Photo of the Day 341

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska, 2003

Photograph by Frans Lanting

Seen from above, a network of countless tributaries gleams like molten metal in Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Larger than Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts combined, the park protects more than 13 million acres (5 million hectares) of mountains, tundra, forests, ice fields—and solitude.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Alaska's Giant of Ice and Stone," March 2003, National Geographic magazine)