The native Aleuts called it Alyeska - the Great Land, and Alaska is amazing even today. Most of Alaska is unspoiled by humans and contains widely differing landscapes, from the frigid barren landscape at Barrow in the north, to the lush temperate rain forests in parts of Glacier Bay in the south. The Alaskan landscape is continually under change. Its more than 100,000 glaciers are constantly moving, carving valleys. And its earthquakes, such as the 1964 earthquake measuring roughly 9.0 on the Richter scale, can cause large areas of land to emerge from under the sea.
Most visitors prefer to visit Alaska in the summer.
During these months, daylight lasts almost 24 hours each day, although photographers should note they will not have direct sunlight all this time. Some hours offer lighting similar to dusk. During winter, northern Alaska can experience no daylight for months at a stretch, and the temperatures can fall well below 0 F, which are reasons enough to deter most visitors. However, in northern Alaska, tourists can usually see the northern lights, or aurora borealis, only during the cold, dark winter. Barrow is surrounded by frozen, barren tundra and the frozen Chukchi Sea near the Arctic Ocean.