{"id":1039,"date":"2013-10-30T15:53:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T23:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/?p=1039"},"modified":"2013-10-30T15:53:24","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T23:53:24","slug":"getting-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/2013\/10\/30\/getting-high\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting High"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve got a thing for the Alpine. The word deserves capitalization because, for me, it is more than a habitat, or geographic zone. It is these things, certainly, but it also has personality and character.\u00a0I relish the time I get to spend in the high elevations, on mountaintops and wild ridges.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I made this image atop a mountain that lay beside the Kongakut River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It was a mid-afternoon in June, and my clients, after a few days of long hikes were preferring their tents, naps or card games to the rocky tundra. So I took off alone. Moving as quickly as I could the 2500 vertical feet from the river to the mountaintop. The flowers were in full bloom, but I wasn’t pausing often for photos or any other reason except to occasionally gasp for air.<\/p>\n

There was forest-fire smoke in the air. Not a lot, but enough to smell, just a bit. It was blowing in from the south, and softening the hard afternoon light (and probably doing some unseen damage to my hard-working lungs). It took me about an hour and 45 mins to reach the top. The mountain broke away precipitously to the east, where far below I could make out the colorful dots of our tents. Amidst the boulders on the summit outcrop, I found several patches of wildflowers, but these caught my eye more than any other.<\/p>\n

I lingered only briefly on the mountaintop before plunging down the far side of the peak, down a loose scree slope and into a tundra-filled gully that led me, back to our gravel-bar camp. I was gone from camp for perhaps only 3 1\/2 hours, but that is the draw the alpine has on me. Any time up high, is better than none.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve got a thing for the Alpine. The word deserves capitalization because, for me, it is more than a habitat, or geographic zone. It is these things, certainly, but it also has personality and character.\u00a0I relish the time I get… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,14,147],"tags":[42,41],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arctic","category-landscape","category-travel","tag-anwr","tag-kongakut"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/AK-ANWR-Kongakut-WhaleMtn-1063-143.jpg?fit=667%2C1000&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8wo3z-gL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1041,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildimagephoto.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}