Only in Alaska!

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Alaska News
Earthquake rattles Southcentral Alaska Tuesday evening

Tegan Hanlon,Yereth Rosen | Alaska Dispatch News | July 28, 2015


A map showing the epicenter of Tuesday evening's
earthquake, as recorded by the Alaska Earthquake
Information Center.
Alaska Earthquake Center / UAF


A 6.3-magnitude earthquake that hit south of Mount Iliamna around 6:35 p.m. Tuesday rattled Alaska from Kodiak to Fairbanks, according to the Alaska Earthquake Center.

The quake struck roughly 70 miles below the Earth’s surface across Cook Inlet from Homer, said Michael West, a seismologist at the Alaska Earthquake Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The epicenter was about 144 miles southwest of Anchorage.

“It’s deep -- that’s important,” he said. “That means the shaking was not as strong, but spread widely.”

Linda Hull of Clam Gulch, about 65 miles away from the earthquake’s epicenter, said she heard a very low rumble before a slow rolling motion started. That lasted for several seconds before she felt a jolt.

“Pictures didn’t fall off the walls, but they are all crooked,” she said after the quake. Glass figurines fell off her shelves, but didn’t break. “Light fixtures were still swaying for about three minutes after the shock hit,” she said.

West said the Alaska Earthquake Center has recorded hundreds of earthquakes in lower Cook Inlet so far this year, but Tuesday’s was the largest.

“This earthquake is in no way a surprise,” he said. “It’s absolutely the kind of earthquake that we expect in this area.”

The Alaska Earthquake Center did not receive any reports of damage, he said. Tuesday’s earthquake was just slightly larger than the 6.2-magnitude quake that hit in September 2014 about 60 miles southwest of Talkeetna.

Janice Krukoff of Anchorage said she was sitting in a recliner Tuesday evening waiting for her dinner to warm up when she heard a “real low sound.” She had heard it before and knew it meant shaking would follow.

The tall fan in front of her began to wobble. Time seemed to slow down.

She said she has felt many earthquakes before. The center of the one Tuesday was roughly 144 miles southwest of Anchorage.

“They say you get used to it, but you don’t,” she said. “You don’t take nature for granted.”

The National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer reported Tuesday that the earthquake was not expected to cause a tsunami.

Kenai Police Sgt. Jay Sjogren said there had been no emergency calls about the earthquake in that city.

Sjogren said he was at the counter of a gas station when the earthquake struck. “It was a good jolt and the sign started swaying,” he said. The street light was swaying as well, he said. “It was just a little bit of excitement for everybody."

But Craig Augustynovich, manager of the Rainbow King Lodge in Iliamna, said he was surprised to learn that there was an earthquake. “I didn’t feel it,” he said.

West said the Alaska Earthquake Center struggles with putting a duration on just how long earthquakes shake the state.

“Because in reality, this earthquake was over and done with in a couple of seconds as far as the actual fault rupturing,” he said. “What you felt were the actual vibrations bouncing around and around and around and around kind of like if you yell in a gymnasium and you hear the sound of the echo.”

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Ship Creek, the tent city, early summer 1915.
FIC photographs, Anchorage Museum, B1979.001.85

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Columbus Day renamed Indigenous Peoples Day in Alaska



Tehya Yate, 3, looks out towards the audience during a Tlingit "Honor Song" where attendees were invited to cross the stage while
singing and dancing during the closing ceremony of the First Alaskans Institute Elders and Youth Conference at the Dena'ina Center in
Anchorage on on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015. Bill Roth / ADN

Tegan Hanlon, Chris Klint | Alaska Dispatch News
October 12, 2015

Alaska’s governor and the Anchorage mayor have both named the second Monday in October as “Indigenous Peoples Day,” joining the movement of cities across the country to reframe the federal Columbus Day holiday.

Mayor Ethan Berkowitz signed the Municipality of Anchorage’s proclamation Monday morning during the opening remarks of the First Alaskans Institute Elders and Youth Conference, which brings hundreds of Alaska Natives from across the state to downtown Anchorage in the days leading up to the Alaska Federation of Natives convention.

"The more we can do to strengthen the ties between the communities that make up Anchorage and make up Alaska, the better," Berkowitz said in an interview after he made the surprise announcement around 9 a.m.

About an hour later, Liz Medicine Crow, president and CEO of First Alaskans Institute, stepped onto the stage at the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center to announce Gov. Bill Walker had also signed a proclamation naming October’s second Monday as Indigenous Peoples Day.

"This distinction is really massive because now we're leading the nation, here in Alaska," she said.

Medicine Crow’s announcement was met with loud applause from the hundreds in the crowd at the conference. Adults, teenagers and children huddled near the stage to get their photographs taken with copies of the two proclamations. Students posed with the papers, including a group from Hoonah City School District in Southeast Alaska. Raymond Osborne, 17, said that the announcements left him speechless.

Medicine Crow said in an interview that for her, the proclamations are “a recognition that indigenous peoples matter to both the state of Alaska and the Municipality of Anchorage and it gives us a platform to continue to work on equitable law, policy and relationships.”

Willie Hensley, a former state legislator and longtime Alaska Native leader, said the proclamations represented a "little bit of a balancing of the scales" in Alaska.

"It's about damn time," he said with a laugh. For him, it meant all people in the state can move forward together. "There's been a lot of repression. It's time that people are able to feel a lifting of that repression,” he said.

By Monday afternoon, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board had also passed a resolution at a special meeting Monday naming Indigenous Peoples Day.

For students, school remained in session Monday because the state of Alaska does not officially recognize Columbus Day.

However, Columbus Day has remained a federal holiday for more than a century, traditionally commemorating the 1492 arrival in the Bahamas of Christopher Columbus’ voyage from Spain.

The celebration as the “discovery” of the New World has provoked increasing backlash from indigenous and nonindigenous groups that view it as glorifying centuries of racism and oppression.

Before Berkowitz signed the proclamation Monday morning, Eklutna Chief Lee Stephan spoke at the conference about growing up in Eklutna, a Native village within the municipality. He said he tried to “figure out what the heck was wrong with us.” What led to the drinking, suicide, abuse and drugs, he asked. Then, he provided an answer.

“I want you all to write this down and look it up in the white man’s dictionary, all of you get a pen in your hand,” Stephan said. “To know what’s going on in our lands -- the word, ‘colonialism.’”

Stephan said the announcement from Berkowitz Monday was unexpected, but welcome.

Former U.S. Senator Mark Begich also spoke at the conference. In an interview, he praised the naming of “Indigenous Peoples Day” and said he hopes it will provoke Alaskans to take time to think and reflect about indigenous people and their cultures.

The flurry of proclamations Monday put the state in line with a number of other U.S. cities that have named the second Monday in October Indigenous Peoples Day, including Albuquerque; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Olympia, Washington, according to The Associated Press.

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Sidney Huntington, Athabascan elder and author, dies at 100

Megan Edge | December 8, 2015



Elder Sidney Huntington, 96, reads the Iditarod Trail Race statistics at the Galena checkpoint on March 10, 2012.
Loren Holmes photo


Alaska Native leader Sidney Huntington died Tuesday at age 100, his son Gilbert Huntington said. Besides the confirmation of his father’s death, Gilbert Huntington said he was at a loss for words. But for much of Sidney Huntington’s life, he was in fact giving people something to talk about.

Huntington was known around the state for his years of service on the Board of Game covering hot-button issues like wolf management, as well as for his autobiography and an anti-suicide play that’s based on his life.

Huntington was born in 1915 to white and Athabascan parents. His mother died when he was young. After her death, he spent some time at the Anvik Mission School. At 12 years old, he worked on his father’s trapline. Four years later, he trapped, hunted and fished on his own, historian Bill Hunt wrote in 1993.

Much of Huntington’s life was documented in the book “Shadows on the Koyukuk," written with Jim Rearden in 1993.

Huntington stepped down from the Board of Game in 1992 at age 77, after serving on the board under five governors. He had suffered a heart attack during a Board of Game meeting during the previous fall.

In 2008, a play intended to counter suicide took another look into Huntington’s life. “The Winter Bear” is a story about life and survival in Interior Alaska, rooted in Huntington’s life. The play has traveled to several villages around the state and in the spring arrived in Bethel.

Huntington celebrated his 100th birthday on May 10.

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Of moose and men: A brief history of domesticated moose in Alaska

Laurel Andrews | January 2, 2016


Jack Carr rides in a buggy pulled by his two pet moose, Bill and Helen, in this undated photo.
P-20-183d. Alaska State Library. Alaska Purchase Centennial Collection


Long before Jack Carr was noticed for raising two pet moose, he was already famous.

An Alaska mail carrier at the turn of the 20th century, Carr spent his days crisscrossing the territory by dog sled, delivering mail between the Last Frontier and the contiguous United States.

In this role, Carr brought news of Alaska to a national audience. He was the first to confirm the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897, when he brought the news of gold to Seattle, the New York Times reported more than a century ago.

Only later, after moving to Washington state, did Carr procure and train two moose. He named them in honor of President William Taft and Taft's daughter, Helen. The unusual pets brought Carr’s name to the headlines once again.

Despite the novelty and interest surrounding his pet moose, he wasn’t the only one domesticating moose during that era. From Fairbanks to Skagway, stories of pet ungulates were making the news.

'Moose will go on vaudeville stage'

Carr's name is scattered among various publications of the time, where he described the advances and ills of the era, from the destitute miners spending their scant money at saloons to the bustling population of Dawson City.

He took the first mail from Circle City by dog team in 1896, mushing down to Skagway, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner wrote in 1960. The next year he purportedly traveled from St. Michael, at the mouth of the Yukon River, to Seattle. His journey took only 87 days, the article says, not including the days he rested.

By 1898, Carr was described as “one of the most famous mail carriers and travelers” among Yukon pioneers by the Klondike Nugget, based in Dawson City.

A few years later, Carr was again on the move.

A 1906 article from the Fairbanks Daily Times says that Carr, “the greatest of all mushers,” had “quit the business.” He and his wife were heading to Seattle, ending his mail contract between the Yukon-Koyukuk region.

The couple had already sold a trading post they owned in Fort Yukon. Carr had also secured a gold mining claim that “relieve(d) him from any further necessity of mushing or doing anything else save watching the other fellows work,” the article says.

(The later News-Miner article says, though, that he was still mushing in Alaska in 1908, so there is some discrepancy as to the end of his mail-carrying career. At some point, though, he ended up back in Interior Alaska, with two baby moose by his side.)

In November 1909, his image appeared in the Seattle Daily Times next to two moose calves. The article was dug up by Elizabeth Cook of the Tanana-Yukon Historical Society.

“Moose Will go on Vaudeville Stage,” the article’s headline proclaims. “Jack Carr, Pioneer of Alaska, Educating Animals He Caught in Far North for Theatrical Career.”

According to the article, Carr captured the twin calves near Circle City in the Interior when they were 6 days old. He fed them condensed milk and oatmeal until they were more fully grown.

He named the two moose Bill and Helen, after President William Taft and his daughter.

Bill and Helen were brought to Seattle via steamship and train, where they lived in an enclosure on Carr’s property, the article says.

Undated images of the two moose fully grown show that he succeeded in training them to pull him in a sulky, a light, two-wheeled carriage. Another image shows a moose standing on two legs and Carr standing on a pedestal, smiling at his domesticated creature.

Eventually, Carr got bored of living in Seattle, the News-Miner reported. He moved to the now-abandoned town of Katalla, Alaska, where he lived for the rest of his life. It’s unclear when or if the moose went with him.

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I discovered this photo on Facebook today, one I took in our front yard in 2012. Strange. We had some minor snowfall today which may increase, but this is far more serious.

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Anchorage Is Out Of Snow!


UPDATE: Fairbanks snow arrives in Anchorage by train


Paula Dobbyn/KTUU
POSTED: 05:00 PM AKST Mar 02, 2016 UPDATED: 09:41 AM AKST Mar 03, 2016

Anchorage is officially out of snow, according to the National Weather Service. But with the city preparing to host the world’s premier sled dog race on Saturday, contingency plans are under way.

What to do? Haul in snow from up north, seven rail cars in all.



“It’s loaded and ready to go,” said Alaska Railroad spokesman Tim Sullivan. “It’ll arrive in Anchorage about 8 a.m. (Thursday.)”

Sullivan was referring to the estimated 300 to 350 cubic yards of snow that has been scooped from the rail yard in Fairbanks. That's enough packed powder to cover a football field, two inches deep.



The snow will begin the voyage to Anchorage tonight to help create a trail down Fourth Avenue for the Iditarod ceremonial start. The seven rail cars are scheduled to leave Fairbanks at 8 p.m.

Once the Fairbanks snow is offloaded at the Anchorage train depot, the municipality will take charge of spreading it out.

“It’s about 15 truckloads of snow,” said Paul Van Landingham, street maintenance manager.

City maintenance crews will start building the trail after police close off Fourth Avenue and Cordova Street Friday night. Iditarod officials said to expect road closures in the area beginning about 4 p.m.



The Fairbanks snow will be spread around the official starting point at Fourth and D Street. It’ll cover about a block, Van Landingham said.

Crews will probably take about four hours to get the entire course in place. Race officials this year have shortened the ceremonial start from 11 miles to three because of warm weather. Daytime temperatures have been in the mid-to-upper 30s of late and that's expected to continue through the weekend, according to meteorologists.

With Anchorage receiving only 27.6 inches of snow so far this winter, it’s been tough to stockpile enough to service Fur Rendezvous and Iditarod sled dog races. The city needs about 1,100 truckloads in all.

“It’s a struggle. But we plan ahead,” he said.

With daytime temperatures five to 10 degrees above normal, Van Landingham said he has also worried about having his snow piles melt.

Anchorage is experiencing its seventh least snowiest winter, according to Rebecca Duell, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Anchorage. By now, the city would have normally received just over 60 inches, she said.

But conditions are not as bad as last year when Anchorage had only gotten 20.5 inches of snow by March 2, making it the least snowiest winter season on record, Duell said.

Still, it’s pretty barren out there in a city known for its long, hard winters.

“It’s the first time in Anchorage history that we had a snow depth of zero in the month of February,” Duell said.

Copyright © 2016, KTUU-TV

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Photo by Rob Stapleton

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2016 Iditarod Sled Dog Race







Dallas Seavey outruns his father to capture 4th Iditarod crown in record time

Beth Bragg, Tegan Hanlon | March 15, 2016




The finish line doubled as a Seavey family reunion. Dallas was greeted by his wife, Jen. A few moments later, he hugged his grandfather Dan Seavey, one of the Iditarod’s pioneers. His 5-year-old daughter, Annie, also was there along with Seavey's brother, Danny, and mother, Janine.

And 45 minutes after Seavey claimed victory, dad Mitch Seavey arrived in second place -- in a time that also bettered the 2014 record.

Garlands of yellow roses were draped around the necks of Dallas' lead dogs, litter-mates Reef and Tide. It was a familiar routine for Reef, a 4-year-old male who has now run on three championship teams.

“What makes Reef such an awesome, awesome sled dog and such an awesome lead dog is his drive to go,” Seavey said. “He doesn’t care if it’s 40 or 50 mph winds or day seven or eight of the Iditarod -- when you put a harness on him and hop on the sled he starts barking and lunging.”

A team fit to win

By the time Dallas reached Nome, he had whittled his team down to six dogs: Reef, Tide, Lobben, Candle, Ripple and Barley. He dropped Steiger in Safety, 22 miles from the finish line, and dropped two others in White Mountain, a checkpoint 77 miles from Nome.

He left White Mountain with a 39-minute lead over his dad. Mitch Seavey ran 10 dogs from White Mountain to Nome, but Dallas' smaller team was too fast to catch.

“It’s a pretty bomb-proof bunch,” Dallas said. “It comes down to the cream, not how much milk you’ve got.”

A former Alaska high school wrestling champion, Seavey took the Iditarod lead for good when he beat his father to Koyuk by two minutes Sunday evening, a week after the race began in Willow.

He said he had to rethink his strategy before that, along the Yukon River. He had fewer dogs than he had planned for after Glitter and Hero unexpectedly got sick with a virus and were sent home. He started to keep the runs “a little bit shorter,” he said.

Seavey increased his lead on the way to White Mountain, and then he released two of the fastest runs in his 10-year Iditarod career.

He made the 55-mile run to Safety in 5 hours, 48 minutes, one minute faster than his previous best of 5:49 in 2007. Then he made the 22-mile sprint to Nome in 2:40, again beating his previous best by a minute.

During his record-breaking 2014 Iditarod, Seavey made the run from White Mountain to Safety in 7:25 while mushing through a ground blizzard.

“I still don’t know how we got here so dang fast,” he said at a press conference after his finish.

It could have been a combination of trail conditions and the level of competition, he said.

While the trail wasn’t like the 2014 trail — which he described as perfect for record-breaking and bone-breaking — it was what he called “typical,” meaning there was snow, but there was also dirt.

“We didn’t have any super, super cold,” he said.

Other teams also had big talent, he said.

“This is a new era of mushing,” Seavey said. "... I think this Iditarod had more better teams than have ever been on the Iditarod.”

Seavey's victory earned him $75,000 in prize money and his pick of a new Dodge vehicle. The win makes him the sixth four-time champion in Iditarod history and the fourth to win three races in a row.

A father-son pair

Dallas’s stiffest competition this year came from his father, a 56-year-old who has already won the Iditarod twice. Mitch Seavey's win in 2013 briefly interrupted his son’s championship streak.

Mitch topped his son’s 2014 record by nearly an hour. Their 1-2 finish was a repeat of last year, when Dallas beat Mitch by more than four hours.

At 3:05 a.m., Mitch drove into Nome with 10-dog team that got tangled just before the finish line. He got off his sled and helped lead the dogs under the burled arch, where his family, Dallas included, was waiting. Father and son hugged.

“Hey, pop,” Dallas said.

“Good job,” Mitch said.

Mitch Seavey said he identified a problem with his team earlier in the race: He lacked a hardheaded leader, he said. Still, his dogs Woody and Pilot led the way to Nome.

Mitch's wife, Janine, said she admired how much her husband prepared for this year's Iditarod. She said she would like to see him win again, but she’s also proud of her son.

“We win either way,” she said. “We can’t not win.”

Family patriarch Dan Seavey echoed that. He said he doesn’t cheer for either his son or his grandson over the other.

“I just say I hope a Seavey wins,” he said.

At the postrace press conference, Mitch said he was proud of his son. Annie — his granddaughter and Dallas’ daughter — sat by them.

“We’re pretty much mushing head-to-head, going toe-to-toe at it,” Mitch said.

Still, he said, there are just certain mushing questions father and son don’t ask each other.

“It’s an interesting dynamic to be biggest competitors and best friends at the same time,” he said.

As the press conference ended and the building emptied, Dallas and Mitch Seavey sat at the side of the stage with Annie and their wives. It was time to get some sleep, the mushers said.

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Nenana Ice Classic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Nenana Ice Classic is an annual ice pool contest held in Nenana, Alaska. It is a fundraising event in which individuals attempt to guess the exact time the Tanana River ice will break up at Nenana. Tickets are on sale from February 1 through April 5 of each year throughout Alaska. The Nenana Ice Classic is a non-profit charitable gaming organization. As such, the proceeds benefit many volunteer and non-profit organizations.



The Tanana River with the tripod on the ice during
the 2008 Nenana Ice Classic. The Mears Memorial
Bridge is in the background.


Closeup of the tripod, sitting
on dry land. This large striped
wooden structure is placed
on the frozen Tanana River
each year.


History

The Ice Classic began as an ice betting pool in 1906 with six entries: Adolph Nelson, Jim Duke, Gunnysack Jack, Jonesy, Louis and Joe Johnson, and the first winner, Oliver Lee.After coming the closest to betting on breakup of the Tanana ice, Lee won an equivalent amount of "a couple of rounds at the trading post bar." The ice pool subsequently became inactive until 1916. In that year, railroad workers revived the betting through ticket sales at Jimmy Duke's Roadhouse, but limited the betting to Nenana residents. After word of the lottery spread to towns along the local railroad by Alaska Railroad Commission workers, the lottery was opened up to residents of the Alaska and Yukon territories in 1917.

In 1917, railroad engineers bet $801 on when the ice would break. In 2009 the 93rd annual prize money was $283,723. In 2014 the jackpot was a record $363,627. Since the Classic's beginning in 1906 over 10 million dollars in prize money has been given away.

The tripod

The "tripod", which actually has four supports, is planted on the river ice between the highway and railroad bridges in Nenana, 300 ft from the shore. The tripod is connected to a clock which stops as the ice goes out, moving the tripod with it.

Ice measurements

The Tanana River at Nenana usually freezes between October and November, reaching an average peak thickness of 41 inches (104 cm) on April 1. The ice then melts on top due to weather and bottom due to water movement.










Nenana Ice Classic is celebrating 100 years of tradition. The Nenana Ice Classic contracted with Barbara Lavallee,
a well known Alaskan artist, to create the 100 Year Centennial Poster. Signed and numbered posters are available
through the Nenana Ice Classic office.

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Alaskans Sick of Being Put in a Box Draw Their Own U.S. Map

Sep 9, 2014 • By Abraham •

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