The Month Of Glaciers

This past month unfolded a bit different than I expected. I almost never film two videos from the same location, and yet here we are. Both flights brought me back to Lake George. Not because I was out of ideas, but because the lake offered something it almost never does: perfect conditions.

If you have flown in Alaska long enough, you learn that certain places only reveal themselves when the timing is right. Lake George is one of those places. Most of the year it is unpredictable: windy, full of unstable ice, and difficult to read. But for a few days this fall, the lake went calm, the air settled, and the floating ice spread out across the water like a gallery. When a place like that opens up, you go. Even if you were just there.

The first flight had a very specific mission. I was chasing a photo I have been thinking about for a long time. Not a thumbnail and not a random picture for a video, but an image that felt like “This is Alaska” in a single frame. Glacier, light, scale, isolation, and an airplane small enough in the shot to remind you of the size of the place.

And because of how I am wired, it turned into this silly little competition with myself. Not against anyone else. Just against the version of me who took the last “best photo I have ever taken.” I wanted to see if I could do better.

This is where the real work comes in. The process is far from simple. I am the one composing the shot, flying the drone, choosing the angle, and dialing in the exposure. The drone is just the camera platform. The airplane is what gets me into the places where a shot like that can even exist, places most people will never see.

The second flight could not have been more different. Same glacier, same lake, same season, but a completely different purpose. That day was about getting down on the water. Paddling through the ice in the packraft. Exploring the shapes and sounds up close instead of from the air. Where the first flight was all about timing and composition, the second was slow, quiet, and almost meditative.

Both flights lived inside the same tension though. This whole month has been the dance with the cold. Fall flying in Alaska always carries that feeling. The best light of the year shows up right before the lakes freeze, but that also means you are flying right at the edge of the season shutting down. Miss it by a couple of days and the lake becomes unflyable. Miss it by a week and float season is over completely.

That sense of transition shaped the entire month. Lake George became a marker, not because it was new but because it was changing every day. New ice patterns. New colors. New risks. New opportunities. The kind of place worth returning to, not for repetition, but for evolution.

Starting this field journal with a month like this feels right. This is what flying in Alaska really is: not always about finding new places, but about returning to familiar ones at the exact right moment with a new purpose or a new version of yourself.

Two flights.
Same lake.
Same glacier.
Completely different missions.

One to chase a photograph I have wanted for years.
One to explore a place that keeps pulling me back.

And together, they shaped this month in a way I did not expect.

Float flying in Alaska is downright magical. There is something here for every kind of pilot. If you want to escape into high mountain lakes, you can do that. If you want to put your floats down next to an active glacier, you can do that too. Alaska gives you more choices than you really deserve.

On this flight, I took 13C out with one goal in mind. I wanted to capture a truly Alaskan image. Now that you have already seen the video, I can break the flight down a bit more here. And if you have not watched it yet, here is the link. Go watch it first, then come back for the behind the scenes version.

Landing on a glacial lake is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of threats to work around, and even when you do everything right, the risk is still there. But then again, most float flights come with their own version of risk. That is part of the deal.

Think about it. Floating ice, floating logs, floating debris. Any of it can puncture the aluminum or fiberglass skin of a float. Ice can be tougher to spot because it blends in with the grey water, but logs and debris on a glassy day landing into the sun are not any easier. The hazard changes, but the mindset stays the same. Pay attention. Respect the water. Stay humble.

Most people assume that the smaller chunks of ice are the real threat when you are landing near a glacier. While they are a factor, they’re not the biggest threat here. The big chunks are. And so is the glacier face itself.

Our glaciers here in Alaska are always moving. Always calving. Always shifting. That is the one piece of this environment that you cannot control. The trick is to stay far enough away that even a large calve will lose its energy before the wave reaches you. This glacier is fairly small at the face, maybe forty or fifty feet, not hundreds. That keeps the wave energy manageable and makes this lake relatively safe to land on. But “relatively safe” is still not safe.

The real hazard on this flight was the giant chunk of ice I used as the main subject of the photo. If you have seen Titanic or read anything about icebergs, you know the idea. There is far more below the surface than above. But the truth is that you never really know what is underneath. And with the water being a milky grey from glacial runoff, visibility was basically zero.

In the video, you heard me mention that we were watching for changes on the surface. What I did not explain there is that the water around the berg had a noticeably different texture when we flew over it. That usually means there is something under the surface shaping the flow of the water. We marked that line in our heads, and once we were on the lake, we used that visual boundary to decide how close we were willing to get. That line was our absolute limit.

The second threat was the berg rolling over. Even if there was a shelf under the water, we could not be sure how stable it was. Once a chunk breaks away from the glacier, it immediately begins melting on all sides, just like ice in a glass of water. If it melts unevenly and the weight shifts, the berg can flip with zero warning. Anything in the way gets crushed. So our strategy was simple. Keep our distance and watch for even the slightest hint of instability.

Setting up the shot itself was the easy part. I use an app called The Photographer’s Ephemeris to figure out when the light will be best at any specific location. Hit the timing, know where the sun is coming from, and the rest is just exposure settings. I was flying a DJI Mini 3 Pro, which does not have aperture control, so I was limited to shutter speed and ISO. Not ideal, but workable. I shot about thirty images from different angles and shutter speeds during the twenty minutes we had before golden hour disappeared. After that, the light was gone and we needed to get back to Lake Hood before dark.

Landing a floatplane at night is not something that comes naturally. It is not exactly recommended either, although I know plenty of pilots who have done it. I prefer not to.

This flight was one of the last of my float season, and it was one that required a lot of planning before we even left the dock. A photo mission always does. But this one felt especially important because it carried the weight of the season ending. And with it, the reminder that Alaska gives you an incredible set of opportunities, but only for so long.

I grew up in the water the way some kids grow up in the woods. It wasn’t a hobby. It was the language my childhood was written in. My parents were waterskiers, the kind of people who treated lakes like second homes, and they tossed me into that world before I even understood what it was. I learned to swim at eighteen months because they wanted me to be safe, but something deeper happened the moment I hit the water. I didn’t just take to it. I belonged to it.

By five, I was chasing kids twice my size in club meets. By seven, I was navigating open-water courses most adults wouldn’t touch. As I got older, the water pulled me deeper. Scuba. Freediving. Technical dives. Trimix. Wrecks. I didn’t experiment. I committed. The ocean became a place where the noise of life faded into something quiet and honest. A place where the only thing that mattered was the next breath, the next stroke, the next moment.

Through all of it, swimming, scuba, and surfing threaded themselves through every season of my life. The water was always familiar. Always waiting. Always home.

Alaska complicated that relationship.

Here, water becomes something else entirely. Colder. Wilder. More unforgiving in a way that demands respect.

A crowded surf day means there might be one other silhouette on the horizon, and that silhouette is just as likely to be a whale. Most lakes sit empty even in the heart of summer. And when you tell an Alaskan you spent the morning paddling through the Knik Gorge or tracking a secret surf break near Seward, you get the kind of look reserved for someone who clearly missed a safety briefing.

But that’s the truth of it. I’m a waterman, and if there’s water involved, I’ll find my way onto it. Even if Alaska makes that complicated.

So when I landed on Lake George with Andrew on that first flight, the photography run, I felt that familiar nudge. The quiet one that doesn’t ask. It just suggests.

You should come back.
You should get on the water.

A few days later, I did.

The season was almost over. Inland lakes were already freezing. My windshield had been frosted that morning. The window was thin. But Lake George was still open. And despite Lake Hood getting hammered by wind, it was calm out there in a way that felt temporary.

Departing Lake Hood took work. East flow meant a long taxi with a quartering headwind, which in a floatplane feels less like taxiing and more like negotiating with physics. The airplane wants to weathervane back into the wind, and you fight it with water rudders, prop wash, and a promise to yourself that you won’t embarrass yourself in front of the tourists sitting on the deck at The Lakefront Hotel with cameras.

The 180 holds its own. Those Edo 2870s bite the water enough to keep you honest. And once airborne, it flies like any other Cessna 180, aside from the subtle pendulum motion created by five feet of aluminum hanging beneath you.

Landing the second time felt different immediately. The first flight had been about chasing a photo. This one wasn’t. This one was about the place itself.

I should probably talk about the packraft, because until I owned one, even I didn’t really understand what they were. Think of an inflatable boat, but shrunk down until it fits where a jacket would normally go. Six pounds. About the size of a paper towel roll. I have a Kokopelli Rogue Lite, which is strong enough for lakes, oceans, and Class I rivers. It’s the kind of tool that lets you say yes to things a sane person would probably say no to, which is why it never leaves my aircraft. Wheels, floats, skids. It’s always there.

I inflated the packraft on the beach, slid it into the water, and pushed off.

From the air, glaciers look bold and solid. From the water, they feel active. Nothing is still. Every piece of ice makes noise. Small cracks. Deeper groans. Sharp pops when chunks bump into each other. You hear it constantly.

The cold comes up through the raft slowly, not all at once. A reminder that you’re not meant to be there for very long.

It’s quiet, but not relaxing quiet. It’s the kind of quiet where you’re paying attention to everything. The ice. The wind. The distance to shore. This is the part that never really comes through on video.

From a thousand feet up, the icebergs look massive and stable. From ten feet away, they don’t. You can see how uneven they are. How much sits below the surface. How quickly they’re changing as they melt. You’re constantly thinking about balance. About distance. About what happens if something shifts.

Nothing dramatic happened while I was out there. That’s the goal.

Paddling among the ice makes it obvious why almost nobody ever does this. Not because it’s impossible, but because access alone filters most people out. You need timing. Conditions. Judgment. And you need an airplane just to get close.

This wasn’t something I did because it would make a good video. I’d been thinking about it long before I ever hit record. The camera just came along because it usually does.

I stayed out longer than I probably should have, watching the light change and listening to the glacier calve in the distance. Eventually the wind started creeping back in, and that was my cue. The window was closing, and this wasn’t a place to rush things.

Packing everything back into the airplane felt less like wrapping a shoot and more like closing a personal loop. This was one of those moments that doesn’t translate cleanly to YouTube. You can show pieces of it, but you can’t really explain what it feels like to be that low on the water, surrounded by moving ice, knowing you’ll probably never see it in that exact state again. That’s why it stuck with me.

Now, like I said in the video, I’ve actually paddled this lake before. A few years back I had the paddleboard out on the water, but it was summertime. The water was warmer, the ice was smaller, the risk factor was lower. Here are some photos of that day.

By the time I pointed the nose back toward Anchorage, east flow was still in play. That steady south wind hadn’t gone anywhere. Coming back into Lake Hood on floats with a quartering headwind always takes a little more attention than you’d like at the end of a long day. A long landing helps. Staying on step as long as possible helps too.

When a floatplane is on step, the floats are riding on top of the water instead of pushing through it. Drag drops way down, and the airplane behaves more like a speedboat than an aircraft. You’re not airborne yet, but you’re moving efficiently and carrying momentum.

When you’re on step, the water rudders are up. Directional control comes from airflow over the tail, not from anything in the water. As long as you’ve got speed, the air rudder stays effective. The tradeoff is that it’s a balancing act. In gusty conditions, a sudden puff can grab a wing, and if you’re not paying attention, you’ll get reminded quickly that water doesn’t forgive sloppy inputs. Done right, though, it makes moving around in wind far more manageable.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Lake Hood Seaplane Base is actually two lakes. Lake Hood and Lake Spenard are connected by a canal, and together they form the center of floatplane flying in Anchorage.

Anchorage started as a tent city in 1915, long before highways or major airports existed. For decades, floatplanes weren’t a novelty here. They were the transportation system. Lake Spenard served as the city’s original seaplane base in the 1920s, but as airplanes grew heavier, it became clear more room was needed. In the late 1930s, the canal was dredged to connect Spenard to nearby Lake Hood, creating the foundation for what exists today.

My current spot sits on the north end of Lake Spenard, which works out well on days like this. With east flow, I can make a long landing through the waterlane, touch down in more sheltered water, and keep the taxi from turning into a wrestling match with the wind. After a day that started at a glacial lake and ended back in town, that kind of finish feels right.

On floats, landing is only half the job. Docking is where you actually find out how the day is going to end.

These are the parts that don’t always make it into the video. But they’re just as much a part of the adventure..