Magazine

Artists of a unique medium converge in Fairbanks, Alaska every March to create masterpiece sculptures made from giant blocks of ice. Fairbanks’ ice, dubbed the Arctic Diamond, is renowned for its purity, which lures craftsmen from all parts of the globe to attend the World Ice Art...

A sunny summer Sunday found Iditarod rookie Mary Helwig reading a book on her lawn near Willow when a neighbor’s text interrupted: A fast-moving forest fire was headed toward her kennel at Mile 72.5 of Parks Highway. Helwig packed food for her five dogs, some expensive sled-dog harnesses, her...

It was a hard day for going anywhere, let alone up the Redstone Valley and over Iviisaq Pass. My Eskimo buddy Clarence Wood and I plowed through loose, rolling drifts from the previous day’s blizzard, our snowmachines dragging basket sleds loaded with gas, gear and grub, bound for a week in the...

You could travel the wildest reaches of Alaska for a lifetime and not witness a scene like this—a pack of wolves feeding on a caribou kill on the edge of a rushing river. From the crest of a tundra bluff, I watched the gray alpha male tug at a hindquarter as others waited their turns. Then a...

Photos by Andrea D’Agosto I sat at the Talkeetna Roadhouse with three other women climbers after an attempted ascent of Denali. After two weeks of freeze-dried meals, our mouths watered in anticipation of home-cooked fare, and the aroma of freshly baked bread warmed the room. We replayed our...

During the seventh night of an eight-day ascent up Denali’s demanding Cassin Ridge, Mike Helms and I anchored our tent to a precarious perch at 18,000 feet. That night, we survived hurricane-force winds and in the morning, woke to temperatures that had plummeted to -35 degrees. We waited for...

Denali looms out the window of our motor coach on the windy road to Talkeetna. It’s a welcome sight after driving through the haze and hot spots of the Sockeye Fire in Willow. We pull over at a rest stop to take photos of the peak while a local cross country ski team trains up and down the...

As we head into the new year, we asked you, our readers, about your favorite destinations in Alaska. No need to turn to Yelp or Travelocity for reviews—our Facebook poll reached more than 104,000 loyal Alaska magazine followers. We received a few hundred photos featuring everything from the...

“This doesn’t look good,” Seth Kantner muttered, peering at the pale gray end of a spark plug, then passing it to Vic Walker and me for inspection. The top plug on my side looked even worse—grains of aluminum piston speckling the electrode, sure signs of a damaging, possibly...

I slept well, but then again, A Secret Service agent stood just outside. The agent wasn’t there because of me, but rather guarded former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalyn, who were in the cabin next door. The president was here to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Alaska...