Featured Stories
The Passage – A Father’s Day Special Video
"The Passage" A Story of Fathers and Sons Traveling Alaska's Inside Passage About "The Passage" In 1974, Nathan Dappen's 20-year-old parents and uncle, Andy, built their own canoes, launched them into the Pacific, and became some the first people in modern history to...
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Without a Trace – An Alaska Tragedy
On the east side of Anchorage in the Wonderpark area of town sits a decaying gas station. Time and elements have chiseled away at paint and trim. Vandals have destroyed the showroom windows plus a good portion of the interior. Someone lit a tire on fire in one of the garage stalls blackening the walls. In a few more years I have the nagging suspicion Yeager’s Service Station will be gone without a trace.
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Hatcher Pass Explorations
The desire to see Mint Hut for ourselves grew during our busy summer, and finally, on the second to last day of August last year, the weather and our schedules came together. Again, we set off early. The temperature at the parking lot near where Mother Lode Lodge used to be, was about 22 degrees. All the foliage was in full fall colors and covered with frost, the sky was clear and we were determined.
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A Quick Bite of Alaska
The fishing was great! We averaged one to two fish per drift, including two fish over 25 inches. The time flew by, and after countless fish, it was finally time to head back to camp. At day’s end, I thought about an old Will Rogers quote: “If all politicians fished instead of speaking publicly, we’d be at peace in the world.” Mr. Rogers hit the nail on the head with that one.
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The Master Pilot
Troy yelled for me to open the door and jump. Everything was blinding white outside. It was like leaping into a freezer. Wind instantly froze tears in my eyes. Smoke or steam rose from the propeller area and I thought the plane was on fire. Snow quickly came up to my waist and the real possibility of sinking further petrified me. All was quiet except for the wind and popping of our aircraft strobe.
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The Trading Post
The Trading Post, as it was known from 1935 to the beginning of WWII, bustled with activity when the commissary/grocery store opened in 1936. In that first year only, instead of U.S. dollars the government issued scrip, called bingles, monthly to the new colonists. The amount distributed was based on the size of their family.
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WWII Brings the Military to Anchorage
“…after the outbreak of the war, a blackout went into effect. Cars drove with parking lights only, and on the base all windows were painted black with only a small slit in the center for daylight. In the face of a shortage of black paint, residents improvised and dissolved phonograph records in acetone and used the result as a paint substitute.”
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A Nod to the Queen of Sourdough
Her accomplishments are impressive, but there remains within the pages of “Alaskan Sourdough” a simple, lovely, crackling humor—sunshine and sweetness sprinkled in among the hardness that was her pioneering life.
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Alex Papasavas & Turkey Red
Palmer restaurant owner’s commitment to quality and community Sometimes you visit a certain place and it just feels right. Maybe it is the atmosphere, maybe the service, maybe the food. Whatever it is, it is just right. Such is the description that comes to mind when...
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Smallest Aurora Chaser
“This girl has a passion for the northern lights” It was thirty below zero and the lights were out. Zaira was putting on her gear to get ready for the chase. Aurora blasted the sky with multiple colors and Zaira couldn’t resist anymore. She ran outside, right into the...
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Swedish Black Currants
The daughters of Heinie and Alice Snider may not have agreed on much, but they were all thrilled when my husband and I bought their parents’ dream home, built in the mid-1950s on a portion of the homestead land they grew up on.
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“Goodbye, Little Cabin”
All good things must come to an end After living in Alaska as a young man in the military, my dream was to return someday. That dream became a reality when I moved my family to Alaska in September 1971, to accept a job about 20 miles east of Fairbanks at Eielson Air...
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Taking A Drive
She kind of shrieked and started doing sloppy, slow-motion, suction-dance maneuvers.
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The Alaskan – Unfriendly
We know the wildness of our home. A simple grocery run turns into a life and death situation at -40 if your vehicle breaks down.
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The Jewel of the Pacific
Watching the graceful and athletic performances of these 20-plus ton beautiful creatures served to remind and motivate us all of the need for conservation, education, and research to help protect the precious marine environment.
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Driftwood Bay
“Doesn’t it just make you hate them,” said Madelyn, “Ninety percent of what we are finding is plastic water bottles. Can’t we recycle these?”
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Our Survival Story – Part I
Standed, alone, and fighting for survival on Monahan Flats My Name is Vivian (Cotter) Mayo, and with my husband, Scott, I reside in Cantwell, Alaska, where we’ve lived, loved, and nearly frozen to death—this is our survival story. First, I should lay some groundwork...
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Appalachia, North Korea and Alaska
North Korea was in the middle of their coldest winter in 45 years. Temperatures dipped as the UN forces led by the United States pursued the North Koreans up to the Chosin Reservoir…
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Brigadier Clitheroe – Shaping the Lives of Others
We sometimes don’t realize the impact until youth has long since passed us by. So it was for me with Brigadier Clitheroe.
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Booty Road – The First to Walk the Iditarod Trail
The sun got hotter as I walked, and sweat rolled down my back soaking my shirt... No. I must be hallucinating again. Actually it’s about 40 below zero and I’m trudging down the Yukon River with a twenty-mile-an-hour wind blowing in my face. Such was my first walk from...
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Arctic to Indian – Skiing in the Chugach Mountains
The mountains overlooking the city of Anchorage are known as the Chugach Front Range. They stand somewhat apart from the rest of the Chugach Mountains, separated by a notable valley in which runs the mostly clear waters of Ship Creek. This creek, with its final...
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Our Survival Story – Part III
Alone with the Wolves Scott and Vivian Mayo are as careful and experienced as anyone who recreates in Monahan Flats. They were enjoying a winter getaway in December 2013, when the unimaginable happened. This is the third and final segment of their survival story. I...
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Connecting Scammon Bay
We circled the village of Scammon Bay, which sprawled across a hillside near the Bering Sea coast. The airstrip looked good for landing the Cessna, but I could see people standing nearby. I wondered why they were waiting there. It was July 1972. I led RCA Alascom’s...
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Cabin Fever
When I was young my family lived for several years in a little cabin near Big Lake, and at the same time my father built another cabin out in the woods, up north and out of town, where we would go in the summers when school got out. We traded one log stove for a...
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My Favorite Teacher Mrs. Clara Slumberger
Of the many people who impact our lives, perhaps the greatest are school teachers. Our favorite teachers influence us far out of proportion to the small amount of time they spend with us. I first encountered Clara Slumberger in the 1955-56 school year, when I was in...
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Cold Case McCarthy
Graphic words paint an ugly picture through microfilmed newspaper accounts on the demise of Rose Levine-Silberg. The established town ‘prostitute’ was found bludgeoned to death in her combination McCarthy cabin / business called ‘Chili Con Carne Parlor.’
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Of Moose and Men
Perhaps this was my moment … the one where a boy has the grand chance to prove himself a man.
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Spoon Carving with Birch
It is thrilling to make something functional and utilitarian with your own hands in the old style.
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Mendenhall Ice Caves
Often when I am at the Mendenhall Glacier, I hear tourists asking, “How do I get to the ice caves?” I normally tell them if you have to ask, you shouldn’t go.
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Whiteout
I wondered if I was going to be the third teacher from Metlakatla to drown this year. Or worse yet, was the town going to lose its entire basketball team?
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