MINTO FLATS — Within a vast bowl bordered by blue hills, I rolled along on a trail scratched into ice by snowmachines. That deceptive basin — Minto Flats — is big enough to swallow Denali, if the big mountain happened to stumble in here and fall. Just over a ridge west of Fairbanks, Minto Flats is […]
Millions of people live in dimples on the Earth’s surface — often near the ocean, in lowlands between mountain peaks too rugged and cold. One of these global indentations, Cook Inlet Basin, recently showed another characteristic of the planet’s basins — they quiver like a bowl of jelly during an earthquake. Many people in Anchorage […]
Many years ago, geologists stood on the bank of the Copper River and watched Childs Glacier thunder icebergs straight into the river. Using a little imagination, one researcher remarked how an advance of the glacier could seal off the big river. He envisioned a process that has happened many times in the world and is […]