Looking Back
Selecting “keepers” is a quick process. Identifying the few images with potential usually occurs within days of taking them.
But when I have time, I like to browse through old images looking for new discoveries. Sometimes I find an overlooked keeper.
I recently looked back at my 2019 Yukon trip. You may recall that photographing the Aurora Borealis was my main reason for going to Tombstone Territorial Park, a protected wilderness area in Canada’s Yukon Territory.
The Tombstone Range is a small, remote, spiky mountain range that makes for dramatic backgrounds. And the treeless, windswept arctic tundra usually has clear skies.
Clear skies were paramount. After 29 consecutive cloudy nights (5 in Alaska and 22 in Iceland), I desperately wanted to see and photograph the Aurora Borealis.
Remote
Tombstone Territorial Park is located on mile 45 of the Dempster Highway, a rugged and neglected gravel road. It took less than an hour to realize the wisdom of purchasing windshield insurance for the rental car.
The traditional way into the park is hiking the one-way, seven mile long Grizzly Lake Trail. While seven miles sounds doable, the trail is more climbing than hiking. The elevation gain is nearly one mile. It’s like climbing the Willis Tower four times in four miles while carrying a 50-pound backpack.
Our photo group opted to be helicoptered into the park close to our first primitive campsite. 
Looking clean and happy going IN before a week without a shower.
For the rest of the trip, we hiked about 13 miles with several thousand feet of elevation gain before returning to the extraction site. Our 50-pound backpacks seemed to get heavier with every step.
You couldn’t have asked for a more immersive wilderness experience. The campsites were truly primitive.
The #$%&@ 85-liter, 50-pound backpack that only seemed to get heavier with time!
The Shot
My initial image review in 2019 identified mainly Aurora Borealis and grand landscape shots. It was the quiet beauty of the Tombstones reflecting in a pool that caught my attention this time around.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus