Anchorage Daily News

CRAIG MEDRED

It's not really 'outdoors' if you're driving

Americans deserve $4 per gallon gasoline, and more. Yes, escalating fuel prices are going to make those midnight 105-mile runs to the Russian River to fish for red salmon painfully expensive this summer, but we've had this coming for a long time.

CRAIG MEDRED

Gear is fine but won't replace skill or good sense

When did everything become so much about the gear?

CRAIG MEDRED

Harrowing ride down trail convinces cyclist it's time to install disc brakes

The sidewalk dropping fast and straight out of the Chugach Mountains atop a winter's accumulation of snow was a testament to how snowmachines can be the best thing that ever happened to Alaska.

CRAIG MEDRED

Staying alive beats dying doing what you love to do

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

CRAIG MEDRED

Think mushing to Nome is tough? Try pedaling it

Kathi Hirzinger-Merchant didn't even warrant a mention on Sports Illustrated's silly list of the toughest athletes in sports, but she'd kick your butt any day.

Poll Who's the toughest woman in Alaska?

CRAIG MEDRED

Dangerous moves

Someone please explain the disconnect here: On the one hand, the ski industry is now encouraging all skiers to wear helmets just in case, for safety, because you never know what could happen on the slopes, yadda, yadda, yadda.

CRAIG MEDRED

Clinging to winter

A trek on the Arctic-to-Indian Trail along the creek to Indian Pass and then down to the community of the same name along Turnagain Arm is an Alaska spring classic.

CRAIG MEDRED

Truly nice guy fights a terrible disease -- cancer

As a teenager, Fred Bull was about the nicest kid you'd ever meet -- friendly, inquisitive, happy, never prone to that surliness that sometimes marked those years for many of us.

CRAIG MEDRED

Ski helmet that lets you talk on phone is crazy

I don't think all ski helmets are bad. They make a lot of sense for beginners and kids learning to ski. They protect people from the sorts of minor concussions caused by hitting your head on hard snow after falling at speeds of 15 mph or slower.

CRAIG MEDRED

Who really deserves Exxon money?

Where's my money? To be honest, that's all I think every time a greedy Exxon and a bunch of greedy commercial fishermen go back to court again to argue over billions of dollars in punitive damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

CRAIG MEDRED

Your brain beats beacon for avalanche safety

If avalanche beacons are supposed to save lives, why do so many people who wear them end up dead?

CRAIG MEDRED

Change inevitable in weather just as it is in life

By midnight Monday, at 2,000 feet along the Front Range of the Chugach Mountains, the cold snap that had for weeks held the region in its grasp was breaking.

Mat-Su salmon cursed by actions taken in Soldotna

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough is the fastest growing region in Alaska.

If Scdoris wants help, let her take GPS on Iditarod

Junk this foolishness binding her to a guide to help run the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

'Blood knife' tale fails to pass basic examination

The wolf-killing "blood knife" popped up in the news again this month.

CRAIG MEDRED

Nature isn't Disneyland; it's savage and unyielding

All things die. Some die slowly day by day in a steady decay from mountain to rock to sand to dust. Others go with the flick of a switch from the world of light to eternal darkness.

CRAIG MEDRED

Close to town, wilderness is a wonderland

Down in the Anchorage Bowl, city lights twinkled but city sounds remained far removed. Overhead the sky was sprinkled with stars and streaked occasionally with the bright lights of an inbound jet.

CRAIG MEDRED

Talking and tracking from the wild gets easier

Spot's electronic nose sniffed me out under one of the last spruce trees on the edge of Chugach State Park near the head of Potter Valley.

CRAIG MEDRED

No one's howling when wolves eat dogs

Where, oh where, are the humaniacs when our companion animals need them?

CRAIG MEDRED

Let's not get so sanctimonious about 'cheating'

Fifty-four years ago -- 55 come May -- Tenzig Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary became the first men to stand atop the world's tallest peak. They reached the summit thanks to a performance-enhancing supplement. When Mount Everest finally succumbed to man, it was thanks to better climbing through chemistry. Norgay and Hillary sucked bottled oxygen into their lungs to improve their climbing abilities at altitude.

CRAIG MEDRED

Warm spell triggers hunger for snowy cold snap

By 10 p.m. the thermometer was pushing toward single digits as I pulled on the headlamp and set off with Hoss to explore the winter-only trails along the flanks of the Chugach Mountains above the house.