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Totem Bight State Historical Park in Ketchikan.
30-Second Reads

Alaska’s Unrivaled State Park System

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Big federal parks are a draw for many, but state parks are often local favorites. Alaska has over three million acres of state parks, more than any other state. Its 156 parks stretch from north of Fairbanks to Kodiak to the islands of the southeast panhandle. Some are small, like the 40-acre Halibut Point Recreation Area along Sitka’s road system. Others are sprawling, like the 1.6-million-acre Wood-Tikchik State Park north of Dillingham, which with its clear-water lakes and soaring mountains is the largest state park in the country. Opportunities vary across the state park system. They include full RV hook-ups at the parks along the Alaska Highway between Fairbanks and Tok, or the remote wilderness of the 500,000-acre Chugach State Park outside of Anchorage, where you might see more moose than people. Some parks, like Totem Bight in Ketchikan, are set aside for historical purposes. Others, like the Alaska Chilkat…

An old locomotive boiler sits along the Chilkoot Trail.
30-Second Reads

Chilkoot Trail becomes a National Historic Trail

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Omnibus bill brought the designation The Chilkoot Trail—made famous by the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush that lured over 100,000 miners north to Skagway and the Yukon—is now a National Historic Trail. Congress has given this unique distinction to only 19 other trails, including the Oregon Trail, the Iditarod, and the Pony Express Trail. The 33-mile trail connects Dyea, near Skagway, to Lake Bennett, British Columbia. The U.S. side is within Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, where visitors can take in museum exhibits, ranger-led hikes, or the abandoned boomtown of Dyea. The trail itself is popular among day-hikers and backpackers, who can see numerous artifacts left behind by prospectors. In a statement, Angela Wetz of the National Park Service said the new designation will help the park tell the story of the gold rush and the area’s natural and cultural landscapes. The park also celebrates the Alaska Native history of…

My View North
30-Second Reads

Wilderness for All

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Appreciating Alaska’s parks and other public lands I live in Alaska because I was born and raised here, and it will always feel like home. But I stay in Alaska because it’s the only place on the planet with so much dramatic and varied wilderness. Alaska’s national and state parks alone total nearly 60 million acres. Some of that is right out my back door. Getting away from it all to play on public lands is as easy as hopping in my car and driving 30 minutes to a trailhead. Add a bit longer drive plus an air charter or water taxi, and I could be dropped off in the middle of nowhere to enjoy only my own company for days or weeks on end.  Once out there, though, I wouldn’t really be alone, as so many wild creatures roam the land and water: grizzlies in Denali National Park and…

The Gift of Salmon
Authentic Alaska

The Gift of Salmon

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Alaska’s Other Gold A decade ago in late July, my wife, MC, was picking salmonberries at the edge of the forest on Admiralty Island when she startled a brown bear. I spoke to the bear gently as MC backed away. As we left, we walked past the end of the berry patch, where we had stashed our kayak, to the edge of a meadow where the sea met a stream. Pink salmon leapt continuously into the air. Hundreds, maybe thousands, were schooled up at the mouth of the stream. That evening, we went to retrieve our kayak. Next to its hull lay a bright, silver-colored pink salmon with one large bite taken out of it. Nearly all the salmon we’d watched jumping had begun to mottle with their spawning colors. I knelt over the salmon, pondering why the bear had dropped it there until I sensed the bear was bedded…

Cow caribou from the Porcupine herd migrate to their calving grounds in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife refuge in spring.
Wildlife & Nature

Beyond the Haze

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In Search of the Porcupine Caribou Herd Text by Doris Hausleitner Images by Peter Mather We peer out at the Yukon River from the dusty roads of Dawson City. “The smoke is definitely worse,” Jonathon concludes. “I see less of the other shore today than I did yesterday.” It is the end of June, and wildfire season has come early to the Yukon and Alaska. Aggressive fires burning north of Fairbanks have already changed our original plan—to fly into the Kongakut River in Alaska and hike to the Firth River in the Yukon with the hopes of intercepting the migrating Porcupine caribou herd. Now the fires burning between Dawson City and Old Crow and problems changing our landing permit into Ivvavik National Park are threatening to thwart our plans completely. Our team is a diverse group. I’m a wildlife biologist and instructor at a local college in southeastern British Columbia.…

Ditale Sofia Adventure Pants
Gear

Ditale Sofia Adventure Pants

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Gear Review By Bjorn Dihle When Ditale, an outdoors women’s clothing company, reached out to me about testing their Sofia Adventure Pants, my wife, MC, happened to be looking over my shoulder. I felt weird at the idea of reviewing women’s clothing, so, luckily MC was happy to take the task on herself. She loves Sofia Adventure Pants. They’re clearly high quality, and are warm in cool conditions, breathable, and rain-resistant—all prized qualities in southeast Alaska’s cool, rainy, temperate rainforest. She’s worn them hiking, sledding, foraging, fishing, and kid-wrangling (which is a part of most her activities) and is planning to wear them hunting when Sitka blacktail season kicks off. They have several big pockets, including the typical hand-sized front pockets and big, snap-closed pockets at about mid-thigh that are handy for things you might want easy access to and have proven handy multiple times. She was initially afraid they…

Glaciers are alive by Debbie Miller
30-Second Reads

Author Releases 15th Children’s Book

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Glaciers are Alive connects young audiences to wonders In her latest book, released in May 2023, Alaskan author Debbie Miller introduces young readers to the fascinating world of glaciers. Aimed at readers between four and eight years old, it is her 12th collaboration with long-time Alaskan illustrator Jon Van Zyle. Glaciers Are Alive is a journey down an Alaskan glacier, from its source high in the mountains to its terminus in the ocean. Along the way, readers meet the goats, bears, birds, and even the ice worms who thrive in glacial landscapes. Where the ice meets the ocean, Miller highlights the rich habitat it creates for seals and other marine life. And she describes how glacial ice keeps Earth cool. “Glaciers build habitat as much as they carve their way through it,” says Miller, who found inspiration for the story while writing her 2018 nonfiction book, A Wild Promise, about…

The Hog Butte Fire burns in interior Alaska last summer.
30-Second Reads

Elements Fire Season

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July brings the height of Alaska’s busy wildfire season. At this time, lightning, dry vegetation, long hours of warm daylight, and human activities all conspire to light new fires and keep old ones going. Wildfire is a natural part of most Alaskan ecosystems. As elsewhere, it contributes to forest health, nutrient cycling, and wildlife habitat. It occurs most frequently in the state’s interior and least in the south-coastal rainforests. But climate change is altering fire’s dynamics. First, Alaska’s snow season is arriving later and ending earlier, leaving more time for fire to burn. Summertime temperatures are also rising, leading to more dryness, heat, and expansion of fire northward. Lightning is also increasing. And warming nighttime temperatures help fires retain more energy overnight. Many Alaskan fires are allowed to burn in remote areas to maintain natural processes, but wildfires threatening communities are suppressed. Fighting fire is an important career in Alaska,…

Van Ballenberghe poses with the antlered skull of a huge bull moose, one of many he followed over years of research.
Authentic Alaska

In the Company of Moose

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Remembering Alaska’s “Moose Man” I got the hard news in a group email last September—biologist Vic Van Ballenberghe was gone. I could practically feel the collective sigh as the news radiated outward across Alaska, the Lower 48, and worldwide to scientists, conservationists, writers, filmmakers, and others who had known him, or his work. His passing hadn’t come as a surprise; at age 78, he’d been struggling with Parkinson’s for years. But letting go of Vic and imagining Alaska without him would take a while. Though they should, most Alaskans probably wouldn’t recognize his name. A short version of Vic’s bona fides goes like this: he was regarded as a (some would argue the) premier moose biologist, especially noted for his keen observational skills and uncounted thousands of hours of boots-on-the-ground field research stretching over a 50-year career. He published scores of peer-reviewed scientific papers, editorials, and articles, plus a fine,…

Sagebrush Dry Hands-Free Berry Basket
30-Second Reads

Sagebrush Dry Hands-Free Berry Basket

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Gear Review by Bjorn Dihle All serious berry pickers have their preferred techniques. Some are aggressive; some are Zen-like. I’ve tried different methods and even dabbled with a Jonas Swedish Berry Picker. Presently, I use a method I’ve learned from ravenous yet meditative bears that involves stripping bushes of their berries. Instead of using my jaws, though, I use my paws. My wife takes berry picking seriously but does not like to pretend to be a bear, at least when she’s in the woods. (Home life is a different story.) Numerous times she’s mentioned wishing she had a berry picking bucket that would allow her the use of both hands. So, last year I gifted her a Sagebrush Dry Hands-Free Berry Basket for her birthday. I was already a fan of Sagebrush Dry, as they’re a small-town southeast Alaska company and make great waterproof backpacks and other gear. My wife…

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