If you or your loved-ones take an Alaskan adventure this summer – big or small – consider bringing along these phone numbers.
Above: The Dakhká Khwaán Dancers. Photo courtesy Simon Ager The Dakhká Khwáan Dancers from Whitehorse, Yukon, are the lead dance group at this month’s Celebration in Juneau, the region’s largest Alaska Native gathering. It’s the first time in the event’s 42-year history that the lead dancers hail from outside of southeast Alaska. “We are the first Interior Tlingit group to be given the honor,” says Marilyn Jensen-Yadułtin, the founder and leader of the group since 2007. “We are very humbled, honored, and excited.” As lead dancers, they will sing and drum as dozens of groups file onstage during Celebration’s opening and closing events. Jensen-Yadułtin says it takes “tremendous endurance,” as each performance requires three hours of non-stop singing and dancing. The group has practiced for months and will debut new regalia, songs, and masks. First formed in Carcross, Yukon, the Dakhká Khwáan Dancers have grown from six to 30 members…
Not everyone likes eulachon, so loaded with oils they are nicknamed candlefish, but this Alaskan family does, and they load up every spring.
Fisheries experts are concerned about invasive European green crabs spreading in Alaska, especially during this year’s El Nino climate pattern. Research shows the crabs can expand their range during El Nino years, which often bring warmer Pacific Northwest ocean temperatures.
From May 10-12, Valdez welcomes pilots and their planes to celebrate aviation culture. The annual event features ven- dors, seminars, an air show, and a short-distance take-off/ landing competition. This comes on the tail of the May 4-5 Great Alaska Aviation Gathering in Palmer, the state’s largest aviation meet-up. valdezflyin.com.
A skier pulls a backflip into a pond at the Alyeska Slush Cup. Courtesy Ralph Kristopher, Alyeska Resort SALMON CULTURE EXHIBITION Celebrates connections between salmon and Alaska Native peoples and honors salmon as a resource that has nourished communities physically and spiritually for thousands of years. At the Anchorage Museum through September 2024. Visit: anchoragemuseum.org/exhibits/salmon-culture. ALASKA HUMMINGBIRD FESTIVAL Annual event begins April 5 with a juried art show and reception at the Southeast Discovery Center in Ketchikan. Exhibits, bird walks, talks, and more continue through April 27 to welcome the annual return of rufous hummingbirds. Contact Tongass National Forest: 907-228-6220. ALYESKA SPRING CARNIVAL April 19-21 at the Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood. Food trucks, live music, a costume contest, a tug-of-war into a frigid pond, and the always popular slush cup ski competition, where costumed skiers launch over a jump and attempt to ski across a pond. Visit: alyeskaresort.com. NATIVE…
It’s not easy getting a Broadway show to Alaska. In the case of Hamilton, which ran in Anchorage last August, it took over two years of planning and a 757 commercial aircraft. Smaller shows require a mix of trucks and barges, with delivery times that must somehow squeeze into a production’s national touring schedule.
Triston Chaney, 2018 academy graduate and fly fishing guide at Bear Track Lodge in Bristol Bay, teaches fly fishing to a new batch of academy participants in 2023. The Bristol Bay Guide Academy, which was recently featured in the short film School of Fish produced by Trout Unlimited, Orvis, and others, connects local youth to jobs in guided sport fishing. For Alaska Native youth especially, the work entwines traditional connections with salmon and today’s lucrative tourism industry. “The idea for the academy came from Luki Akelkok, traditional chief of Ekwok, and Tim Troll of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust,” says Nelli Williams, Alaska director of Trout Unlimited, which helps sponsor the academy. Williams explains that many Bristol Bay residents work in commercial fishing but that the guides at local fishing lodges are often hired from outside the area. One barrier to hiring residents has been a lack of experience…
DIGENEGH (MCGRATH) “Over on the Kuskokwim River” in Deg Xinag, the Athabascan language of Shageluk, Anvik, and the Athabascans at Holy Cross. Of about 275 Deg Hit’an people, approximately 40 speak the language. McGrath is featured in Luc Mehl’s story in this month’s Community section. (source: Deg Xinag Learners’ Dictionary) SUYITNA (SUSITNA RIVER) Dena’ina for “sandy river,” referring to the river’s silt and many sandbars. The river begins at the Susitna Glacier in the Alaska Range and runs 313 miles to the ocean near Anchorage. It drains nearly 20,000 square miles, mostly within the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, home to this year’s Arctic Winter Games. Learn more about the games in this month’s Profile section by Tim Lydon. (source: Shem Pete’s Alaska) Above: Sandbars in the Susitna River as seen from the Denali Highway. Courtesy Bo Mertz
ALASKA GETS ITS FIRST “ALL-AMERICAN” TELEGRAPH CONNECTION On March 2, 1903, Congress funded undersea telegraph cables between Seattle, Sitka, and Juneau, which would connect Alaska’s military posts to their Washington, D.C., headquarters. Previously, Alaskan telegraphs reached the Lower 48 via Canadian wires. To tackle the job, the U.S. Army used a Spanish ship seized off the coast of Cuba in 1898, during the Spanish-American War. Named the Rita by the Spanish, the army redubbed it the Burnside, after Civil War major general Ambrose Burnside. The nearly 300-foot iron steamer could carry 300 miles of cable. The Burnside finished laying the first 291 miles of cable between Sitka and Juneau in October 1903. By the following August, it had strung over 1,000 miles of line from Sitka to Seattle. Under further appropriations, the Burnside extended the cables from Sitka to Valdez in 1904 and on to Seward in 1905. Twenty years…