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 […]
POKER FLAT RESEARCH RANGE — Under a bluebird sky and perched above a resilient winter snowpack, two sounding rockets point upward, ready to blast through the thickness of our atmosphere to gain a better look at the sun. Inside a building on this sprawling complex within the Chatanika River valley north of Fairbanks are two […]
Interior Alaska is a hungry place — lots of boreal forest and swampy wetlands with big, flat rivers winding through. Wildlife sightings, especially of big mammals, are rare. But a recent video posted by a seismologist makes the Tanana River flats look like the Serengeti. A motion-triggered game camera installed above buried instruments shows visits […]