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This site features over 8000 VR panoramas. These amazing photographs show
you exactly what it is like to be in a particular place - you can look in any direction,
all the way around, even up and down. It's the next best thing to being there!
I have been so continuously busy since finishing the Alaska blogs (below) that I have not had time to write up two very important new topics:
• I made a three week trip to the Big Island of Hawaii in March 2011, resulting in a complete new set of 245 panoramas documenting all parts of that fantastic island.
• Then in late May I traveled to Portugal for the International Panoramic Photography Festival. This included staging two exhibits of panoramic prints, one of them, entitled Panorama Borealis, featuring panoramas from my trip to Alaska in 2010.
Hopefully blog chapters for each of these two important events will be forthcoming later this summer.
When California passed a new state budget effective July 1, it required Amazon and other on-line retailers with a "presence" in California to pay sales tax. Amazon is based in Washington state, and they pay taxes on sales they make to customers located there. Now sales made by Amazon affiliates (such as myself) located in California will similarly be subject to California sales tax.
Unfortunately, instead of simply paying the taxes, Amazon has chosen to cut off all affiliates resident in California. So although I can continue to run ads for Amazon, and visitors to my site can purchase the books and maps I recommend here, I will not be paid any commission on those sales. Large on-line retailers will of course shift their operations to other states, so it will only be the ten thousand or so little guys like me who suffer.
On a more positive note, I have made a major change to the way the Virtual Guidebooks site works. Up until now all files were sent from a single main server (DreamHost) in Southern California. But now I have moved all the graphics files (thumbnails and panorama movies) to the Rackspace Cloud. They will now be sent "from the cloud", specifically, from various Akamai servers around the world, the choice of which ones being based on analysis of distance and traffic.
I can see already that pages load much faster, and the speed increase should be more obvious the further from California the viewer is located. Also, increasing traffic will not slow the system down and huge spikes will not crash it. This is real enteprise technology, and it costs me extra, the amount depending on traffic. This summer will be my test period. If the cost gets too high, I may have to go back to the old system.
The main purpose of this trip was to update and extend my panoramic coverage of northern British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. Many of my panoramas from that area were taken (on film) before 2000 and have been removed from my website.
In June I made two photography trips, one early in the month to Santa Barbara and San Diego, then another two weeks later to the redwoods. I kept telling my friends I would leave on my BIG trip July 5. But all through July I had to deal with frustrating delays, so it was well into August before I finally broke free and headed north.
A day and a half of driving straight up I-5 got me almost to the Canadian border. I always enjoy watching the landscape steadily scrolling by, seeing the gradual transition from dry California to green Northwest. I drive this thousand-mile stretch every year and I never tire of it.
When I got to Bellingham the weather was beautiful so I took a side trip east on the Mount Baker Highway into the North Casades. It was an amazing clear evening when I got there, too dark for 360° panos, but I took a couple of snapshots with my "little" camera (Olympus E-P2) and some high-res composites with my Canon 5dMkII.Picture Lake, a familiar postcard view, but still amazing.
The next day I shot some panos on Ptarmigan Ridge, with Mount Shuksan in one direction, Mount Baker in the other.
Panoramas of the Mount Baker Highway
Panoramas of Heather Meadows on Mount Baker
Panoramas of Artist Point and Ptarmigan Ridge
From Mount Baker I crossed into Canada and spent a couple of days with my cousins Anne and Clive.
Hundreds of wildfires were burning in the interior (the Cariboo) and the smoke was reaching the lower mainland. We took an evening walk at Blackies Point near their home in Crescent Beach and enjoyed the sunset and long colorful twilight.Mud Bay from Blackies Point
The next day I shot a few panos around White Rock, plus the fishing port of Steveston at the mouth of the Fraser River, followed by dinner with my niece Sarah and her husband Chris.
Panoramas of Steveston on the Fraser River
Panoramas of Crescent Beach and White Rock
By the next day the smoke had produced Los Angeles-style orange skies and thick haze, but I headed north anyway. It wasn't too bad in the Fraser River Canyon, where I revisited the Alexandra Bridges, but by the time I got to Quesnel it was intolerable. In desperation I stayed in a motel, just for the air conditioner's smoke filtering.
Panoramas of the Grand Canyon of the Fraser River (only the last two are new)
Panoramas of the Gold Rush Trail
Barkerville Historic Town features 120 authentically restored buildings from the 1863 Cariboo Gold Rush. It includes costumed interpreters and small businesses in the historic buildings. I shot panos there many years ago, on film, but never scanned and produced them, so I made the side-trip from Quesnel again. It is an interesting and photogenic place.
On the way back I stopped at Cottonwood House, a restored roadhouse from the gold rush era on the Cariboo Wagon Road. I was shown around by the lovely young women there, looking demure in their long dresses and aprons.Thanks to Kayla and Alexa for posing for me at Cottonwood.
Panoramas of Barkerville, the Main Street
Panoramas of Barkerville, the Back StreetsAt Prince George I was thwarted in my original plan to go west along the Skeena River then north to Stewart-Hyder and Telegraph Creek because the Cassiar Highway was closed due to the fires. So I headed northeast to the Alaska Highway.
North of Prince George and Pine Pass I left the main route and went southeast to the (once and future) coal-mining town of Tumbler Ridge and Monkman Provincial Park, featuring awesome Kinuseo Falls.
It was smoky when I got there and rained a bit that night, but I had just enough sun in the morning for a great shot of the waterfall. This was my first lengthy stretch of unpaved road - much more was to come later in the trip.Kinuseo Falls in Monkman Provincial Park
Panoramas of Monkman Provincial Park
From Tumbler Ridge I went over a few mountains and out onto the prairies, to Dawson Creek and Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway.
From Dawson Creek the famous road runs 613 miles across northern BC, then 577 miles across the southern Yukon, then 200 miles in Alaska to its official end at Delta Junction. Another 96 miles takes it to Fairbanks, for a total of 1488 miles. In the course of this trip I would drive all of it.
It poured rain all the next day, but luckily this stretch of the Alcan (Alaska Highway) is the least interesting of the entire route.The Alaska Highway in the rain, near Prophet River
I very much enjoyed the funky little museum in Fort Nelson, an amazing hodge podge of donated old stuff, including a moose-hide bikini.
At Fort Nelson the Alcan turns west and enters the mountains. I saw a moose and a bear almost right away. The Alaska Highway crosses the Northern Rocky Mountains at Summit Lake, a dramatic stretch of road near timberline. I saw just a single young caribou here -- often there is a whole herd of sheep licking salt off the road shoulder along here.Barren ground caribou at Summit Lake
Panoramas of Racing River and Toad River
That night I camped at Muncho Lake, famous for its silty green colors. It was a beautiful evening followed by a night of torrential rain.Muncho Lake right next to my campsite
More wildlife the next day. Most of the Alaska Highway has been widened and straightened, with a very generous grassy strip on either side. This has been a boon to the Nordquist herd of wood bison that live along this stretch of the Liard River. I saw this small group just before the Liard River bridge.Wood bison alongside the Alaska Highway
Liard River Hot Springs is an oasis of warm water in the boreal forest, an amazing place with vegetation typical of hundreds of miles further south. The bathing pools were first developed during construction of the Alcan. This is now one of the most popular of the BC provincial parks, a favorite stop along the highway.The Alpha Pool at Liard River Hot Springs
Panoramas of Liard River Hot Springs
West from here the highway crosses back and forth between BC and the Yukon. During construction of the Alaska Highway an American serviceman working at Watson Lake put up a signpost to his home town of Danville, Illinois. Other signs were added, and now it is known as the Signpost Forest, currently with 65,000 signs.
Late in the day the clouds built up again, but I camped comfortably at Continental Divide. This undramatic watershed line separates waters flowing to the Yukon River and the Bering Sea (Pacific Ocean) from those flowing to the Mackenzie River and the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean).Stormy weather along the Alaska Highway near Continental Divide.
This is typical of the minimal and cryptic gps maps displayed on these remote roads - a single line for the highway, nothing else for miles. I use my gps to determine latitude/longitude for each of my panos as I shoot them.
Near Squanga Lake the next morning I met Penny and Bill, from Nottinghamshire (in England), whose travels make mine look provincial. They had just been up to the Arctic and were heading south to California.A camper van that has been everywhere
Next I took the first of my planned side trips, to Atlin in the remote almost cut-off corner of BC. The clouds lowered and it set in to rain steadily, so I took a few panos of the historic town then turned back.
There are hints of the American military who built the Alaska Highway in placenames like Snafu Lake (Situation Normal - All Fouled Up). I camped at Tarfu Lake (Things Are Really Fouled Up) in a gentle rain and enjoyed my first campfire of the trip.
Panoramas of the Atlin Road in the Yukon
Finally the Yukon River! Soon I rolled into Whitehorse, nexus of the Stampede of 1898 to the Klondike gold fields. An interesting town, with lots of history, three excellent museums, and a much needed resupply point. I bought a terabyte drive at Walmart to back up my imagery - 170 panos so far, and I was not even to Alaska yet.
This DC-3 outside the Yukon Transportation Museum is mounted on a bearing so it turns into the wind.The world's largest weathervane.
Panoramas of the Whitehorse Rapids of the Yukon River
Panoramas of the MacBride Museum
Panoramas of the Yukon Transportation Museum
Panoramas of the Yukon-Beringia Interpretive Center
Refreshed from my civilized stop in Whitehorse, I headed across the mountains to Skagway, Alaska. This was the perilous route taken by the Stampeders of 1898, who backpacked their supplies through the snows of White Pass and Chilkoot Pass. The next spring they built rafts and scows and floated down a series of lakes and the Yukon River all the way to the Klondike.
Princess and Holland America cruise lines offer bus tours over the pass to Whitehorse, and on as far as Dawson and Eagle. I even saw them in Deadhorse a week later!Princess Cruise Line buses on the White Pass route.
Skagway is an interesting place with lots of history - much of the town is preserved as Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park.
But Skagway is totally dominated by mass tourism. There were four cruise ships there that day (sometimes there may be up to eight), each putting as many as a thousand people ashore. Most of the businesses along the historic main street are selling jewelry and trinkets to people from the cruise ships. In fact, they are the same businesses and salespeople that one will meet in the Caribbean in the opposite season. Weird.
My special thanks to "Madame Ophelia Johnson" at the Red Onion Saloon in Skagway. She was very particular that I get her stage name right - I was half a block away before I realized the double entendre.Red Onion Saloon on Broadway in Skagway
Panoramas of the Port of Skagway
After Skagway I had a quick look at Dyea (on the Chilkoot Trail), a once busy town of which almost nothing remains.
Panoramas of Dyea and Chilkoot Pass
I ended the day with an amazing evening drive back across the White Pass. The light was incredible, not good for panoramas (no time to get off the road) but I got some wonderful single shots.Stormy weather just north of White Pass
Panoramas North of White Pass in BC
Panoramas of the Klondike Highway South of Whitehorse
Carcross is an interesting historic town on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad. One of the sights there used to be the lake steamer SS Tutshi, which burned in 1990. Construction was under way to preserve and interpret the few small remnants of the historic boat.
Camping that night near Carcross it dropped below freezing for the first time on the trip, and I really appreciated my campfire.
Back through Whitehorse again but I didn't continue west on the Alaska Highway - I turned north on the Klondike Highway, following the trail of '98 towards Dawson City. It passes near Lake Laberge, famous as the setting for Robert Service's poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee".
Panoramas of the Klondike Highway South of Pelly Crossing
The highlight of this stretch of road is Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon River, a major hazard to navigation in the early years. The sun faded the instant I arrived, and by the time I got down to the cliff edge (223 steps, then a trail) it was starting to rain.Viewpoint above Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon River.
Panoramas of Carmacks and Five Finger Rapids
At Stewart Crossing I made an impulsive decision to take another side trip, to the Keno Mining area. Known as the Silver Trail, it is mostly gravel and leads through some seriously remote country. First the riverboat town of Mayo, then the recently abandoned mining town of Elsa, and finally Keno.
I enjoyed the excellent Keno Mining Museum, then took the road to the top of Keno Hill (it's really a mountain) with interesting geology and beautiful tundra.Don on the Butterfly Trail, tundra at the top of Keno Hill
Panoramas on the Klondike Highway North of Pelly Crossing
Dawson City and the Klondike gold fields at last! It seems quite a journey even today (about 3000 miles by my route), unimaginable the challenge and hardship it must have been in 1898.
Dawson is an amazing historical town, largely restored using income from the casino. All new buildings must generally resemble the old ones. I stayed in a log cabin at Klondike Kate's - excellent food!
Panoramas of Dawson City -the Waterfront
Panoramas of Dawson City - Center of Town
Panoramas of Dawson City - Edge of Town
The highlight of my time in Dawson was a tour of Gold Dredge Number Four, a National Historic Site of Canada. Since I was the only one to show up at 1 pm, I got a custom look around - many thanks to Sue Taylor for the excellent tour. The dredge is on Bonanza Creek, site of the original discovery and still being mined today.Gold Dredge Number 4 and the Parks Canada Interpreters
Panoramas of Gold Dredge Number Four National Historic Site of Canada
I had been hearing since 'way back in BC that the road going west from Dawson was washed out. Then I heard that it was open again, but only for escorted convoys. Rather than go back to Whitehorse I decided to try it.
The weather on the aptly named Top of the World Highway was dicey, rain and fog, but still magnificent. I crossed the border into the US at Boundary, Alaska, an incredibly remote location. I imagine this is where an INS agent might get posted if he really annoyed his boss.Fog on the Top of the World Highway
Panoramas of the Top of the World Highway
I managed to miss the noon convoy and had to sit there in the middle of nowhere and wait four hours for the next one. It was caribou hunting season in this area and I saw lots of ATV's bristling with guns and caribou antlers.Waiting for the convoy at Boundary, Alaska
Then it was two hours at 15-20 mph in a train of vehicles. Just like a wagon train they had two escorts ahead of us (scout and lead) and perhaps two more behind (trail and sweep). Rain, mud, and fog the entire way.Following the pilot car for 27 miles of muddy road
I camped in Chicken, Alaska, truly a bit of the old frontier, and the beginning of paved road again.The log cabin post office in Chicken
I had a truly strange experience a few miles west of Chicken. I stopped at a viewpoint and a man came hustling up to me with an anxious look on his face, taking money out of his wallet.
He was quite obviously drunk (at 9 am), and explained that he was celebrating his brother's birthday and I would be "saving his life" if I would sell him a beer. He said he could not drive on to the next pub (pub sounds wrong for Alaska) because he might get stopped and loose his license, which would ruin his life. He assured me he was not going to drive, so I gave him my last beer, a Sierra Nevada that had been rattling around in the van ever since California.
We talked for a while. He was from Germany, very pleasant and intelligent. We took pictures, and he thanked me again for saving his life!Saved his life with a beer
Soon after that I reached the Alaska Highway near Tok, wide and smooth and fast through Delta Junction, then on to Fairbanks, the main city of the interior.Alaskan highway numbering is simple -- there are only eleven of them
Fairbanks seems like a city of a million people, but in reality its population is only 30,000. But it has all the necessary services, which was to come in handy for me later in the trip! I spent a day cleaning up and shot a few panos around town. I also phoned ahead for my tour of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, which requires 24 hours notice for security check.
Panoramas of the Chena River Parks in Fairbanks
Panoramas of Downtown Fairbanks
I hadn't really planned on driving the Dalton Highway, but once I got to Fairbanks I just couldn't resist -- it is the northernmost public road in the world, going well past the Arctic Circle. I have driven the Dempster Highway to the Arctic in Canada, twice in fact, so the Dalton seemed the logical next challenge.
The Dalton, also known as the Haul Road, was built in a single summer to support construction of the Alaska Pipeline. It was designed for heavy truck traffic and is laid out like a race course - no sharp corners or windy stretches. I was surprised to find that nearly half of this road has now been paved, including a brand-new section (still hot) north of Coldfoot. But it remains a challenging drive, narrow with no shoulders and a lot of big trucks going very fast. The pipeline parallels the highway, seldom out of sight, much of it elevated but other segments buried.A typical stretch of the Dalton Highway with the Alaska Pipeline alongside, in an area of burned spruce forest.
The weather was changeable as I started, but improved and it turned out to be a beautiful drive. Fall colors increased as I went north, with the deciduous trees in shades of yellow and gold, the tundra purple and red. The first landmark was the Yukon Crossing bridge.
Panoramas of the Elliott Highway
Panoramas of the Dalton Highway South of Yukon Crossing
Panoramas of Yukon Crossing on the Dalton Highway
Just north of Yukon Crossing was one of my favorite stretches, Finger Mountain and the Kanuti River headwaters, with wonderful fall colors. I crossed the Arctic Circle at midday, weak sunshine and 62°.Fall colors at the headwaters of the Kanuti River
Panoramas Near the Arctic Circle on the Dalton Highway
I filled up my gas tank in Coldfoot at milepost 175 (248 miles from Fairbanks). It is the only supply point between the Yukon River and Deadhorse, and not much to look at. A few miles north is the picturesque hamlet of Wiseman, where a few old sourdoughs still mine for gold and tough it out through the long winter.Log cabins at Wiseman
I camped at Marion Creek nearby. A bit cold, but very pretty. It seemed the perfect opportunity to see the Aurora Borealis, but no show.
Panoramas of Wiseman and Coldfoot
The adventure continued - I was already well past the Arctic Circle but still had 225 miles to go. The scenery got wilder and the colors more intense as I drove deeper into the Brooks Range, along the Koyukuk and Dietrich Rivers, past the northernmost tree, and over Atigun Pass at 4739 feet.Chandalar Shelf at the south base of Atigun Pass
Panoramas of the Koyukuk River
From there it was a long downhill through the Atigun Valley and onto the rolling tundra of the North Slope, beautiful and serene.North slope tundra near Slope Mountain
But I was certainly not alone. In addition to the truck traffic (a hundred trucks a day) there were hundreds of hunters, many with bow and arrow, stalking the caribou (with considerable success).
The weather continued clear and warm and it was one of the best driving days I have ever had. Perhaps the high point was when I saw two musk oxen butting heads in the middle of the road half a mile ahead. When they saw me they ran away, but stopped soon enough that I could get a good view of them, and also include them in a pano of the tundra.One of the pair of musk ox I spotted in the tundra
Panoramas of the North Slope of the Brooks Range
Panoramas of the Arctic Coastal Plain
About this time I noticed a gray ridgeline ahead, like a mountain range where I knew there was not one. It was the semi-permanent fog bank along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. When I eventually drove into it the temperature dropped from the high 50's into the mid-40's. By this time the terrain was dead flat and dotted with lakes, great for waterfowl and other wildlife.
Then there came Deadhorse - what a weird town. It is built on gravel pads in the tundra, nothing directly on the ground to avoid melting into the permafrost. It is more of an industrial park than a town, and is full of huge pieces of oil field equipment and specialized vehicles. There are no trees, no flower boxes or potted plants, no business district, and no real houses -- everyone lives in hotels or dormitories at their employer's expense.
I had dinner at the Arctic Caribou Inn, hearty fare cafeteria style, then camped in my van in their parking lot. There was good cell phone reception and excellent high speed internet, so I phoned and e-mailed my friends to say "guess where I am?"My van at the Arctic Caribou Inn in Deadhorse on Prudhoe Bay\
First thing in the morning I took the oilfields tour, interesting enough, but not possible to take panoramas (or even regular photos) from the moving bus. The high point for most people was when they were allowed to get out and wade into the Arctic Ocean (35°F). I stayed dry and took pictures.Wading in the Beaufort Sea at Prudhoe Bay
I drove around Deadhorse and took a few panos. Then I started the long drive home. This was truly the turning point of the trip - I had nowhere to go but back south the way I had come.
Panoramas of Deadhorse on Prudhoe BayTypical north slope scene, the endless road and the pipeline crossing the treeless tundra.
The weather improved slightly as the land rose up from the coastal plain, but I could see big clouds over the Brooks Range ahead and sure enough it was raining when I got to Atigun Pass - and snowing just a thousand feet higher.
The fall colors were wonderful south of the pass, but stopping for panos became increasingly difficult as the rain increased and driving took all my attention. I camped in a brilliant yellow aspen grove right on the Arctic Circle.Rain in the Brooks Range, north base of Atigun Pass
The rain continued through the night and the next day, so I just drove steadily, relieved in a way to be almost done with this adventure. Little did I know what lay ahead for me.Fall colors south of Yukon Crossing
I got to the end of the Dalton Highway, mile 0, and paused to consider which way to go on the Elliott Highway - turn right for 76 miles of unpaved road to Manley Hot Springs, or turn left for Fairbanks. It was the rain that decided me on the latter.
The Elliott Highway from that point south to Fairbanks is wide, fast, and paved, but still very remote from civilization. So it worried me when the van started making strange noises, losing power, and the CHECK ENGINE SOON light came on, then started blinking urgently.
I hoped to make it at least to the edge of cell phone range, but no, it was not possible. It was several miles before I found a safe place to pull off the highway, into a gravel road leading up to Pump Station Number 7 on the Alaska Pipeline. Just in time, too - once stopped I couldn't make the van move at all.
I flagged down a contractor's pickup and they advised me to walk up the road to the pump station and use their phone. The security guard there allowed me to do this, and I called AAA for a tow. The tow truck arrived in just over an hour, and carried me and my muddy van back the final 56 miles to Fairbanks.Rescued by Ron's Towing
So there I was - I had almost completed the 950-mile round trip from Fairbanks up the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast of Alaska. Then my van broke down and I had to be towed the final 56 miles back to civilization.
It could have been much worse - there is a stretch of 239 miles between Coldfoot and Deadhorse with no services whatsoever, no phones, nothing. Even where I ended up, south of Livengood on the Elliott Highway, there is no cell-phone coverage, and precious few places even to safely pull off the road. It was a minor miracle that I managed to roll into a side road with Alaska Pipeline Pump Station Number 7 less than a mile away.
I was towed to the comfortable and convenient Super 8 Motel on Airport Way in Fairbanks.The Northernmost Dennys
The day I broke down was a Sunday, followed by the Labor Day holiday, so it wasn't until Tuesday that I could get my van looked at. I had it towed from the motel to the big well-equipped Cadillac-Chevrolet dealership. I was a little embarrassed to see my mud-encrusted vehicle in their immaculate repair area, but they are used to that up there.Chevrolet Cadillac of Fairbanks
I was confident that they would be able to fix it and get me back on the road - but at what cost? My wife and I even discussed the worst-case scenario of buying a new vehicle in Fairbanks.
Turns out it was very simple and easy to fix - a broken rotor arm, which had nothing to do with my demanding drive. It could just as easily have happened running errands at home.
When I picked up my van I was given directions to the nearest pressure wash. Normally I never wash my van, but this was pretty extreme. As I drove out of the Chevy dealer's lot I noticed that I had left a rectangular ridge of mud behind.Before washing
I was back on the road and in fine shape, but I had a big decision to make on where to go next. I could head straight south to Denali, or go east then south to Valdez. The weather had been cloudy and rainy all through my stay in Fairbanks and more of the same was forecast. Denali was only a half day away, so the weather was guaranteed to still be bad when I got there. My van is fine for sleeping in, but not much fun for long periods in the cold and rain.
So I headed east through North Pole to Delta Junction, then south on the Richardson Highway.North Pole, Alaska - did you know that Santa Clause runs an RV park in his off-season?
It rained steadily that day, all night, and the next morning. By the time I got to the Tok Cutoff at Glenallen I was ready to give up on Alaska and head for home. But luckily I didn't, because the bad weather was about to break, and some of the best days of the trip lay ahead.Camping in the rain
The Richardson Highway passes through the Alaska Range, of which I saw nothing because of the weather, then just west of the Wrangell Mountains (also invisible), and finally through the Chugach Range and out to the coast on Prince William Sound. Despite the weather it was a beautiful drive, with fall colors reaching their peak and a lot of wildlife - a lynx crossed the road in front of me early in the morning.Richardson Highway in the rain
Panoramas of the Gulkana River
The visitor center for Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park near Copper Center had a very encouraging weather report - clearing then sunny for the next week. Sure enough, the clouds had lifted high enough to give me some dramatic views as I passed over the Chugach Range.Glaciers from the highway at Thompson Pass
Valdez is a major fishing port (and smells like it), but is famous mostly as the terminus for the Alaska Pipeline. I toured that facility in 2000, but it has been closed to the public since "911".
The town was surprisingly busy and I had trouble getting a room so had to take a slightly more expensive cabin. It was well equipped and comfortable, and I had a great dinner at the Valdez Bistro. I decided to take the boat tour on Prince William Sound the next day no matter what the weather.
This day I took the Stan Stephens Glacier Cruise around Prince William Sound. It started out densely foggy, but cleared just in time to give us a look at the Anderson Glacier waterfall. After that it was clear all day.Prince William Sound waterfall
Around another point or two we turned into the bay that heads in the Columbia Glacier, one of the larger and more active tidewater glaciers in Alaska. The terminus was miles away but we circled around in the floating ice for an hour. Some of the icebergs were an amazing shade of blue.Floating ice from the Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound.
From the Columbia Glacier we steamed around to the south side of Glacier Island and followed a pod of orcas (killer whales). Though not really set up for wildlife photography I got some passable shots and some short movies.An orca in Prince William Sound
In addition to the glaciers, floating ice, and wildlife, the scenery in Prince William Sound is stunning. My main disappointment was that it was impossible to take 360-degree panoramas from the crowded bow of the boat. But that opened up the possibility of an entire day of simple single-shot photography - so much less demanding and more fun than panography.Islet in Prince William Sound.
Panoramas of Prince William Sound (only the first two are from this trip)
Panoramas of Valdez (first four from this trip)Pink and chum salmon spawning in Crooked Creek.
There isn't much left of Old Valdez. It was damaged in the earthquake and tidal wave of 1962, then the town was relocated to its present site. There is a good view across the bay to the Alyeska Pipeline Terminal. It was interesting to watch the tide coming in and rise an inch during the time it took me to shoot just one pano -- I started on dry gravel and ended in the water.Remains of the waterfront boardwalk street in Old Valdez
A little further out of town a road leads to the small lake at the terminus of the Valdez Glacier. Of all the desperately dangerous routes to the Klondike gold fields this had to be the worst - right up the glacier to the divide, then many miles more to the Copper River. In the winter it was rigorous, but in summer it was deadly as the snow melted and crevasses opened up. An alternate route through Keystone Pass and over Thompson Pass was soon pioneered, and eventually followed by the Richardson Highway, Alaska's first permanent road from the coast to the interior.
The drive northwards through Thompson Pass was spectacular, perfect weather. Local people were out picking berries and just lying around in the sun. I stopped (again) at the Worthington Glacier. It used to extend past the viewing area and there was a trail along its lateral moraine, but it has retreated so far that now the ice terminus is beyond a small lake.Berry pickers near Thompson Pass
All through the trip I had been frustrated by the difficulty of finding viewpoints that were not blocked by trees and taking panoramas are not mostly highway. On the north side of the Chugach Mountains I found a unique solution -- I waded across a beaver-created marsh, and stood on their dam to take my pano.
Panoramas of the Chugach Range on the Richardson Highway
At the end of the day I headed east to the tiny historic town of Chitina and camped next to the mighty Copper River. Readers of Dana Stabenow's Alaska-based mysteries will recognize this area from her books.Welcome to Chitina
Chitina is where the gravel McCarthy Road starts and runs 60 miles east through Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park. It was a beautiful morning's drive, though the thick forest blocked distant views much of the time.Early morning fog over the Chitina River
I have a problem with heights and exposed places such as swinging bridges and cliff-tops. I am able to overcome it - I have climbed some serious mountains and stood on the brink of Half Dome. But I knew there was a famously scary bridge over the Kuskulana River on the McCarthy Road, and I had been dreading it for precisely 6094 miles.
The Kuskulana Bridge was built in 1910 for the Copper River Railway and abandoned when the mine shut down, but local people continued to use it. It was narrow, barely wide enough for a pickup truck, and had no guardrails. It is 525 feet long and 238 feet above the river. A few years ago The Milepost noted that half the deck boards were rotted away and missing.
I know I could not have crossed it back then, I would have been frozen at the wheel. The current edition of The Milepost notes that it has been rebuilt and guardrails added, but that many people still find it scary.
Then suddenly, there it was - the canyon and the bridge. I held my breath and drove across without hesitation, 5 mph, eyes glued to the far end. Once done it was no longer intimidating and I walked back to the middle and took a pano. On the way back the next day I even shot a handheld movie as I drove.Kuskulana River Canyon and Bridge
Panoramas of the McCarthy Road
The McCarthy Road ends at the Kennecott River, just short of McCarthy, so you have to walk across (just a few years ago you had to use a self-propelled cable tram).The new footbridge over the Kennecott River
McCarthy is a picturesque little town, a mere shadow of its prime when miners came down from Kennecott to raise hell on Saturday nights. Now it provides services for the huge national park, and is the setting for several of Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak murder mysteries.Ma Johnson's Hotel in McCarthy
I rode the shuttle bus up alongside the moraine-covered glacier to the company town, mill, and mines at Kennicott.The Kennecott Cooper Mine MIll rises up the mountainside above town
It was the last day for tours, and I was the only one to sign up, so I got a one-on-one tour (again!). My guide, Nealy, was able to accommodate my special needs so I got a few intriguing panoramas inside the huge mill building.There is a great view from the top of the mill building
Panoramas of the Kennecott Mine Mill
Back at the end of the road I drove into a private campground and found that the owner and his buddies were closing it for the season by eating and drinking everything that was left in the store. They had just finished the beer, after six hours of steady effort.
So I was the last camper of the year. It was immediately cold when the sun went behind the mountain, a clear night with brilliant stars, and I heard wolves howling.Don in camp at McCarthy
The next day, returning along the McCarthy Road the fall colors were even more spectacular. The air was still and the lakes reflected like giant mirrors.Long Lake on the McCarthy Road
I stopped to look at the fish wheels on the Copper River. Powered by the current they scoop unsuspecting salmon right out of the silty river. Not very sporting, it is only for natives with traditional rights. The smell of rotting fish was truly amazing.Fish wheels on the Copper River at Chitina
The fine weather allowed me to re-shoot some views of the Wrangell Range from viewpoints south and north of the historic settlement of Copper Center. These are volcanoes, eroded, dormant, and active, up to 16,000 feet high. I spent the rest of the day circling around their west and north sides.Quaking aspen near Copper Center
This was a very long day of driving, along the Tok Cutoff and then back on the Alaska Highway, enlivened by spectacular foliage colors and clear views of the glacier-covered Wrangell Mountains to the south.Mount Sanford from near Slana on the Tok Cutoff
Panoramas of Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge
I crossed back into the Yukon at Port Alcan, and camped a few miles later near Snag Lake.
Another long drive that began with many miles of severe frost heaves. The colors of the cottonwoods, aspen, and birch were outstanding and there was a series of beautiful lakes - Moose Lake, Pickhandle Lake, and huge Kluane Lake.Reflection in Pickhandle Lake
Panoramas of the Alaska Highway in the Western Yukon
The official viewpoints of the spectacular Icefield Ranges in Kluane National Park failed to provide me with a good unobstructed view - they had let trees grow up thirty feet tall right in the way.
On a hunch, I pulled into an unpaved side road, many of which lead to gravel pits. It was narrow and a bit muddy, so I walked it instead of driving, and in a quarter mile it did indeed end at a small gravel quarry on a glacial moraine running along the side of a broad valley, with a staggering range of peaks on the far side.
Score! The weather was perfect, the scene magnificent - on the 36th day of the trip, I had to rate it as the best view yet.The Icefields Ranges from the north
I had planned to spend the night in a motel in Whitehorse, but there was some sort of First Nations conclave going on and the town was full. So I camped a few miles further on, cold but peaceful.
Another full day on the Alaska Highway. I stopped at the impressive Teslin Tlingit Heritage Center on long Teslin Lake and bought a few distinctive Indian handicrafts as presents.Clan totems at the Teslin Tlingit Heritage Center
That night I stayed in a motel in Watson Lake. Strange to tell, there was a very noisy honky-tonk bar next door, most of the patrons of which appeared to be First Nations/Native Americans/Indians. Also, although the town did not have cell-phone service, the high-speed internet was excellent.
It had been a memorable trip and I was ready to head home. I knew I had some great photographs and was anxious to get to work on producing the panoramas. But the weather was perfect and I was still a long, long way from California.
As it turned out the best was yet to come.
I turned off the Alcan onto the Cassiar Highway, heading south for the first time since Valdez. The fires that had prevented me from using this route northbound were still smoldering. When I first drove the Cassiar (BC Highway 37) almost twenty years ago, none of it was paved - now all of it is.
There are a number of lakes along the northern half of the Cassiar Highway that have white clay beaches and shallows, producing startling shades of blues and greens.On the floating dock at Boya Lake
Early afternoon I stopped at the Rabid Grizzly Rest Stop -- does that sound restful? As I walked along the beach on Dease Lake I realized that I was following some very large cloven hoof prints - moose.Fall colors around huge Dease Lake
I faced a difficult decision at Dease Lake -- whether or not to make the 70 mile (one way) side trip down the Stikine River to Telegraph Creek. The weather seemed to be changing and eventually I decided that the side trip to Stewart/Hyder was more important photographically.
Telegraph Creek is the epitome of a middle-of-nowhere village, miraculously preserved and partly restored. I first went there in 1996, stayed at the Riversong Inn, and met owner Dan Pakula and some of his family. I returned in 2000 with seven students (including Kat and Landis Bennett, well known in the VR photography community), and saw Dan again. We have kept in intermmitent contact via e-mail ever since.
That evening the campground host at Kinaskan Lake gave me the tragic news that Dan Pakula had died a few weeks earlier in a freak accident. A huge loss to his community, and to his many far-flung friends.
Panoramas on the Cassiar Highway North of Dease Lake
Panoramas on the Cassiar Highway South of Dease Lake
A cold wonderfully clear morning for a beautiful drive south through near wilderness on the Cassiar Highway. At Meziadin Lake I turned west on the Glacier Highway, cutting across the Coast Mountains to the twin towns of Stewart, BC and Hyder, Alaska. This is a highly scenic route, with a dozen glaciers spilling off mountain tops high above the road.The Bear Glacier from the Glacier Highway
At the summit the Bear Glacier comes right down to road level. It used to cross the valley and the original road was built 200 feet higher to get past it. But, like most glaciers, it is shrinking. There is a lake between the glacier and the highway, and the last time I was there it was calving icebergs into the lake. But now it doesn't even quite touch the water.
Panoramas of the Glacier HighwayWelcome to Hyder
Stewart is a charming little town, determinedly normal. Hyder goes out of its way to be wild and wooly, frontier style. The international border is right at the first building on Hyder's main street, but there is no US border check. On the way back, there is a Canadian customs station and they make you stop and answer a few questions. The first of which is the standard "where are you coming from?", which is hilarious since the road into Alaska leads right back into BC then dead-ends.
There are two big reasons to go to Stewart-Hyder, other than for the historic towns and their dramatic setting on a fiord between high peaks capped with glaciers. First, there is Fish Creek, a prime area for viewing bears catching spawning salmon. Unfortunately the salmon season was almost over and I saw no bears there. The other is the Salmon Glacier.Fish Creek bear-watching platform - no bears
I headed up the Granduc Mine Road, which follows the Salmon River then climbs past both old and active mines. It climbs steadily up the canyon wall and soon the glacier comes into sight. I was first here in 1996, and I think the tip of the glacier has moved back as much as half a mile since then, referring to my old pictures.The terminus of the Salmon Glacier
Panoramas of the Granduc Mine Road
This is a classic river of ice, flowing miles down the deep U-shaped valley. Eventually the road reaches a summit and you can see that the glacier comes down from an ice-field surrounded by high peaks then splits.High above the Salmon Glacier south branch
The northern fork of the glacier runs a short distance then degenerates into a chaos of jumbled chunks of ice. This is where, early each year, water coming from snowfall and the melting glacier pools up to form Summit Lake. For the last few decades the lake has broken through the ice barrier each summer and emptied under the south branch of the glacier down into the Salmon River in an event known by the Icelandic term "junkaloup". This accounts for the flood-ravaged appearance of the riverbed downstream. The road continues a few miles past the summit to the actual Granduc mine and former town site.The empty bed of Summit Lake
The Salmon Glacier in good weather is overwhelming in its beauty and scenic grandeur. On my first visit many years ago it was raining and I turned back too soon. The next time the road was blocked by snow and we were only able to get as far as the tip of the glacier. On my third try the clouds came down and I could see nothing beyond the road shoulder. So I was ecstatic to see and photograph it, finally, under optimal conditions.The immense central part of the Salmon Glacier
Panoramas of the Salmon Glacier
But just when I was counting my experience complete and the trip an unqualified success, I had an unexpected adventure.
I had been jumping out of the van and taking panoramas from the road shoulder periodically all the way up from Hyder. I was just about to stop and get out again when a grizzly bear appeared in the road ahead of me.
I fumbled for my camera as the bear paused and looked at me. He reared up to get a better look over the willow bushes and I got a picture.Grizzly bear rearing up to look at me
He was over seven feet tall standing up like that. He was certainly bigger than me, but my van was bigger than him, and he decided to move away. He continued to move parallel to the road, and I got a great picture of him with the glacier behind.My grizzly bear and the Salmon Glacier
Then the bear crossed the road and went uphill out of sight. Two motorcyclists came up behind me - I flagged them down and warned them. They went slowly around the corner, saw the bear, made rapid U-turns in a spray of gravel and roared off. I don't know if a grizzly would run down a motorcycle, but it might (they can catch a moose).
I rolled slowly down the road and saw the grizzly again. He was back on the road and now he came up behind and circled around the van, checking me out again. Probably just curious, or maybe he was wondering how he could open it up and eat me. I got a photo of him in my rear-view mirror.The bear checks me out more closely
The bear apparently decided I wasn't really of interest and climbed up above the road and disappeared.The bear moves on
Back up at the summit viewpoint I took three panoramas and chatted with a Moldovian-Canadian traveler for a while before heading back to Hyder. I had dinner in Stewart then camped in their municipal campground at Rainey Creek. It had been a memorable day!
I kept thinking about how perfect my encounter with the great bear had been - not dangerous or harmful to either of us. I got a good look at him and some great photos.
But it could have been different. If I had been on foot instead of in my van I would have been well within the danger zone (less than one hundred feet). I would likely have been charged and maybe mauled. In Hyder a few years ago a man was killed and eaten by a grizzly. I kept thinking of the claws I had seen on a stuffed grizzly in the visitor center in Glenallen a few days before.Grizzly claws
I took a few geographic documentation photos of Hyder and Stewart, then drove back over the pass to Meziadin Junction and south to the end of the Cassiar Highway.
The weather had deteriorated and it was dark and gloomy by the time I got down to the Skeena River. I took a few panos of the famous totem poles in the villages of Gitanyow (formerly Kitwancool) and Gitwangak (Kitwanga).Totem pole at Gitanyow
Panoramas of Kitwanga Junction
I camped that night on Ferry island in the Skeena River in the town of Terrace. After so many weeks in the boreal forest, taiga, and tundra of the North the lush forest of tall cottonwoods felt almost tropical!Ferry Island Campground in Terrace
Despite discouraging forecasts, the next day was brilliantly clear with a relatively warm wind from the interior. I followed the mighty Skeena River all the way down to tidewater.
Panoramas of the Lower Skeena River
After a quick look at the fishing fleet at Port Edward I went up to the Northern Cannery, a National Historic Site of Canada. It consists not only of the cannery but the entire supporting town, all built on pilings over the water. I was upset to find that it was closed for the season.North Pacific Cannery - closed
But I went through the gate anyway and took a series of panos of the outside. The caretaker, named "Spider", showed up and offered to give me a tour. So I had my third one-on-one tour of the trip (Gold Dredge Number 4 and the Kennecott mill) and got panos in the net loft, cannery building, and on the rotting main dock.
Panoramas of the North Pacific Cannery
I finished the day with a few panos in Prince Rupert, sunny and warm, looking really good. On two previous visits in bad weather I had thought it a very drab town. I bought a ticket for the Inside Passage ferry southbound on Wednesday and camped that night on the edge of Prince Rupert.Prince Rupert Harbor
On a long trip I need a down day once in a while, and I hadn't had one since Fairbanks. Despite the excellent weather I just couldn't motivate myself to go out and make strenuous photographic efforts. I checked into a motel, cleaned up, and started to catch up on my panos and blog.
This was a very long day. I lined up for the ferry at 5:30 am and we pulled out of Prince Rupert just as the sun came up. Then we steamed steadily south for fifteen hours.Ferries at Prince Rupert
I made this trip once before, northbound, on the ill-fated Queen of the North. The Queen ran into Gil Island just after midnight on March 22 of 2006, and sank in 1400 feet of very cold water. The new ferry, the Northern Expedition, is very modern, comfortable, and extremely safe. They made a point of that.
I booked a cabin, which was very nice, and ate three meals, each in a different restaurant. I kept running up on deck every hour or so to take photographs.
The scenery of the Inside Passage does't change very fast, and seems to go on forever. The Grenville Channel is dramatically narrow, long and straight, and takes four hours to steam through.
There are a few lighthouses, the old cannery village of Butedale, now and then a fishing boat, a fleeting view of the town of Bella Bella on Campbell Island.Glassy calm in the Grenville Channel
I had dinner in their very nice (and expensive) restaurant just at sunset. We finally docked at Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island at 10:30 pm. I drove half a mile to the first campground, parked, and went to bed. It rained all night.
Panoramas of the Inside Passage - North Half
Panoramas of the Inside Passage - South Half
I had a list of places on Vancouver Island that I wanted to visit, or revisit, and even considered a whale-watching excursion from Telegraph Cove. But the continuing rain discouraged me and I just kept driving, all the way down the island to Nanaimo, with only one stop.Rain all the way from Port Hardy to Nanaimo
At Nanaimo I caught another brand-new ferry back to the mainland, where I rolled in just in time to have dinner with my cousins and meet the newest member of the family, Georgia. I gave her a plush killer whale and tried to teach her to say "orca".
It was still gray and rainy so I headed south and ended up driving all day, to Kelso Washington.Raining at the Peace Arch border crossing
The next day was beautiful, clear right to the top of Mount Rainier, but it had been a long trip and I really wanted to get home, so I kept going.
Finally, at 10 pm, I was home in El Cerrito and the trip was over - 46 days, 9125 miles (12,000 km), 525 panoramas.


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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Oil futures fell Wednesday, with losses intensifying after the U.S. House approved a short-term debt-limit extension and on reports that oil deliveries to the Jones Creek terminal in Texas through the Seaway pipeline had been cut. March crude CLH23, -50.95% fell $1.45, or 1.5%, to settle at $95.23 a barrel. Limiting some capacity in the Seaway pipeline means that the supply glut of oil at Cushing, Okla. might not get emptied as fast as some had hoped, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group. "That caused a knee-jerk selloff" after the market was already weakening following the debt-ceiling vote, he said.
Oil falls 1.5% after debt limit vote, Seaway news
Quote References
-53.19 -50.95%

subset: commoncrawl


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Louis Vuitton Montagne GM Replica Bag
2015-9-17 fashion Louis Vuitton
The Louis Vuitton Montaigne GM Monogram Empreinte is the ideal city-chic bag for dynamic business women who want to carry around a fabulous luxury accessory that is both functional and spacious. The best part about this LV purse is that it has a smartly designed interior that is designed to accommodate all your lady essentials and it also comes in the Monogram Empreinte leather version which adds a touch of style and modern sophistication to your office or casual look.
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Doom of Mandos
The Doom of Mandos, also called the Doom of the Noldor, the Curse of Mandos, and the Prophecy of the North, was the judgement of the Valar (believed to have been spoken personally by Mandos) pronounced on the Noldorin Elves who carried out the Kinslaying at Alqualondë in Eldamar. It was given to the Noldor in the lands of Araman north of Valinor as a warning of the woe that would come upon them if they continued in their rebellion against the Valar and did not repent of their killing of the innocent Falmarin Elves. A part of the Doom goes as follows:
- "Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains. On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them it shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. The Dispossessed shall they be for ever. ..."
The pronunciation of this Doom was the immediate cause for the full repentance of Finarfin (already reluctant to proceed) and his followers, and their return to Tirion. There they asked and received the forgiveness of the Valar.[1]
However, nine-tenths of the Noldor (as well as a handful of others such as the Vanya Elenwë and the Falmar Teleporno who each accompanied their Noldorin spouses) continued on their way to Beleriand to fight Morgoth, and the disastrous wars they waged there fulfilled the prophetic Doom.
Most would not survive, and none who died in exile save two (Finrod and Glorfindel) would be re-embodied before the War of Wrath that would finally end the First Age. Forgiveness and pardon for most would not come until then. For some, it did not come even then, such as for the prideful Galadriel who would only at last prove her necessary penitence at the very end of the Third Age.
Fëanor and his sons would remain unpardoned for other reasons, namely their unfulfillable Oath. This would make it impossible for the survivor Maglor to return until the Silmarils do.


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Salvation: The Battle for the Salvation 3
Follow the adjoining corridor and you should shortly come to a wrecked elevator. Don't bother jumping on top of it, there's nothing there. Rather, while facing it in the hallway use your force grip to lift it up so that you have room to fit under it and drop down the shaft to the floor below. From there look for a small platform jutting out of the wall of the shaft. You can use this to jump up and advance to the next corridor.
Follow the corridor and you'll come to a room with a large laser cannon and a squad of storm troopers. Kill the troopers and then take a glance at the next door. It's missing a fuse, but there aren't any obvious ones present to replace it with. You can ransack the laser cannon for a fuse. Once the door is open head into the next room. An explosion will knock another cannon loose and send it flying across the room. Before you worry about that though, take out the incinerator droid, storm troopers and saber guards that attack you. Once they're dealt with and the room is clear, you need to reactivate the cannon laying on the floor. To do so, search the other cannons in the room for a fuse. When you find one, electrify it and replace it in the loose cannon. Once you've done this you should be able to fire it manually. Doing so will blow a hole through some debris, allowing you to proceed.
Enter the room you just made accessible and jump up to the corridor above. Follow it and you should come to a ledge looking overlooking a large room housing the Salvation's main cannon. It's also the current home to a few squads of storm troopers and a pair of AT-MTs. Jump down and wipe them out. Upon doing so a squad of jump troopers packed up by some snipers will move in. Kill them all and the main cannon will suffer some crippling damage. What this means for you is that the main gun needs to fired manually. Perhaps by someone possessing some a particular set of force powers.
Head over the left side of the room. Some newly blown off debris will allow you to jump up to the cannon's power generators. Jump up and move close between the two nodes to activate a quick time event. Complete it successfully to fire the cannon. After that board the nearby elevator and ride it up to the next floor. When it stops, exit into the hall and swing a right. You'll come to another moving platform. Board it and it will start moving. After a short time some terror droids will drop in. Destroy them and ride the platform until it stops. From there continue down the next corridor until you reach the engine room.
After a brief cutscene you'll regain control. The Salvation is crashing into the planet below and you need to make sure it hits ground without interference. As the Salvation moves forward follow the on screen quick time instructions to push aside debris with the force. After you break atmosphere, you'll escape the Salvation glide down to the ground below. Avoid or destroy the oncoming debris until you land.
This ends the level.
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The next question to be resolved is this: can the morphology of a giant, aquatic salamander even be compatible with the other evidence (besides the Gray Photo), the other observations, and the centuries of varying reports of unidentified creatures in Loch Ness? Particularly with what reports there are of long necks? Herein I shall attempt to demonstrate that this is indeed the case, and that the form of a giant salamander is more than adequate for explaining the great majority of all observations.
Before proceeding, another brief nod to history is in order. Over a century before the press coined the name "Nessie" and began spreading the notion one should expect to see a plesiosaur if they went looking for An Niseag, in fact a whopping 131 years before Hugh Gray took his camera to the loch, a crofter from the village of Abriachan named Alexander MacDonald was rescuing an injured lamb near the water's edge when he had a harrowingly close encounter with a 20 foot long animal in Loch Ness. As related by Nicholas Witchell (The Loch Ness Story, Penguin edition, 1975, page 17) MacDonald reported the animal that paddled to within 50 yards of him using two short appendages reminded him of a salamander, and indeed referred to it as "the great salamander" for the rest of his life. (From another source, a correspondent for the Northern Chronicle who also looked into the Alexander MacDonald case, we hear that MacDonald "often" saw his "salamander" in the early hours of the morning while he waited to catch the ferry to Inverness from Abriachan pier.) Witchell further relates that into the start of the 20th century the ferry skippers putting in at Abriachan pier would hail the piermaster by shouting: "Seen the salamander today?" This tale almost immediately precedes Witchell's account of an even more singular event, this time from 1880, the first underwater sighting. The diver was Duncan MacDonald. When sent down to examine a shipwreck off the Fort Augustus entrance to the Caledonian Canal, he immediately gave the emergency signal to be pulled up, and reportedly never dove again in his life. Because next to the keel of the ship, on the rock shelf where it was lodged, Duncan MacDonald saw a large animal "like a huge frog". (Taxonically speaking of course, salamanders are frogs with tails, and hence the name of their order of classification, Caudata.) Here we have three nineteenth century references to exceptionally large animals recognized as amphibians in Loch Ness.
(Thanks to an anonymous reader of my blog, I also have another most pertinent account to relate. The source is A Bridge To The Past: An Oral History of Families of Upper GlenUrquhart by Peter R. English (Inverness, Speedprint, 2009). It reads: "Early in the Second World War, Ian [MacDonald] had been on an exercise in the area with the Cameron Highlanders when, going along the shores of Loch Ness, a disturbance was spotted. They all piled out of the truck and, armed with their spying binoculars, they watched "the beast" for a full twenty minutes. When Hamish [MacDougall] as a little lad was not behaving to Granny's [Annie MacDonald nee Galbraith's] liking, she would threaten "I will throw you to the salamander" – her name for "the monster" [emphasis mine]. Between this and the Alexander MacDonald account of 1802 cited above, we have proof that for a period of at least 112 years, the local name given to "the monster" in Loch Ness was the salamander, or the great salamander.)
I quote these accounts at this point to invoke the cryptozoological term "ethnoknown". Put simply it means, local people know and realize what animals they have around them, and have a working knowledge that often proves superior to the "informed" opinions of outsiders. One must live in an environment to understand it. It strikes me as critically suggestive that during the 19th century and into the early 20th, a period relatively free from mythological and medieval influences on the one hand, but also free of the upcoming journalistic, pseudo-scientific, and Hollywood-borne influences on the other, that local inhabitants were interpreting the animal they lived with in the Loch as "the great salamander". Not a water horse nor dragon, nor a plesiosaur, and certainly not Godzilla. The people living around Loch Ness who encountered this mysterious animal during this arguably less-biased period were comparing what they saw to the fauna they already knew, and they saw it for what it was: a very large salamander. In earlier times witnesses were surely more apt to jump to the conclusion they'd seen a manifestation of the devil, and in later times a Jurassic marine reptile. But in this post-rationalistic age, this window of time before the animal in the Loch had any 20th century expectations to conform with, eyes were open and common sense may have just prevailed. People weren't labeling it a salamander without reason. The simplest reason being, that's exactly what they were seeing.
All this seems to have made perfectly good sense to William Horsburgh Lane, who retired along with his wife Agnes to Invermoriston to lead a quiet life by the shores of Loch Ness. Lieutenant Colonel Lane had lead an adventurous life, soldiering in the Far East with the Indian army, and then pursuing his life-long interest in archaeology. But earlier in his life, while fishing in Burma about 1901, Lane had run into none other than Andrias davidianus, the Chinese Giant Salamander which grows to lengths of six (perhaps even eight) feet. With that interesting encounter in his past, and then finding himself living beside Loch Ness, Lane took up a keen interest in the local rumor, and was sure he knew the answer: the local monster must be a relative of the creature he remembered from Burma. In a 1933 letter to the Inverness Courier, William Lane became the first to espouse the giant salamander theory in print, and went on to write the very first book published on the subject of Nessie, The Home of the Loch Ness Monster (Moray Press, March 1934). Respected naturalist Rupert T. Gould (The Loch Ness Monster and Others, summer 1934) and biologist Roy Mackal (1976) were at least temporary proponents of a giant amphibian theory, but otherwise the idea has languished, largely perhaps as a consequence of the Surgeon's Photo, which was taken after Lane published, and shortly before Gould's book went to press. There is however no account of Lane ever wavering in his theory. Like Alexander MacDonald, we may presume William Lane was also still thinking in terms of "the great salamander" when his life ended. Fortuitously he had his own sighting just a year before his death, and in so far as we know the large black hump he witnessed didn't cause him to change his mind.
Morphology is the study of the gross structure of an organism and the details of its outward appearance (size, shape, measurements, color). Below is my "working" morphology of the Loch Ness Giant Salamander, an attempt to pin down what a specimen would look like if we could lift it out of the water and examine it. This is compatible with my interpretation of the two animals in the Gray Photo, but not limited by it. (Size, for example, cannot be reliably measured from the Gray Photo until we work out what the field of view was before the print was cropped.) The degree to which my model is compatible with other lines of evidence, or incompatible with the conclusions of other researchers, will no doubt raise some points for discussion, but none more so than the absence of the classically interpreted long neck. A long, plesiosaur-like head and neck arrangement on any species of Amphibia, any salamander current or extinct, would be a startling and unlikely anomaly. And if the Gray Photo with its short-necked and large, almost eel-like headed creatures is accepted into evidence, then we must resolve this new morphology with the views of the past.
|Click on diagram for larger image
|Juvenile Andrias davidianus
Before dealing with the human viewpoint and the previously proposed long-necked morphologies, let's have a look back at the evidence on which those viewpoints were based. The three lines of evidence that can give us structural details or help to infer morphology are eyewitness accounts (from surface and land sightings), photographic evidence, and to a much lesser extent sonar readings. I shall tackle these in reverse order, to get the smallest out of the way first and save the largest category for last.
What Sonar Has Told Us About Morphology
Unfortunately sonar images do not provided morphological detail beyond approximate size (and not always that, depending on the type of sonar). When size is reported for sonar contacts, the estimates never seem larger than 20 feet (with a 50 foot exception recorded in 1954; see Nicholas Witchell, The Loch Ness Story, Penguin edition, 1975, pages 80-81). Significant sonar echoes might also be returned by Atlantic sturgeon or Wels catfish, distractor species that might also be occasionally present in the Loch, but these would not normally exceed 15 feet, leading us to believe our larger contacts must be with an unidentified species.
Sonar can also give us speed, direction and depth of an animal, implying anatomical and behavioral traits which help construct an image to some minor extent. For example, it tells us the body plan must be that of a powerful swimmer. Time and location of contacts may tell us something of behavior as well, such as diving profiles telling us we're dealing with a benthic, water-breathing animal (see Roy Mackal, The Monsters of Loch Ness, page 126). This may not seem like much, but it's actually invaluable to the conclusion we're dealing with an unknown species in the first place, and the type of animal it must be.
Despite the maximum size of 20 feet so far detected by sonar, I have elected to go with 25 feet for my "typical" specimen in the preceding drawing. In any event, changing the scale would be the easiest correction to make if future evidence so warrants. There are two reasons to predict a slightly larger size. One is that eye witness testimony over all these years includes larger specimens, even up to or exceeding 60 feet. I would throw out these largest estimates on general principles, suggesting as others before me that these are cases of misidentification of the Loch's well-documented and occasionally remarkable wave forms. This brings us down to the many estimates of 30 feet or smaller as representative of the largest reported size. And I would further reduce that, taking into account how difficult it is to estimate the scale of something seen far out in the water, with no adjacent reference points; if anything, the adrenaline or preconceptions of the viewers seem more likely to cause observational errors on the "plus" side, rather than the "minus" side.
But I also hesitate to take the 20 foot sonar readings as indicative of the largest size for the following reasons. Sonar reflections are highly dependent on the density of the object. Giant salamanders have a low bone density; reduced ossification is a characteristic part of the adaptation from terrestrial salamanders to aquatic forms. This is not only true of our three current, recognized species of giant salamanders in Asia and North America. The post-cranial remains of the aquatic Labyrinthdonts show an evolutionary progression towards increasingly cartilaginous skeletons before fading out of the fossil record (a subject to which I'll be returning, and for very good reason, in a later article on the taxonomy of our beastie). What this comes down to is that there are good reasons to suspect the Loch Ness Giant Salamander has a relatively low bone density, and would therefore return sonar contacts that could lead to an underestimation of its actual size. If the calcification is even lower in juveniles, one could even wonder if these smaller, younger specimens might be invisible to sonar.
So between 30 foot eye witness sightings and 20 foot sonar contacts, I am parsimoniously confident to award our virtual type specimen, a typical adult, a size (or we should say length) of 25 feet.
What Photographs Have Told Us About Morphology
Studying the external form of an animal only requires a pair of eyes, but of course captured images that can be studied and measured at leisure would be the most helpful thing to have. Unfortunately useful photographic images of our beastie are few and far between. Here I'm narrowing the definition of useful to any image that gives us a clue to the structural morphology of Nessie, and for which the case of it being a hoax or mistake cannot be definitively proven. As liberal as this may sound, just these two criterion serve to eliminate almost all candidates: a photo (or webcam video) of a hump, blob, or wake tells us nothing we don't already know, regardless of authenticity. I also include the Tim Dinsdale film in this category, as even if it's not a boat it doesn't show us structure. As to the second category of unheplful material, examples include the Sheils photos, the recent Edward's hoax, and the tremendously "over-enhanced" Rines flipper pictures which aren't showing us parts of any living creature at all.
Some of the more famously (or infamously) useless photos:
This leaves, in my estimate, only three photos that can be taken as useful, or possibly useful. I've devoted two previous articles to the Gray Photo, and direct you to those for my reasons to believe the photo is not only authentic, but shows us the upper portions of two giant salamanders of unrecognized species. Unfortunately the Gray Photo lacks reference points to give us scale. On the other hand, the Peter MacNab photo, which gives us reference points and scale, only shows us two moving humps. For many years the MacNab photo was thought to be inadmissible as evidence because there appeared to be two conflicting versions of the photo. Roland Watson has resolved this matter with a proof that the two versions are actually one and the same photo, and you may read about that here. And lastly we come to the much maligned Surgeon's photo, although purported to be a hoax (Nessie - The Surgeon's Photograph Exposed, by David Martin and Alastair Boyd, Herts., U.K., 1999). If one wishes to accept it as genuine (and I don't consider the case quite closed on this matter) it also lacks reference points to give us scale. It also undermines the working morphology I've established so far, or at least it would seem to. And what of the second photo Dr. Wilson took? The temptation here is to throw out these two Wilson pictures, but one should never be too hasty to throw out data that doesn't fit one's model. What doesn't fit might actually be trying to tell us something. So I have chosen to keep the Wilson photos under consideration, and let's see where that leads.
So what then do these few photos tell us about structural morphology?
Useful, or possibly useful photos:
|From left to right: (1) the Gray Photo (2) the MacNab Photo (3) detail of the 1st Wilson Photo (4) the 2nd Wilson Photo
The Gray Photo is the most useful piece of evidence we have. We see the overall shape of the upper portions of the animal, evidence for the number of appendages and their locations as well as the important clue that the anterior appendages are actually limbs, the shape of the head and mouth (on the further of the two animals), and the horizontal flexture of the powerful tail along with a look at a fairly prominent caudal fin that runs forward from a point about a third of the tail's length, starting from the tip, to slightly up the rear of the dorsal hump. Also of great importance, it gives us the lateral proportions of the animal. As a percentage of overall length we have: 16% head-neck, 50% body, and 34% tail. This is in major contrast to the traditionally assumed proportions of 33.3% head-neck, 33.3% body, and 33.3% tail. And I am about to make much of the "co-incidence" that the actual tail is the same proportion of the total animal as the traditional head-neck region was supposed to be: any authentic sighting or photograph of Nessie in which a long neck was spotted must have included a misidentification of the tail as the neck.
Accepting that the right hand portion of the Heron-Allen print of the Gray Photo shows a large head on a short neck (see Watson's article), then every case of a witness reporting a long thin neck had to be a misidentification of the tail (if what they saw was the same species as in the Gray Photo). It would be highly imprudent to postulate two separate species of large unidentified animals in Loch Ness, or to postulate extreme variability in neck anatomy from specimen to specimen, when all we need to account for such sightings is that the Loch Ness Giant Salamander occasionally lifts its tail above water.. And exactly such a tail is the clearest element in the Gray Photo. I'll return to this dilemma later.
We can take from the MacNab photo one of two conclusions: we have a single, two-humped specimen an incredible 50 feet long, or we have two single-humped specimens, one with a 30 foot dorsal line followed by a smaller animal showing a length of about 12 feet. Personally I would favor the two-specimen interpretation, and the supporting evidence to this might be that the two humps seem to be on slightly different axis in the full size image. Even so, the visible 30 feet of the longer object would mean something even bigger than my virtual type specimen. But the normal variability within a species would still allow for an occasional member to exceed the mean size, which if 25 feet might make a specimen a little over 30 feet (20% above average) not totally implausible.
Last among the photos relevant to the problem of morphology, we come to the two pictures taken successively by Dr. Kenneth Wilson in April 1934, the first of which has become known as the "Surgeon's Photo". It remains the most popular Nessie icon in the world, despite having been labeled a hoax since 1994 (Nessie - The Surgeon's Photograph Exposed, by David Martin and Alastair Boyd, Herts., U.K., 1999).
What's problematic for this article is any chance the Wilson pictures might still prove genuine, as at face value the Surgeon's Photo (1st Wilson photo, above) depicts what has been accepted by many as a long, plesiosaur-like head and neck. That Wilson's photos might still be vindicated is a possibility, as the key witness for the expose that debunks Wilson's first photo (Christian Spurling, stepson of Marmaduke Wetherell) actually seems to have been unaware of the existence of Wilson's second picture (2nd Wilson photo, above), a glaring omission by someone claiming to have been in on the alleged hoax from beginning to end. So rather than dismissing the Surgeon's Photo, I've chosen to tackle it head on (no pun intended), as if it does show a live animal in Loch Ness.
For those who long accepted the Surgeon's Photo to be a genuine picture of Nessie, the standard interpretation was almost universally agreed upon: this was the head, held horizontally, atop a long serpentine or swan-like neck that appears to meet a thicker body before entering the water. There is some disturbance in the water behind the neck, but no hump. Perhaps the animal is stretched out vertically with the neck above water. But isn't it equally possible then that Nessie is stretched out vertically, head down, tail above water with the tip curling down? Unfortunately the angle of the sun at the time this image was made gives us only a black silhouette to study. All details within the borders of the silhouette are blank, awaiting completion by the imagination of the viewer. Tim Dinsdale (Loch Ness Monster, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1961) took the picture to be genuine, and thought it couldn't be a carved model because of details he saw in the photo that a hoaxer wouldn't have had the foresight to include.
A rather curious detail that first perplexed me when I was analyzing this photo many years ago is the apparent pinching in the neck that starts about halfway up. At the time I took this uneven diameter to be the sign of a possible mane lying flat, but this constriction occurs on both the dorsal and ventral sides, which seems inconsistent with a mane. This sudden narrowing of the "neck" is even more evident in a negative image of the photo (I've indicated the spot where it starts with red arrows in the first three panels below). Years ago I gave up trying to understand this artifact in the photo. Earlier this year I had prepared a drawing based on a giant salamander for use in this article (you'll see these illustrations a bit further on) and had need of turning the finished product into a silhouette to use as an insert. Imagine my own surprise when I black-filled the picture, rotated the tail into an upright position, and spotted pinching in the same area of the "neck" as in the Surgeon's Photo. How had I unintentionally created the same effect? The answer lies in that the perceived pinching in my drawing is an illusion. It's not that the tail object has any constriction in it (look at the fourth panel), it's that the caudal fins I depicted hanging on either side, when viewed in silhouette, cause a sudden widening on the object that fools the eye when other detail is lacking (see panel five). Now I hasten to add, quite strongly, this proves nothing whatsoever about Wilson's first photo. It should be obvious that proof about a photo cannot be drawn from any illustration that coincidentally resembles the photo. The only thing unequivocal is that a coincidence has occurred. That coincidence being, the object in Wilson's first photo has a detail consistent with the raised tail of a salamander bearing dorsal and ventral caudal fins. It's certainly a hard detail to explain in a hand-carved plesiosaur neck. It's not impossible to explain, perhaps the hoaxer got carried away with his sandpaper, but it certainly is a curious matter besides the rest of this business. At any rate, I'm satisfied the Wilson photos pose no danger to my working morphology, and could even strengthen the case if anyone overturns Christian Spurling's story.
|Click for larger image
If the object had been moving at any significant speed this would contraindicate the tail being above water, as we can presume the animal can't make great speed without use of the tail. According to Nicholas Witchell, who obtained his information through Wilson's widow and the rare privilege of viewing Wilson's own letters about the incident, he reported it took him two minutes to take the photos (he had to change plates multiple times), during which the object "moved a little and submerged" (The Loch Ness Story, revised edition, Penguin Books, 1975, pages 44-45). Note there is no wake in either Wilson photo, and nothing to indicate significant motion as well. Wilson also reported having to run 50 yards and back to obtain his camera from the time the object surfaced; from that we can estimate that the object was above water for about 5 minutes, during which neither Wilson nor his companion apparently saw any significant movement to report. But yet there is some movement. In the 2nd Wilson photo, taken approximately 30 seconds later according to Witchell's findings, the object has submerged by approximately two-thirds of what was visible in the first picture; the angle at which the object enters the water is noticeably lessened, yet the "head" is still horizontal to the waterline (was the model hinged?). And most importantly, the profile of the knob at the tip has changed; a skull is fairly unlikely to change its proportions in 30 seconds, but the flopping tip of a tail is extremely likely to take on other dimensions as the tail moves to a lower angle.
There is nothing in Wilson's photos or sighting account to preclude the object above water being the tail rather than the neck and head of an aquatic animal. In fact a tail, especially one with a pair of caudal fins, makes for a much better explanation of the object that occurs in both photographs. Nor is it suspicious that the animal (if the photo is genuine) held its pose for five minutes; the known giant salamanders are ambush rather than pursuit predators, and will hold quite still waiting for nearby prey to pass within snapping range. If this is an instance of feeding behavior, doesn't it make far, far more sense for the head to be below water than above?
Having exhausted anything sonar and photos can tell us about the structure of the Loch Ness Giant Salamander, let us move on to eyewitness accounts.
"What Surface Sightings Have Told Us About Morphology")


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Today is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Winston S. Churchill. Our friend Steve Hayward notes the occasion at the Corner here as does Peter Schramm at No Left Turns in "Remembering Winston Churchill."
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LeahS [Admin]12/13/10
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