Looking south down the Igning Creek drainage from the Noatak River in Alaska’s Brooks Range, a wide expanse of gravel and sand is crossed with grizzly and caribou tracks. Shulakpachak Peak glitters with glacial snowfields in the far distance.
Plein air watercolor by Kim Solga.
20 inches by 13 inches on Yupo paper.
Original painting for sale: $350.
Please contact me for information on shipping costs (I recommend UPS insured delivery). If you wish to have me mat and frame the painting so it is ready to hang in your home or office, or to send as a gift, I am pleased to discuss the additional cost of framing, mat and frame options.
A bush flight into Gates of the Arctic takes an hour from the small village of Bettels…soaring up and over peaks, glaciers and deep gorges of the Brooks Range. If there’s a storm, the pilot circles to try another pass, then another until the plane runs low on fuel and we return to the airport with hopes for better weather tomorrow.
Eventually the float plane lands us on a small lake beside the Noatak River, unloads our piles of gear, then flies away with a promise to meet us at another lake 60 miles downstream.
Colorful tundra and snow capped peaks surround our camp. The silence and solitude is overwhelming. At our feet, mosses and tiny arctic plants create miniature bonsai gardens on every surface. Vast hillsides sweep up to rocky crags. Looking carefully, we see herds of grazing caribou and white specks that are mountain sheep on the cliffs high above. One slow black dot turns out, with binoculars, to be a grizzly foraging blueberries. A loon calls from the other side of the lake.
We spend two weeks rafting the Noatak…paddling gently past marshes and gravel bars, creeks filled with salmon, bears and eagles feasting on the salmon. The intricate lace of animal tracks decorate every mud bank. Sunsets are spectacular, and the aurora borealis puts on a dramatic display when nights are clear. Cold mornings, ice on the tents, even the snows of early winter don’t dimish our delight with this wilderness, the least visited of all of America’s National Parks.