Falling Fins

The most remote and inaccessible zones of Chugach State Park can be rugged almost beyond belief, especially where faces have collapsed and eroded over geologic time. One spring day, while flying along a snowbound mountain at about 7000 feet, I found this series of crags and pinnacles leaning precariously over a chasm. A winter of blowing snow had crowned them with elegantly sculpted cornices that reminded me of fins. It took many passes of patiently maneuvering the helicopter on the leeward side of the mountain to set up and hold position for this image.