DCL

3. Tell us about your impressions of the Porcupine Creek setting and the Alaska Panhandle in general? Did the physical features match what you imagined before you arrived?

SAM BROWN: Southeast Alaska is difficult to describe if you haven't been there. It is definitely the most beautiful place I have ever worked. The first time I visited it was all under several feet of snow and there was a bald eagle in every tree. In the summer, it was a whole different world. There aren't many places where you can swim in the ocean, climb a snowy mountain, watch the Northern Lights and catch a king salmon, all in the same day. Another amazing fact is that there are so many mountains in this part of the world that they haven't gotten around to naming them all.

SIMON EVERSON: It was far more magnificent and beautiful than I could have imagined and the local people were great. Seeing a moonlit mountain range reflected in the still surface of velvety black ocean is quite a sight but it's like that everywhere. Flying over a snow capped mountain range on a helicopter filming shoot and sweeping down into Porcupine Creek only inches above the tips of golden yellow autumn trees. Seeing the incredible deep blue ice of glaciers that you know the frozen water is literally thousands of years old. Quite a change from the rainy streets of London. A completely different sense of time in Alaska.

SAM MAYNARD: One day in early May I was driving up the dirt track that travels along the Klehini River to Porcupine Creek. The sun was beginning to set behind the blue snow covered mountains and there was orange light bouncing off the river with a mother Grizzly and two cubs walking across the water. At this moment, I thought, 'this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen'. It was a great privilege.

JAMIE BERRY: Every time we turned the final corner into Porcupine Creek it felt like choral music should be playing. It was beautiful, especially to see the Chilkat Mountains towering over the woodlands of Porcupine Creek. Mosquito Lake must be in the top five most stunning places I've ever been. Surrounded by snow-capped mountains, the lake is home to Dolly Varden and Cutthroat Trout. I think I sat in a boat with a rod for about five hours in total. I never caught anything. I did eat the ones caught by the better fishermen in our group. Delicious!

MATT TESTA: I was continually struck by how intact the ecosystem is in Southeast Alaska and by how interconnected everything is there - the land, the people, the wildlife, the weather. It really gives you a glimpse into how things must have been in the lower 48 before most of the wilderness was removed. Alaska is thick with wild creatures. They don't just have bears in Southeast Alaska - they have LOTS of bears! You see scat, tracks and both black and grizzly bears on a pretty regular basis which is just plain awesome. The cabin we lived in on the Klehini River is in an area known as The Valley of the Eagles for its large bald eagle population. Eagles would often congregate outside my bedroom window in the morning and wake me up with their chattering! As alarm clocks go, it's hard to beat.

I'll never forget being on top of one of the summits not far from Porcupine Creek and getting a real bird's eye view of where we were. It was a rare day off and a few of us hiked up a stunning trail to the top of a mountain called Peak 3920 (named very pragmatically after its elevation). It was a clear day and we had these amazing 360-degree views down the Lynn Canal towards Juneau to the south, up to the Yukon to the north, with rivers, fjords, glaciers and innumerable mountain peaks in all directions. I just remember thinking 'this is the most beautiful place I have ever been.' I was stunned by the enormity of the landscape. I lived for a few years in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the Teton Range. That is a big, wild place and famously scenic. But it seemed that Southeast Alaska was made up of hundreds of Teton Ranges. You just can't get over the scale of the wilderness there.