Articles & Essays
Articles & Essays
This July, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins spent four days and 450 miles (725km) wending his way down the Yukon River in a 24ft Alweld skiff, a flat-bottomed aluminum boat built for shallow Alaska rivers.
This July, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins spent four days and 450 miles (725km) wending his way down the Yukon River in a 24ft Alweld skiff, a flat-bottomed aluminum boat built for shallow Alaska rivers.
After a historic land buyback by the US Forest Service, Tlingit crew members are demolishing culverts to restore streams, salmon runs and cultural history deep in the Tongass national forest. Photograph: blickwinkel/Alamy
The world-renowned alpinist and extreme sports athlete died on October 7, 2024, while attempting to climb Jannu East (7460m) in Nepal with Sam Hennessey. Before his fall we had been working together on a profile. The piece has since become a tribute. Photo: Drew Smith
As housing prices increase in the picturesque town of Sitka, those already living on the edge are pushed off further into the wilderness.
Alaska has seen more than 500 forest fires since the beginning of April, which have forced the evacuation of mining camps, villages and remote cabins.
As the only Republican senator fighting for her seat less than two years after voting to convict Donald Trump, Lisa Murkowski could be one of the crowning casualties in his war to rid the party of dissenters.
Fifty years after it inspired Hunter S. Thompson’s classic novel, the Mint 400 remains the great American desert race. GQ’s intrepid correspondent set out to conquer the course in a vintage Volkswagen Beetle—and search for nirvana on the far side of bone-crushing misery.
For a moment the sun emerges, and the twin shadows of Kevin Mulligan’s aircraft floats take shape on the glacier below. “Oh man,” he groans into the headphones of his Cessna 206, looking down at Baranof Island. “I gotta cross over before I die.”
An American family living in Siberia for a year goes on an adventure, dismissing concerns about bubonic plague and missing “Game of Thrones”.
President Trump’s decision to direct his agriculture secretary to explore opening America’s largest national forest to logging comes as no surprise, considering that Friedrich Trump, the president’s grandfather, made his original fortune amid the Alaska gold rush.
It’s winter king salmon season now in Sitka, trollers prowling the fishing boundary as chinook fatten up on needlefish, herring and krill, in preparation for their spring journeys home to their native streams.
The Trump administration has announced it is considering a proposal to conduct seismic testing for oil and gas in the Arctic national wildlife refuge, the largest such preserve in the US.
Alaska salmon fisherfolk have been giving up a disproportionate portion of their harvest — over 50 percent, at least — to rebuild damaged stocks elsewhere.
The other day in the grocery store, while my daughter Haley eyed the gumball machine by the doors, a headline in the Daily Sitka Sentinel caught my eye: "Search for Missing Boater Suspended," or something like that.
Tongass is the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, with trees more than 1,000 years old. But a pro-logging effort could uproot them.
Corporate gold diggers pan for profit where millions of salmon spawn.
A few weeks ago, I began receiving satellite text messages from Eric Jordan aboard the troller IGotta, with detailed reports on daily chum poundages. Could I break free from obligations in Sitka and fly down to deckhand for a bit, catch some fish?
It is almost winter again here. The days shorten and the furrows of the volcano that looms over our town steadily fill with snow.
A glacier expedition across Baranof Island leads to a sad discovery.
As a cuke deckhand, your job first and foremost consists of making sure your diver survives.
Flakes falling like wet socks from the skies, coating alder branches and truck hoods and boat anchors. Dumps followed by the cold right hook of a sunny day, clack of snow shovel scraping gravel.
One of the benefits of living in Alaska is that the rest of the country tends to forget about you. The frozen north, may they remain happy while gnawing on whale.
There is no clear line between the mood in town and the mood on the fishing grounds here. Here in the Earth's largest temperate rainforest, in the sun-shadow along the outside coast of Baranof Island, seasons are determined by salmon runs and the kind of fishing boats at work.
Just Another Day Dodging Storms and Raising Babies on a Wild Alaska Tugboat
There was no way of knowing that the dark-haired woman I met eyes with in my Cuban salsa class in Sitka, Alaska was from Mount Laurel.
The winter troll line in Sitka extends from Point Woodhouse on Biorka Island to Cape Edgecumbe, just off the volcano. The season continues from Oct. 11 to April 30 -- or until the quota is filled, whichever comes first.
Southeast Alaskans are on the front line of the fight to protect the Tongass National Forest from logging.
From fall through spring, the fleet of commercial fishing boats here in the panhandle of Alaska stalk winter king salmon. In the mornings prisms of ice sparkle beneath the sodium lights of the docks, where I live on a World War II tugboat with my wife and 8-month-old daughter.
When Brighton Coggins landed in Sitka on June 28, his name was Elizabeth. Coggins was flying from Bethel to Baranof Island to attend the intensive two-week Sitka Fine Arts Camp. This was his first year, and he wasn't sure what to expect.