The first days were the hardest days, Noelle Helder said. Imagine being as seasick as you will ever be while surfing waves that look like mountains. You can’t sleep during nights that make you wonder when your boat will crumple like an aluminum can. The nearest help is on a continent you can’t see, and […]
Denali, North America’s highest peak at 20,310 feet above sea level, always seemed abnormally high to Peter Haeussler. He is a geologist who has studied the mountain for years and has also climbed it a couple of times. Denali soars at least 9,000 feet above surrounding peaks in the Alaska Range, except for neighbor Mount […]
While following a snowmachine trail recently, my dog and I came to a low spot that looked like a swimming pool filled with ice water. The air temperature was about 5 degrees F. Rather than plunge in, my dog and I followed the faint bike-and-boot tracks of friends who had snuck across an ice bridge […]
After a few hours of skiing through deep snow, Forest Wagner and I smelled a tuna sandwich. We knew we were closing in on warm pools of water. From the frozen Kanuti River, we moved along an open stream up toward Kanuti Hot Springs, one of more than 100 hot springs in Alaska. Hot springs […]