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Major carriers are already beefing up for the summer tourism season in Alaska

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Major carriers are already beefing up for the summer tourism season in Alaska


All indicators point toward a robust tourist season for next summer.

There’s a new entrant on the scene to take travelers south: Hawaiian Airlines.

Starting June 12, 2025, Hawaiian Airlines will offer twice-daily wide-body service between Anchorage and Seattle. One flight leaves at 4:10 p.m. and the other leaves at 2:55 a.m. (yawn).

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On Hawaiian’s twin-aisle wide-body A330 aircraft, there are 18 lie-flat seat in first class. These are the first lie-flat seats offered between Anchorage and Seattle. Sure, it’s just a three-hour flight. But, hey, it’s 3 a.m.! There’s enough time for a cat-nap, if you’re willing to pay for it.

I checked some midsummer dates (June 18) and found the first-class seats available for $540 one-way, or 40,000 Alaska Airlines miles. Of course, those prices can go up or down in the blink of an eye.

These summertime seats are available using cash or miles on both websites: alaskaair.com or hawaiianairlines.com.

Alaska Air’s frequent flyers already are asking about elite-level upgrades on Hawaiian flights between Anchorage and Seattle and between Seattle and Tokyo.

Right now, travelers who earn miles on Hawaiian flights can transfer them to their Alaska Airlines mileage account.

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According to Alex DaSilva of Hawaiian Airlines, the carrier’s A330s also feature 68 extra-legroom seats (with 36-inch pitch), plus 192 seats in the back.

With 278 seats, the A330 will be the biggest bird in the sky between Anchorage and Seattle.

But there’s another more personal reason to love the A330. Unlike Boeing’s 737s or 787s, or Airbus’ A320 family, Hawaiian’s A330 features a 2x4x2 layout. That means you can avoid the middle seat if you choose wisely.

Nobody likes a middle seat. So even though the A330 is big, about half the passengers on the plane can avoid the dreaded middle seat. Pity the poor folks in the middle section with four-across seating.

The no-middle-seat option also is available on Alaska’s E-175s that fly between Anchorage around the state, as well as on select flights south to Seattle and Portland. The planes, operated by Horizon Air (a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines), feature a 2×2 layout in coach. Sadly, Alaska dropped the Anchorage-Paine Field flight for the summer.

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Delta Air Lines flies the Airbus A220 model between Anchorage and Seattle and between Fairbanks and Seattle. Those planes offer a 2×3 seating plan in coach, so there are options to avoid the middle seat.

Hawaiian’s entry into the Anchorage-Seattle market is part of a larger initiative to bring the carrier’s planes to Seattle for flights to Tokyo. Those flights start on May 20, 2025. Nonstop Seattle-Seoul flights on Hawaiian are planned for October of next year.

Hawaiian Airlines is not the only carrier beefing up its flights for next summer.

Condor Airlines, which operates a larger version of the A330 (A330-300), is boosting its summertime flight schedule from three to four times per week. The first flight is May 17, 2025.

Condor is an earn-and-burn mileage partner with Alaska Airlines.

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WestJet, a Canadian airline based in Edmonton, Alberta, is launching twice-weekly flights (Fridays and Sundays) between Anchorage and Calgary starting June 29.

Delta Air Lines is boosting its nonstop Anchorage-Detroit flight to daily service for the summer, starting May 23.

In addition to its year-round Anchorage-Minneapolis nonstops, Delta will offer summertime nonstops to Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

United Airlines flies year-round nonstops to Denver. But in the summer, it will resume daily nonstops to Washington, D.C., and to Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and Newark.

American Airlines will resume its Anchorage-Dallas nonstop in March. Its Anchorage-Chicago nonstop resumes on May 5. American Air is a key mileage partner with Alaska Airlines.

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Air Canada will resume its summertime flights to Vancouver, B.C., in May. Sun Country Airlines resumes its Anchorage-Minneapolis flights on May 17. Discover Airlines will resume twice-weekly nonstop service from Anchorage to Frankfurt in June.

Alaska Airlines has more nonstops from Anchorage to the Lower 49 than all the rest of the airlines combined. Nonstop destinations, in addition to Seattle and Portland, include San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego (Saturdays only), Salt Lake City, Denver, Las Vegas (Fridays and Sundays), Phoenix, Minneapolis, Honolulu, Chicago and New York’s JFK airport.

Alaska’s nonstops from Anchorage to Maui and Kona end in March.

From Fairbanks, nonstop flights are available on Delta and Alaska to Seattle. During the summer, United Airlines will offer nonstops to Chicago and Denver. Delta will fly nonstop from Fairbanks to Salt Lake City and Minneapolis.

Frequent travelers know nonstop flights are the best. They also know that middle seats are terrible. The new options for 2025 offer some good news on both fronts.

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Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10

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Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10


The 2026 Alaska high school girls basketball state championships begin this week, and High School On SI has brackets for all four classifications.

The brackets will be updated with scores and matchups throughout the week.

All four classifications will play their state championship games at Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage.

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The 1A and 2A championships run March 11-14. Classes 3A and 4A play the following week, March 18-21.

Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 State Championship Brackets, Matchups, Schedule – March 10

3/11 – Shaktoolik (1) vs. Arlicaq (16)

3/11 – Kake (8) vs. Tri-Valley (9)

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3/11 – Fort Yukon (4) vs. Andreafski (13)

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3/11 – Sand Point (5) vs. Napaaqutgmiut (12)

3/11 – Scammon Bay (2) vs. Nunamiut (15)

3/11 – Akiuk Memorial (7) vs. Newhalen (10)

3/11 – Davis-Romoth (3) vs. Cook Inlet Academy (14)

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3/11 – Hoonah (6) vs. Shishmaref (11)


3/12 – Seward (1) vs. Chevak (8)

3/12 – Metlakatla (4) vs. Cordova (5)

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3/12 – Craig (2) vs. Susitna Valley (7)

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3/12 – Glennallen (3) vs. Degnan (6)


3/18 – Barrow (1) vs. Kotzebue (8)

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3/18 – Grace Christian (4) vs. Galena (5)

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3/18 – Monroe Catholic (2) vs. Delta (7)

3/18 – Mt. Edgecumbe (3) vs. Kenai Central (6)

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3/18 – Mountain City Christian Academy (1) vs. North Pole (8)

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3/18 – Colony (4) vs. West (5)

3/18 – Bartlett (2) vs. Juneau-Douglas (7)

3/18 – Wasilla (3) vs. Service (6)


More Coverage from High School On SI



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Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company

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Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company


This is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.

The Alaska Wall Tent comes in an array of sizes and versions, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your individual use-case. They’re all individually made in Alaska, and perhaps even more importantly, they’re all tested extensively to be able to handle local conditions.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 5

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 2

Image DescriptionThis is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.

History Speedrun: The Alaska Gear Company

The Alaska Gear Company was formerly known as Airframes Alaska, it’s an aviation and outdoor equipment supplier and manufacturer headquartered in Palmer, Alaska. The company is led by majority owner Sean McLaughlin, who bought the original bush airplane parts business when it had just two employees and $100,000 in annual revenue. McLaughlin has since grown it to approximately 100 employees and $20 million in annual sales.

The company can trace its early roots to a licensed maker of Piper PA-18 Super Cub fuselages at Birchwood Airport. Through a series of acquisitions, including Reeve Air Motive (an aircraft parts retailer operating out of Anchorage’s Merrill Field since 1950, Alaska Tent & Tarp, and Northern Sled Works, the company grew well beyond aviation into outdoor recreation and cold-weather gear.

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That diversification ultimately drove the rebrand from Airframes Alaska to Alaska Gear Company in late 2023, as the old name no longer conveyed the full scope of what the company produces and sells.

The Alaska Gear Company now operates out of three locations – a 100,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Palmer, a production facility in Fairbanks, and a retail store with an in-house sewing workshop at Merrill Field in Anchorage.

Its product lines span two major categories. On the aviation side, the company is best known for its hand-built Alaskan Bushwheel tundra tires, FAA-approved titanium landing gear, Super Cub fuselage modifications, and a wide range of bush plane parts. On the outdoor side, it manufactures Arctic Oven hot tents, canvas wall tents, custom freight and pulk sleds, and a modernized version of the iconic military bunny boot designed for extreme cold weather conditions.

More recently in 2024, the Alaska Gear Company was named “Made in Alaska Manufacturer of the Year” by the Alaska Department of Commerce.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company

The Alaska Canvas Wall Tent is a handmade-in-Alaska canvas tent made from 13oz Sunforger DLX double-filled, preshrunk, marine-grade cotton canvas that’s treated to resist fire, water, and mildew while still remaining breathable.

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It comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 7

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 4

Image DescriptionIt comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

All tents include a 4.5 inch oval stove jack for use with wood or propane stoves, as well as a 56 inch triangular rear window with insect screening, an 18oz vinyl sod cloth around the base to block drafts and moisture, ridgepole openings at both ends, rope-reinforced eaves, brass grommets, overlapping door flaps with ties, a heavy-duty zippered door, and 100 feet of sisal rope for tie-downs.

The tents are now available to buy direct from the Alaska Gear Company here, and at the time of writing they have stock ready to ship out immediately.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 10
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 9
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 8
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 3

Images courtesy of the Alaska Gear Company



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Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing

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Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing

The St. Elias Mountains in southeast Alaska are dotted with over 100 lakes where glaciers crumble into milky, turquoise water. Those lakes are expanding at an ever-quickening pace.

The lakes will quadruple in size over the next century or two, scientists report March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This growth will transform landscapes, create new salmon habitat and may even change the course of a major river.

“We are seeing the great age of ice retreat” in Alaska, says Daniel McGrath, a glaciologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “These glaciers are just peeling back from the landscape,” revealing deep grooves they carved in the Earth, where lakes are now forming.

Glacial hydrologist Eran Hood of the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, who was not part of the study, adds that “understanding where these lakes are going to emerge is important” because it “changes the whole nature of the downstream ecosystem.”

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Hugging the coastline along the Alaska-Canada border, the tiny mountainous region that includes the St. Elias Mountains is losing 60 cubic kilometers of ice per year. Because lakes absorb solar heat, the glaciers that shed ice into lakes are shrinking faster than those that terminate on dry land. Across southeast Alaska, these lakes attached to glaciers have expanded by 60 percent since 1986, reaching a combined area of 1,300 square kilometers.

McGrath and his colleagues wondered how far this runaway expansion might go. So, they combined satellite images with estimates of ice thickness — mapping deeply eroded grooves that are still hidden under glaciers.

The results were “eye-opening,” McGrath says. The team identified 4,200 square kilometers of glacier-covered grooves adjacent to existing lakes.

He and his colleagues predict that the lakes will continue to expand — causing rapid ice retreat — until they fill those grooves, reaching a combined size of around 5,500 square kilometers, an area the size of Delaware.

“By the end of this century, all of these lakes will probably be more or less fully developed,” says study coauthor Louis Sass III, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. But those growing lakes are already reshaping entire landscapes in a way that is often overlooked in public discourse around glacier retreat.

Many of Alaska’s glaciers terminate on dry land, and their meltwater often creates barren, rocky floodplains downstream, where the streams alternate between trickles and floods — constantly branching and shifting course as they lay down sediment released by the glacier.

“Those habitats are fairly inhospitable for a lot of fish,” including some salmon, says Jonathan Moore, an aquatic ecologist with Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. The water is too cold, and fish eggs “get swept out or buried by the floods every year.”

But as glaciers retreat into lakes and those lakes expand, their meltwater has time to drop its sediment and warm a few degrees in the lake before spilling into a river. Rivers that carry less sediment are less prone to shifting channels.

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A 2025 study by Moore and remote sensing scientist Diane Whited of the University of Montana found that as glacial lakes expanded over 38 years in southeast Alaska, the downstream river channels stabilized, allowing willows and bushes to spread across floodplains.

“It creates salmon habitat,” Hood says. A 2021 study by Moore and Hood predicted that by 2100, glacial retreat in southeast Alaska will transform 6,000 kilometers of river channels into decent habitat for some local species of salmon. The lakes themselves will create spawning grounds for sockeye salmon — an important commercial species.

But these changes will come with upheaval.

For instance, one major river, the Alsek, will probably shift its course as retreating glaciers cause two lakes to merge, providing an easier path to the ocean.

People in Juneau are feeling another dramatic effect of expanding lakes. At least once per year, a lake dammed by the nearby Mendenhall Glacier spills out in a flash flood that gushes through town, forcing some residents to build protective levees around their homes.

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These ecosystems “are going to be transformed,” Moore says. “But that transformation is going to be pretty violent and pretty dangerous.”



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