glacier. As the glaciers in southeast Alaska melt, ice is exposed thousands of years after being buried. Some tunnels in the 1,500-square-mile Juneau Icefield are connected to ice caves, which formed as the glacier moved across uneven surfaces.<br />
<br />
During the Pleistoncene Great Ice Age several climate fluctuations created glacial advance and retreat, and vast sheets of ice covered nearly a third of the Earth’s land mass and one half of Alaska. As the climate warmed during the Holocene, ice retreated remaining in Alaskan at high elevations. The most recent variation in advance and retreat created the Juneau Icefield formed 3,000 years ago and ending in the 1700’s. Mendenhall Glacier has flowed for 250 years for 13 miles ending in a lake at its’ base.
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  • Harsh winds blow snow across the craggy ridges and peaks of the South Chilkat Mountains illuminating intense, orange colors of a winter sunset.<br />
The Coastal Range is directly across the Lynn Canal and the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska.
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  • Dogs faithfully wait in the back of a pickup truck for their owners to return from a mud bogging event on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • A common sunstar fish or Crossaster papposus is exposed at low tide in a rich intertidal zone on Moser Island in Alaska's Southeast. It normally has nine or ten arms but can have many more. They have a piny texture and pray on other sea stars, sea urchins, snails, cucumbers and sea anemones.
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  • A humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) surfaces and dives into Stephens Passage. Studies how the humpback from Southeast Alaska travels mostly to Hawaii to breed and returns in the summer to the cold Alaskan waters.
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  • Cannery workers suit up in gloves, masks, hairnets and protective suits to clean seafood. Petersburg, a fishing village in Southeast Alaska, is known for fishing fleets netting large catch for processing.
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  • Cannery workers take a break on the dock during the busiest part of the salmon season in Petersburg on Mitkof Island.  Hundreds of seasonal employees--some students trying to earn some quick money.<br />
Economists estimate the commercial seafood industry contributes $5.8 billion and 78,500 jobs to the Alaskan economy.
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  • Brake lights of a car light up the dark street on a rainy evening in Juneau.  Docked cruise ships at dusk lit up the harbor looking like building in the city. Tourism is a growing industry in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • Fog drifts over a secluded estuary and the Thorne River on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. The main island includes hundreds of adjacent smaller islands—a total of more than 2,600 square miles with 990 miles of coastline and countless bays coves, inlets, and points.<br />
Fjords, steep-sided mountains, and dense forests characterize the island. Extensive tracts of limestone include karst features.
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  • A rustic, float house, characteristic in Southeast Alaska, is reflected in the waters at dusk. The structure is tied off in a protected cove and accessible only by boat or float plane. Swede and his dog stand on the dock and watch for the evening guests' arrival.
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  • Family and friends build a bonfire on a secluded beach on Prince of Wales Island.<br />
The main island includes hundreds of adjacent smaller islands—a total of more than 2,600 square miles with 990 miles of coastline and countless bays coves, inlets, and points.<br />
The landscape is characterized by steep, forested mountains and deep U-shaped valleys, streams, lakes, saltwater straits, and bays that were carved by the glacial ice that once covered the entire area. The spruce-hemlock forest covered land is full of muskegs, or bogs. Most of the mountains on the island are 2,000 to 3,000 feet tall.
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  • Dressed in colorful traditional clothing, Tlingit tribe leaders celebrate after a ceremony involving six totem poles that were raised in a Native Alaskan local park.
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  • LeConte Glacier is marked by granite peak formations such as Devis Thumb in the background in the Stikine Icefield.<br />
It is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the epoch lasting from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago. LeConte covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.<br />
There are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and LeConte is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere.
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  • Islands are surrounded by icy waters near Glacier Bay National Park. The wilderness contains rugged mountains, glaciers, rainforest and wild coastlines with sheltered fjords in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A tour boat returns to Wrangell harbor after sighting for black bears at Anan Creek.
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  • The Inside Passage is a draw for cruise ship passengers to shop and sightsee in Ketchikan. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores.<br />
Once a logging town, the city now depends on a growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Southeast Alaska every year—sometimes doubling a town’s population in one day.
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  • Tourists don blue jackets and hike in the rain to Mendenhall Glacier through the Tongass National Forest. The region earns its reputation for receiving up to 200 inches of rain a year creating a lush, green and moss-covered environment.
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  • Tongass National Forest is the largest remaining “temperate rainforest” in the world. Islands above Sitka Sound's steep, rugged mountainsides are often cloaked in fog because it receives up to 200 inches of rain a year. The land contains slowly draining granite soil with reflective muskeg bogs as well as limestone karst.
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  • Hatchet in hand, a man steadies his grasp on the handle during a target competition-one of many challenges at a traditional logging show. The Southeast Alaska region's roots are deep in the heyday of a vibrant logging industry when locals come together for fun competing with saws and hatchets, pole climbing and wheel barrow races.
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  • Shredded tree trunks stand on the edge of a clear cut forest near Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island. This is the waste that is left behind that small mills sort through and find usable lumber. As one mill owner said of this opportunity, "One man's trash is another man's treasure."
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  • Scientists climb on gigantic stumps of trees cut years ago while they hiking through surveying what is left of the old growth forest. Tongass National Forest encompasses 16.8 million acres and is the largest temperate rain forest on the planet. The 600 to 800 year old trees lin these forests forests contribute irreplaceable biological diversity.
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  • Water flows off the tail of a diving humpback whale  (Megaptera novaeangliae). Studies show the humpback from Southeast Alaska travels mostly to Hawaii to breed and returns to the cold Alaskan waters.
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  • A storm clears creating a serene landscape along the Mendenhall River after a light, morning snow on trees and surrounding mountains in the Tongass National Forest.
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  • LeConte Glacier is in the Stikine Icefield is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the epoch lasting from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago. LeConte covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.<br />
There are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and LeConte is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere. Since first charted in 1887, it has retreated almost 2.5 miles but is considered stable.
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  • Fog slowly lifts in the valley following a morning snow in Juneau near the Mendenhall Glacier and surrounding mountain peaks in the Tongass National Forest.
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  • South Chilkat Mountain peaks are kissed with warm light at sunset above the Icy Strait. High winds sweep ice and snow from ridge tops creating a landscape that is severe, yet appears serene.
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  • Harsh winds blow snow across the craggy peaks of the South Chilkat Mountains, illuminating intense, orange colors of a winter sunset.<br />
The Coastal Range is directly across the Lynn Canal and the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska.
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  • Ice-covered peaks of South Chilkat Mountains appear to have frosting on their tops from melting snow.
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  • Fog shrouds steep cliffs on the forested hillsides of Mount Juneau in the Tongass National Forest. Sitka Spruce and Hemlock thrive in the wet environment that receives over 200 inches of rain a year.
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  • Rays of sunlight pierce the clouds hanging over Sitka Sound and Baranof Island. Southeast Alaska receives about 200 inches of rain a year creating its moody ambiance.
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  • A detail showing a brown bear’s paws and claws while he is tranquilized to be radio-collared by state biologists.  <br />
Grizzly bears, as they are commonly known, are found in most of Alaska from the islands of the Southeast to the Arctic. Over 98 percent of the brown bear population resides in Alaska.<br />
The coastal brown bear is the world’s largest carnivorous land mammal. Nearly 45,000 brown bears (Ursus arctos), roam Alaska, weigh up to 1,100 pounds. Salmon is their primary food source.
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  • Crisp winter air clears over freshly snow-dusted trees in Tongass National Forest looking across the Icy Strait in the Inside Passage toward Southeast Alaska’s Chilkat Mountain Range. The region is known for it’s harsh winds and rugged landscape as well as it’s beauty.<br />
Chilkat, in the native Tlingit language, means “storage container for salmon.” The name was given because of warm springs that keep the Chilkat River from freezing during the winter as it flows through the mountain range, thus allowing salmon to spawn late in the season, and creating safe “storage.”
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  • A black bear (Ursus americanus) shakes water from his head while feeding on salmon in Anan Creek and hour from Wrangell.  Bears fatten up during the heavy run of fish that spawn in the summer.
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  • Salmon dries on racks before being smoked with alder at a Native Alaskan fish camp near Sitka. The catch will help supplement traditional food supplies through winter months.
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  • Crew members from a family fishing operation land approximately 1,000 Coho salmon in the boat from a purse seine in waters near Craig, Alaska.<br />
Alaska’s fisheries are some of the richest in the world, with fishermen harvesting hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of salmon, crab, herring, halibut, pollock, and groundfish every year. However, overfishing, exploitation, and poor fisheries management in the ‘40s and ‘50s took a heavy toll on the industry. The state adopted drastic measures that saved the fishing industry from collapse. Tough times again hit the fishermen in the 1970s as the number of boats grew and increasingly efficient gear depleted catch levels to record lows.<br />
Permit systems and reserves helped the commercial industry recover in the late ‘70s—a trend that has continued to the present because of cooperation between scientists and fishermen.<br />
Fishermen and loggers rank in the top two spots for most dangerous jobs. Both are common lines of work for people in the Alaskan outdoors. Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking fatal occupational injuries in 1980, there were 4,547 fatal work injuries in 2010, and fatality rates of some occupations remain alarmingly high.
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  • A few cars make a traffic jam on a rainy afternoon at the main intersection in Coffman, Cove, Alaska, population 200.<br />
What began as a logging town on Prince of Wales Island is mostly made up of people who stayed on when the industry declined. Boats and off road vehicles are plentiful and a road connects the community to other parts of the island.
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  • Crew members unload a catch of sockeye salmon from the hatch of their fishing boat. Economists estimate the commercial seafood industry contributes $5.8 billion and 78,500 jobs to the Alaskan economy.
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  • Salmon return from the ocean to spawn in streams on Prince of Wales Island. Scientists believe the fish species navigates to where they were born by using the earth's magnetic field like a compass.
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  • A Bald Eagle in flight catches a fish with its talons. Their wingspans measure 7½ ft. The average weight is 10-12 pounds, some weigh up to 16 pounds. Bald Eagles can pick up and fly off with a fish or other prey items that weigh 4-5 pounds, any more weight than that is too heavy and they will stall out and crash.
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  • Aerial view of timber that is loaded for export onto a ship on South Prince of Wales. The forest industry depends on overseas sales and load floating logs from a nearby mill in a protected bay.
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  • A bride and groom are fitted for crampons before taking a helicopter flight to the Mendenhall Glacier to be married in the icefield.
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  • A couple rides in a limousine to the airport to take a helicopter to the Mendenhall Glacier for their wedding. Holding flowers for the ceremony, they share a warm moment in anticipation of the event.
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  • A couple rides in a limousine to the airport to take a helicopter to the Mendenhall Glacier for their wedding.
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  • Dressed in elegant formal wear, a bride and groom walk to the helicopter to fly up onto a glacier for their wedding ceremony in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A couple arrives by helicopter and carefully negotiates walking on ice onto the Mendenhall Glacier for their wedding ceremony in Juneau, Alaska.
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  • A surreal and beautiful setting for the wedding ceremony. A cake and champagne are placed on a table covered with a linen cloth. A camera on a tripod records the couple's wedding vows taken on the Mendenhall Glacier. They said they were married in "God's Cathedral."
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  • A couple steadies themselves with crampons and kiss while waiting for their wedding on the icy Mendenhall Glacier in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A bride picks up the groom for the kiss completing the wedding ceremony. The couple strapped on crampons beneath their formal wear and flew by helicopter onto the Mendenhall Glacier for a memorable experience in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Hands clasped, a couple shows their rings after the wedding on Mendenhall Glacier.
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  • A bride and groom cut the cake and kiss after their wedding ceremony that was held on the Mendenhall Glacier. Champagne, flowers, music and a linen table cloth set the scene for their atypical, romantic celebration.
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  • Tourists are wed on Mendenhall Glacier in the Tongass National Forest. He marks the spot of their ceremony with a GPS while behind them a guide leads hikers up an icy trail. She blissfully basks in the sun as they wait for their helicopter return back to Juneau.
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  • Droplets of rain water bead on tall grasses in an uplift meadow on Moser Island in Southeast Alaska.
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  • In spite of the 200 inches of rain the area receives every year, nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage, the route through a network of passages between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
One of the stops in Alaska’s Panhandle is the former logging town of Ketchikan. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
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  • Fog lifts over forested islands and muskeg terrain above Sitka Sound. Tongass National Forest is 17 million acres, the largest temperate rainforest in the world.
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  • A cruise ship docks at Ketchikan's harbor bringing a city full of tourists for shopping and sightseeing. The once logging town is dependent on the growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. <br />
The ships travel the Inside Passage, a network of waterways between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. <br />
Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush. The Misty Fjords National Monument is one of the area’s major attractions.
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  • As researchers take measurements to study a brown bear (Ursus arctos) they trapped and tranquilized near the Unuk River, the grizzlies eyes open. They had to work quickly  as the sedative began to wear off.
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  • Children play on swings in the town park above the marina in Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • Timber is loaded for export onto a ship in protected waters on South Prince of Wales island. The forest industry depends on overseas sales of wood that is shipped mostly to Asia.
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  • Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops in Ketchikan - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former logging town.
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  • A young girl wears a hair net at lunchtime outside a family take-out restaurant in the small fishing village of Petersburg. Located on Mitkof Island, the community attracted immigrants of Scandinavian origin to the Native Alaskan Tlingit settlement in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • Float planes dock to board and carry tourists, then take off over cruise ships to sightsee glaciers, whales and bears. The Misty Fjords National Monument is one of the area’s major attractions.
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  • A salmon swims up a 450 foot fish ladder to spawn in a fish hatchery.
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  • Friends come together at The Riggin Shack, a general store that is one of a few businesses in Coffman Cove, Alaska, population 200. The community on Prince of Wales Island was settled as a logging town and people stayed although the industry declined. The community offers services for visitors that include a fuel station, liquor store, lodging, guiding for hunters and fishermen, a library with Internet service and outdoor tours.
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  • A Native Alaskan family crosses a stream while hiking with their dog through the woods. They are headed back to their fish camp on Lisianski Peninsula on the west coast of Baranof Island.
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  • Frosty morning snow on a canoe and trees surrounding a small lake near Mendenhall Glacier.
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  • Estuaries shrouded in morning fog are revealed in the intertidal region of the Southeast Alaskan coast along the Lynn Canal in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • Estuaries along the Lynn Canal are shrouded in morning fog while Lion's Head in the Tongass National Forest rises above.
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  • Sawdust covers a worker’s boots at a salvage mill on Goose Creek on Prince of Wales Island. Although the timber industry has declined in southeast Alaska, the family operation makes red cedar shakes and cuts boards from salvage after a company is done clear cutting trees.<br />
The small company’s work is considered “value–added,” and is acknowledged as the best way to get the most dollars out of each board foot of timber harvested and processed locally.
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  • A family serves dinner to guests in the kitchen of their float house on the water. Their home is made from scavenged wood then tied up with ropes in a quiet bay near Prince of Wales Island. These homes are characteristic of the region and only accessible by boat or float plane.
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  • Cradling his puppy, “Meatball,” a youth hangs out on the dock of the float house. The family built their home off the coast of Prince of Wales Island which is only accessible by float plane or by boat. The houses are characteristic of Southeast Alaska, tied down with ropes and floating on the water in an isolated bay.<br />
Life in remote Alaska offers adventures and an atypical lifestyle rich in experiences.
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  • Father and daughter share a tender moment on their boat which is home for the family during fishing season off the coast of Prince of Wales Island in Alaska’s Southeast. When not the fishing for salmon, the family lives on nearby Marble Island and the children are home schooled.<br />
Alaska’s largest and most valuable fisheries target salmon, pollock, crab, herring, halibut, shrimp, sablefish, and Pacific cod.<br />
The total value of Alaska’s commercial fisheries is $1.5 billion for the fishermen, with a wholesale value of $3.6 billion. Economists estimate the commercial seafood industry contributes $5.8 billion and 78,500 jobs to the Alaskan economy. Fisheries management in Alaska is based on scientific assessments and monitoring of harvested populations and is regarded as a model of successful natural resource stewardship.
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  • A brother and sister compete in a logging show wheelbarrow race. A throwback to the heyday of the logging industry, the competitions bring communities together for fun and games on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • A black bear (Ursus americanus) feeds on abundant pink salmon in Anan Creek adding needed protein to fatten up on a diet that otherwise consists of cranberries, currants, blueberries, devil's club ants and grubs.  Anan Wildlife Observatory in Tongass National Forest is restricted by permit to keep the bears families that feed there wild.
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  • A spotted fawn tries to hide in tall grasses along Pack Creek on Admiralty Island in Tongass National Forest.
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  • A juvenile brown bear (Ursus arctos) crosses Pack Creek to hunt for salmon. The native Tlingít people call Admiralty Island "Kootznoowoo," or "Fortress of the Bears." The island is home to an estimated 1,500 grizzlies.
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  • A brown bear (Ursus arctos) stares intently while exploring the intertidal meadow to nearby Pack Creek on Admiralty Island. <br />
With the highest concentration of grizzly bears in all of southeast Alaska, biologists estimate that the Alaskan grizzly population is holding strong at about 45,000 bears -about 40 times the number in the rest of the U.S. The decline in the range and numbers in the lower 48 states has heightened management concern and an increased interest in habitat-related studies. Juvenile grizzly bears usually separate from their mothers when they are two years old.
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  • Jugs of water are bailed out from a skiff during games and competition at a logging show. The communities surrounding Thorne Bay come together for the summer event on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • Workers unload and weigh fish on the dock of a cannery. Petersburg port has the largest home-based halibut fleet in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Taku Glacier in the Juneau Icefield is the deepest and thickest alpine, temperate, tidewater glacier in the world. From the air Taku Glacier appears to be a ribbon that winds out of the southeast corner of the icefield as an outlet glacier with its terminus in the Taku River.
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  • A newly married couple dances on Mendenhall Glacier. They took a helicopter onto the icefield and celebrated after the ceremony. Although dressed in traditional wedding formal wear, they were careful to step over the melting ice in their crampons.
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  • Living on a float house in a quiet bay, a woman drives a boat to Thorne Bay for supplies and to take her children to school on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • Trees in the Tongass National Forest, which is a temperate rainforest, grow on a moss-covered rocky shore near Sitka Sound.
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  • A humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) surfaces and dives into Stephens Passage. Studies how the humpback from Southeast Alaska travels mostly to Hawaii to breed and returns to the cold Alaskan waters.
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  • Taku Glacier is a tidewater glacier and the largest in the Juneau Icefield. Long an anomaly among  glaciers, it was advancing but in recent years has started to succumb to climate change and retreat. The blue ribbon of ice is mixed with sediment with the terminus of the Taku River.
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