In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife, and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth.
Alaska
Arrival of new international cargo carriers in Anchorage celebrated by state officials • Alaska Beacon
Five additional air cargo companies have started operating this year at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, boosting an important sector of the economy in the state’s largest city, state officials said on Thursday.
The five new operators, all of them international, boost the number of cargo carriers to 39, according to the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Thirty-one, including the new arrivals, are international carriers, while eight are regional carriers, according to the department.
The companies newly operating in Anchorage are Awesome Cargo, based in Mexico; Central Airlines of China; ASL Air Cargo, a Belgian carrier; Aerologic Air Cargo, a German company; and CMA CGM Air Cargo, which is based in France.
Ryan Anderson, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said the new arrivals show how the cargo business is growing in Anchorage, with the state’s help.
“We’re really focused on expanding our capacity for cargo,” he said at a news conference held at the Anchorage airport’s fire station. To that end, the department has created an interdisciplinary cargo team that is planning the changes needed to accommodate increased cargo traffic, he said.
Those plans include physical expansion of taxiways as well as modernization of energy use, such as the integration of solar energy and other renewable sources, Anderson said.
The Anchorage airport, with its strategic position between continents, has long been one of the world’s busiest for cargo traffic. For a while in 2020, at the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the top cargo airport, though it has generally been in the second spot nationally – after Memphis, the headquarters of FedEx – and in the top five internationally.
As of 2023, Anchorage ranked fourth in the world in the amount of cargo shipped, according to Airports Council International (ACI) World, an aviation industry organization.
While cargo volume slipped a bit between 2022 and 2023, it has since increased, according to state officials. Cargo volume passing through the Anchorage airport increased 4.9% from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2024, according to the department. Alaska’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30, so fiscal 2024 ended in the middle of summer.
Volume through the airport is expected to grow by another 2% this fiscal year, reaching what is anticipated to be a record 149.5 million pounds, according to the department.
Also underway at the Anchorage airport, as with all other state-operated airports, is a transition to firefighting foams that are free of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS chemicals. Linked to numerous health problems such as cancer and reproductive problems, PFAS compounds are commonly called “forever chemicals” because they are extremely persistent in the environment and in bodies of people and animals. In Alaska, as in most of the nation, the biggest source of PFAS contamination in the environment is from firefighting foams, largely those used at airports and at military sites.
A newly enacted law in Alaska requires airport fire departments to switch to non-PFAS foams by Jan. 1.
At the Anchorage airport, officials said they are striving to meet that deadline.
“It’s something we’ve been diligently working on since the legislation passed,” said Aaron Danielson, the police and fire chief at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
Companies that sell non-PFAS foams have already been identified, thanks in part to the military branches that have already started switching out their foams, he said. There are now four vendors offering to sell safer foams to the state, so no supply problems are expected, he said.
The challenge will be getting all the firefighting trucks and equipment properly cleaned so that the non-PFAS foams can be used, Danielson said.
Qualified cleaners to handle PFAS-contaminated equipment are few, and they will be needed at all state-operated airports, not just Anchorage, he said. “It’ll be a process for all of us, and it’ll get phased through, to get the cleaners coming through to one department, to another department and continue moving on,” he said.
Anderson said the department has the money for the switchover in this year’s budget and that the deadline is in sight.
“We expect that this winter we will have this equipment clean, and we’ll be fully functional with the new foams,” he said. “It’s a high priority for us.”
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
Alaska
An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post
For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska, one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.
That realization came on a trip The Wife and I took to America’s Last Frontier last month.
“Where is your final destination today?” the woman checking us in for our flight home at the Anchorage airport asked chirpily.
“Tel Aviv,” I replied. “Where’s that?”
When I said it was in Israel, she smiled and said, “Oh.”
Lest one think this was just a fluke: on the plane a few hours later, another Alaskan asked where we were going. When we answered “Tel Aviv,” she said she had never heard of it.
Granted, two people do not a Pew Poll make, but they do offer a small corrective to the perception – fed by the media most of us follow – that the world is preoccupied with Israel, thinking about us obsessively, talking about us constantly, and cursing us unremittingly.
The last part, at least in Alaska, is also not true. During our two weeks there, we saw no “Free Palestine” graffiti, nor were we subjected to dirty looks or “child killer” comments when we said we were from Israel.
All of America, it turns out, is not Mamdani’s Manhattan, nor does social media present a proportionate picture of that country’s reality.
One of the problems with social media is that every incident of antisemitism is posted online. The incidents are real and rising at an alarming rate, but seeing them all in one place creates a disproportionate sense of how likely you are to encounter them while traveling.
Watch enough clips of a Jewish kid harassed on a New York subway or an Israeli couple berated at a hotel in California, and you begin to wonder whether the same thing awaits you when you ride an American subway or check into a hotel.
It doesn’t. Yet the cumulative effect is that you begin to wonder how open to be about your Israeliness. You don’t decide to hide it, but simply having to ask the question adds a mini-layer of apprehension before every trip.
When Israel comes along for the ride
You also learn to read the Uber.
“Honey,” I urged The Wife before we got into an Uber in Chicago during a brief layover, “you don’t have to say you’re from Israel.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to hide who I am.”
“Wonderful sentiment,” I replied. “The driver’s name is Rabah. Humor me.”
We didn’t volunteer our place of origin, nor did he ask.
But on the entire trip, that was the only time we consciously withheld that nugget of biographical information. Everywhere else, we proudly said we were from Israel – and it was fine. More than fine: it was often a conversation starter.
On a whale-watching excursion, we sat across from a young couple from China who work at Google. They were intrigued that we lived in Israel, and even more fascinated that we passed on the chicken sandwiches being served.
Instead of looking for sea creatures, The Wife spent a good part of the trip explaining why some of the fish in the sea we can eat and others we can’t.
“Honey,” I whispered at one point, a bit annoyed. “We didn’t pay all this money for you to give an introductory lecture on kashrut. Look for the damn puffins.”
Since October 7, another layer has been added to the anxiety of travel: whether your flight will be canceled at the drop of a ballistic missile.
One doesn’t just hop over to Alaska on a whim; it takes planning and a special occasion to justify the expense. For us, it was 40 years of wedded bliss, so we booked back in October after being warned that rental cars sell out months in advance.
We chose United. But just days after the war with Iran broke out, United – typically – canceled flights until mid-June, four days after our planned departure. We acted quickly – well, The Wife acted quickly – and switched to El Al. Still, it complicated the trip further.
Then came the more serious question: Do you leave the country when one of your sons or your son-in-law is in miluim in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria?
My first instinct was no: you don’t leave when one of your children is serving. That may have worked before Oct. 7, when reserve duty meant a few weeks a year and could be planned around.
But today, when they have each logged upward of 350 days, saying you won’t leave while they are serving essentially means that you won’t leave at all.
Which, by the way, is hardly the end of the world. But what can I say? I like to travel.
So we went, even though as we were watching bears and sea otters, my youngest son was dodging drones in Lebanon.
“Go,” he said. “What are you going to be able to do by being here? And if, God forbid, something happens, you’ll come back.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “How can we enjoy it if we are worrying about you?”
“You’ll figure out a way,” he teased.
And he was right. Sure, we worried, but less than if we were here. Distance, it turns out, has its advantages. I wasn’t glued to the news, tracking every development on his front.
Perhaps that was Alaska’s greatest gift. Not the calving glaciers, surfacing whales, or foraging bears, magnificent though they were. It was the realization that while Israel is the center of our world, it is not the center of everyone else’s. Every now and then, regaining that perspective is refreshing. ■
I’m typically pretty wordy. But just watch the video.
Disclaimer: Matt Addington is a professional. These bears grazed toward him from 100 yards away while he held tight. Do not try this ever, under any circumstances, or you will likely spend the rest of your time on this earth as bear poop.
Matt Addington is an incredible professional photographer, and I can say that from personal experience. He’s captured images of me in rough shape and somehow made them stunnin’. The Minnesota-based photographer and filmmaker has built a career telling outdoor stories, and his latest bear video proves he knows exactly where to point a camera.
Places like Katmai National Park in Alaska (where this video was taken) can offer unusually close encounters with brown bears, thanks in part to abundant food and tightly managed visitor access. That doesn’t make encounters like this casual or safe to imitate.
Addington is an extremely experienced outdoorsman, and he was photographing with professional guides Scott and Jackie Stone. For people hoping to photograph bears this way, a guided wildlife photography tour is one of the safest ways to do it. Do not try this in Yellowstone or your local national forest.
The bears were grazing nearly 100 yards away when the group set up. They stayed put as the animals continued feeding and gradually moved closer, resulting in some incredible footage and a once-in-a-lifetime photo.
I can only hope he wore his brown pants under his waders.
Alaska
Black bear breaks into Alaskan mall, eats a peach and relieves itself on floor before leaving: video
Can bearly believe it!
A black bear was caught on camera seemingly running errands at a local shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend.
The bear entered the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. Sunday, KTUU reported, citing a JBER spokesperson.
Wild footage shows the young cub strolling through the commissary’s automatic doors and exploring all that the mall had to offer.
The hungry bear stole and ate a piece of fruit before emptying its bowels on the hallway floor on its way out of the building.
Kory Godbout, who works at the barber shop on the military base, was waiting for his first customer of the day when he spotted the furry intruder traveling through the automatic doors.
“My coworker, who is cutting hair in front of me, she yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout recalled.
“And I looked up from my phone and the bear was walking into the barber shop right in front of me,” the barber said. “And we all ran into the break room and shut the door behind us.”
After a few minutes, Godbout and his coworkers emerged from the break room and followed the out-of-place bear into the commissary, where it took a peach from the grocery store and ate it.
The barber recalled that a few onlookers were “going big to try and scare” the bear out of the grocery store.
But all of a sudden, the black bear returned to the barber shop.
“By that time, we were able to run back to the shop and then lock the door,” Godbout said.
“And then we were watching him from the window and then that’s when he decided to, you know, use the restroom in the hallway.”
Officers from Conservation Law Enforcement attended the peculiar grizzly scene and were able to direct the wild animal towards a river and into the woods, according to the JBER spokesperson.
JBER’s wildlife program manager Colette Brandt said in a press release that the bear had triggered the automatic doors and that Sunday’s events were entirely incidental, KTUU reported.
While there has been a decline in bear-related calls since the military base installed bear-resistant dumpsters, seven bears have been put down at JBER for public safety over the past year.
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