Chugiak Mountains and Tebay Lake
Tebay Camp original acrylic painting by Gail Niebrugge. Sold.
The Chugiak mountain range extends across the Bagley Ice fields to Yakutat in the coastal region of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Access to this huge, beautiful, and extremely remote area is by air. I like to stay several days during summer at Tebay Lake, high in the Curgiak mountains, to enjoy excellent fishing and opportunities for research with sketch book and photography. One year we discovered this completely thrashed, abandoned cabin and decided to stay there, but first we had to make it habitable. Clearing the inside of trash and broken fixtures we built a jerry-rigged wood stove out of empty AvGas cans using a rusty stove pipe scrounged from the dump pile. With our home-made stove it was cozy and warm inside at night. This peaceful location is at its best when spending time around a campfire, a scene that I recreated in the painting Tebay Camp.
More tomorrow,
Gail Niebrugge, Artist of Alaska
