I'm an experienced cruiser who has sailed around the globe.
02.01.2024 - 15:49 / cntraveler.com
It was the first week of April, the dawn of spring in most of the Northern Hemisphere, but in Anchorage it still felt very much like winter. Snow was everywhere: piled high on rooftops and cars, lining the sidewalks in colossal embankments, floating in clumps in the Cook Inlet, and shellacking the nearby Chugach Mountains, which form a fierce and jagged amphitheater on the city's eastern edge.
I'd come to Alaska in part to ski those mountains, thanks to a chance encounter I'd had the previous year. While visiting the state for the first time in the way that many do—on a midsummer cruise—I met a guy from Anchorage at a bar. After recounting how I'd fallen for the state after a day spent hiking imagination-defying landscapes, I made a predictably naive remark about how the winters must be brutal.
Signage at Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard home store in the resort town of Girdwood
Breakfast at Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop in Anchorage
“Oh no,” he said. “Winter here is the absolute best.”
He described jaunts to a ski resort with surreal terrain and no crowds, weekends spent holed up in cabins reachable only by bush planes that land on frozen lakes, and weather that (at least around Anchorage) was less punishing than you might think. Go after February, he advised, when the sunlight is back but the snow is still deep.
I began my first day by exploring Anchorage, mainly because I've long been intrigued by cities that seem overlooked—or, in the case of Anchorage, cast more as an entry point than an ultimate destination. Alaska's largest city, home to nearly half the state's 730,000 inhabitants, has a fascinating history and heritage. Indigenous cultures here date back to long before it became a tent encampment of frontiersmen. An earthquake leveled the place in 1964, four years before oil was discovered and opened a spigot of money that shaped the mini metropolis one encounters today. Anchorage feels somehow both brand new and dated, consisting primarily of a downtown of utilitarian towers and a sprawl of strip malls that resemble those towers tipped on their sides. Everyone in the state knows the quip about Anchorage's best feature: “You can see Alaska from there.”
Mark Fleenor, owner of Sheep Mountain Lodge, landing on Matanuska Glacier
Club Paris, a mainstay of Anchorage nightlife since the 1950s, serving steaks and Alaskan halibut
“We are definitely due for a revamp,” joked Rachel Pennington, part of the family that owns Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop, a local staple where I stopped in for breakfast on my first morning. “But that's part of the fun. So much here is hidden that you have to be willing to look for it.”
Her bakery, a past James Beard Award nominee, is a prime example. Occupying a former medical clinic,
I'm an experienced cruiser who has sailed around the globe.
The latest round of winter weather is fueling another wave of flight disruptions at major U.S. airports. After thousands of cancellations last weekend, the air travel headaches are piling up for travelers again Friday — with the biggest problems concentrated throughout the busy Northeast and mid-Atlantic corridor.
Thousands of flights across the U.S. were canceled or delayed Tuesday morning as a winter storm swept across the nation for the second day in a row.
Iconic national parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite are already well known for winter fun. But many state parks also offer a snowy escape. Here are a few of the best.
Airlines are canceling thousands of flights this long weekend as millions are under a severe storm watch due to an arctic blast expected to bring below zero temperatures, heavy snow and blustery winds.
Airlines canceled more than 640 flights as of Wednesday morning as a storm slammed large parts of the Northeast.
This is a developing story and will be updated with more information.
Hawaiian Airlines shareholders will vote in February on Alaska Airlines’ proposed $1.9 billion takeover of the carrier.
If you are boarding a plane in much of the United States during winter, chances are the aircraft will need to have a specially trained crew spray it with de-icing fluid before takeoff to remove ice and snow (or prevent more from sticking).
Cancellations for Alaska Airlines and United Airlines continued into Monday as the FAA said certain Boeing 7 Max 9s would stay grounded until the agency deemed them safe to operate.
Investigators are currently searching for the missing panel that fell off an Alaska Airlines’ jet fuselage during a flight on Friday.
Investigators asked for the public's help Saturday night to find a missing piece of the Alaska Airlines jet that lost a plug in its fuselage on Friday.