By Michael Wald Co-Owner and Guide In late November, Alaska was pounded by a memorable storm. A great warm wave of rain swept north across the interior and all the way to the Arctic Coast. Once the rain passed, the temperature returned to a more seasonable -20 F, and in Fairbanks the rain on the…
By Michael Wald Co-owner and Guide We don’t actually get to guide anyone on Mars but we have been working with some NASA funded scientist who are studying the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes in Kobuk Valley National Park. Apparently 10% of Mars is covered in sand dunes and scientist think the Kobuk Dunes are a…
By Co-owner and Guide Michael Wald “What are all those birds?” my 4-year old, nature-geek son asks me as a small noisy cloud of birds descends and lands in the top of a Sitka Spruce. From the trilled call we can tell they are White-winged Crossbills. I’ve been spending a fair amount of time birding…
By Co-Owner and Guide, Michael Wald After a successful census it has been estimated that there are more than 400,000 caribou who make the Western Brooks Range their home. This is great news for those of us who get to travel to places like the Kokolik River, which annually treats paddlers to 30,000 caribou-days. On…
By Arctic Wild Guide: Michael Engelhard Encounters with wildlife can feel like payback for karmic points earned and keep some of us buzzing for days. Perhaps more than in its weather or plants, the land’s life force concentrates in its creatures, sharpened to poignancy, similar but foreign enough to our own to be captivating. To…
By Co-Owner and Guide, Michael Wald Each year in November, Bald Eagles from around Alaska congregate around the ice free Chilkat River between Haines and Klukwan, Alaska. Though we only saw 100 eagles this weekend; at one time over 3,000 eagles were counted here as they fed on salmon. As we watched eagles with 7…
Michael Wald, Co-owner and guide. It has been a week since I was last out on the Tanana River just south of Fairbanks. With the cold weather we had this past week, it seemed like time to see how the river was freezing-up. So I brushed a couple inches of snow off the car, called…
By Michael Wald, Co-owner and guide All our trips are done and the gear is put away for the winter. Nothing left of the 2010 season except some leftover cheese, a little sunburn and lots of happy memories. Last weekend we hosted a party to thank our guides for a job well done. After the…
By Moe Witschard, Arctic Wild Guide, Professional Photographer and world class Packrafter DOWN THE JAGO IN MY WINNEBAGO aka : Packrafting Adventures in the eastern Brooks Range This August, four of us spent 16 days traveling in the eastern Brooks with packrafts. What’s a packraft you ask? It’s a small one person raft that weighs…
By Michael Wald, Co-owner and Guide I will admit, when we first had kids I feared our days of wilderness travel might be over. But while we haven’t launched off on any month long canoe trips with our boys (now age 2 and 4) we do manage to get them and ourselves out into the…
By Cindy Hunt- Ritzman, I’ve always wondered why my husband Dan loves guiding for Arctic Wild. Every year since I’ve known him, he usually disappears for a few weeks in Alaska, returning sunburned, disheveled, yet also happy and more ‘centered’. This year I had the opportunity to travel with him, on a trip with 4…
By Co-owner and guide Michael Wald Summer is in full swing with small groups of adventurous souls scattered about the tundra, binoculars trained on caribou, wolves, falcons, and loons. I just returned from a wonderful canoe trip in the Colville Headwaters. As soon as we landed, we knew we were in for a great trip….
By Guide, Co-Owner, and Swift-water Rescue Student, Michael Wald Each and every spring Arctic Wild guides head-out on the river to hone our skills, shake out the cobwebs and enjoy the camaraderie of camping with our friends/ co-workers. This year Arctic Wild organized a Swiftwater Rescue Course with a fantastic instructor from out of state….
By Co-Owner and guide Michael Wald As leaves burst from the birches here in Fairbanks and birds begin incubating eggs, we are busy making the final arrangements for our summer in the Brooks Range and beyond. The boats and tents are ready thanks to Bill. Flights are booked with longtime friends Coyote Air and Yukon…
By Dan Ritzman- Guide and Blogger The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reminds us that the price of offshore oil drilling is the constant risk of environmental devastation. In Alaska, we know this through bitter experience. Just over 21 years ago the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef and spilled…
By Dan Ritzman, Arctic Wild guide and Alaska Program Director for the Sierra Club. Over the past month we have lost two of the great champions for Alaska’s wild places – Stewart Udall and Dr Ed Wayburn Stewart Udall grew up in the southwest but he has left his mark on the wild lands across…
By: Bill Mohrwinkel Co-owner and Guide As the days grow longer it signals to Alaska’s trees that it is time to wake up from long winter’s sleep. As I write this I can see the first buds bursting out on the willows. It also signals that summer is upon us and it’s time to prepare…
By Arctic Wild Co-Owner and Guide Michael Wald Alaska’s muskoxen populations have fluctuated widely in the last century. Having been hunted into oblivion for meat to feed whaling crews, they were nonexistent in the State from 1900 until reintroduction in Southwest Alaska in 1935. All of Alaska’s some 4000 muskox are descended from 31 transplants,…
By Author and Arctic Wild Guide, Michael Engelhard This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, “a land like no other.” Let us not forget that 2010 also marks the 30th anniversary of ANILCA, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. This landmark piece of legislation protected more than 100…
By Co-owner Michael Wald I went for a walk this overcast and windless afternoon around the head of the bay near where we are staying, 10 miles from the town of Haines in Southeast Alaska. On the way back home from the fresh water spring under the enormous Sitka Spruce, my 3-year old son was…
By Dan Ritzman, Arctic Wild guide and Alaska Program Director for the Sierra Club . Beluga whales are an emblem of the arctic seas. Big males can reach 16 feet in length and nearly 4,000 pounds. The are supremely ice adapted regularly feed and travel in seas which are 90% covered in sea ice. Belugas…
By Co-owner and Guide Michael Wald Winter in Fairbanks has its charms, but it sure feels good to get some sunshine and warm weather in Hawai’i. We can’t keep our boys, ages 1 and 3, out of the warm water. The island of Kauai is truly spectacular and we have had beautiful weather for the…
By Dan Ritzman, Arctic Wild Guide and Northwest Director for the Sierra Club. Dan will be adding conservation updates and news to our blog monthly. The Arctic Refuge turns 49 today, and it is time to think about the many dedicated people who have protected the refuge for the past 50 years. Back in the…
By: Co-owner and Guide Bill Mohrwinkel I get asked frequently on our trips “ what do you do in the winter”? Yes, It’s cold and dark, we are losing about 5 minutes off each day until December 21st. Aside from the usual winter activities such as skiing, ice skating, snowshoeing, and curling, the long dark…
By Arctic Wild guide, Ron Yarnell It was one of those typical days on our June 2009 Utukok Basecamp trip. Sun was up. (Of course it never really sets here in June, 175 miles north of the Arctic Circle). After a leisurely breakfast we ferried folks across the river in one of the canoes we…
Predicting caribou movements is like trying to track a ghost. Caribou migration patterns are affected by innumerable factors including distribution of quality forage, snow depth, insect abundance and hatch timing, wind direction and calf production. We love seeing the big herds streaming across the tundra and our job of planning trips to coincide with caribou…
The Kokolik River is a wonderful canoe trip for so many reasons. The river is clear and swift, making for fun but easy paddling. The scenery is spectacular and varied as the river cuts through rocky ridges and emerges into broad basins only to reenter the canyons a few miles later. Bird watching is a…
WILD MOMENTS: Adventures with Animals of the North Edited by Arctic Wild guide, Michael Engelhard is now available. Last August, on a nine-day backpacking trip I guided for Arctic Wild, we had a wolf walk right into our camp at Alapah Creek. My clients—a couple from Switzerland—were awed by the fact that you could just…
Nearing the end of our Hulahula River trip in June, we made one last camp on the coastal plain before we reached the coast. We pulled ashore on a dry tundra bench not three feet above the river which, only six miles from the Arctic Ocean, still rippled with a powerful, silt-laden current. As usual,…