Anchorage Daily News

CRAIG MEDRED

'Bike-friendly' Anchorage is a dangerous illusion

Back at work now and happy to be alive, Steve Mashburn can contemplate the abysmal design of Anchorage's so-called "bike trails.''

CRAIG MEDRED

Our primal bear fears started long ago

No matter how long in country, no matter how solid the understanding of the general docility of bears, there comes a certain primal apprehension at the discovery of a grizzly back-tracking your trail in the early season snow.

CRAIG MEDRED

A few signs would go a long way to improve bike trails

Clearly marked and easy to follow, the bike trail here ran past the antique shops and restaurants of this tiny town to disappear into a road that climbed away from the Pacific coast.

CRAIG MEDRED

Bear, glacier stories ignite Internet

Kurt Sorensen is just a guy who shot a grizzly bear outside his back door in Chugiak. It was all perfectly legal, and the bear, like everything, was destined to die some day anyway. But now Sorensen is being vilified on the Internet, except, of course, when he's being glorified there.

CRAIG MEDRED

On fall day hunter gets lucky at ducks' expense

Afterward there was just the slightest tinge of guilt, though the price that had been paid for success was fair enough.

CRAIG MEDRED

Fisheries council robs Joe Sixpack in halibut vote

With all the noise a certain Alaskan has been making nationally about the needs and concerns of Joe Sixpack, you'd think someone might be watching out for his interests here.

CRAIG MEDRED

From Alaska, it's mighty hard to see Russia

Why haven't I seen Russia?

CRAIG MEDRED

Swing of fate leaves lucky moose alive and well

Sometimes fate does this to a man: You spend a couple weeks trooping to the Kenai Peninsula to try to fill the moose-hunting tag of a lifetime. Then you wake up at home and go outside to find a yearling moose -- a moose that would be legal to shoot in most of Alaska -- tied down in your yard.

CRAIG MEDRED

We never had a real summer; let's hope for a real winter

The snow finally melted off the north side of McHugh Peak a few days ago.

CRAIG MEDRED

Exercise can benefit your body and your wallet

Depending on what calculation you go by, I'm getting somewhere between 400 and 700 miles per gallon on the commute to work these days.

CRAIG MEDRED

Lack of summer takes toll on waterfowl season

By the time a tiring dog finally forced the end to opening day of the 2008 waterfowl season, we had slogged a lot of marsh hoping against hope to see dour expectations overturned.

CRAIG MEDRED

Outside reporter needs to do homework on bears

Let's not mince words here: Washington Post staff writer Karl Vick is an ursine illiterate.

CRAIG MEDRED

To co-exist, some bears must die

OK, so we give Far North Bicentennial Park back to the grizzly bears to avoid ongoing and future problems.

CRAIG MEDRED

Blogger comes to Alaska where she breaks law

What do fallen vegans do when they visit Alaska from lands far away?

CRAIG MEDRED

Life jacket, students saved woman in river

Only a few days after 56-year-old David Yanoshek disappeared into the turbid waters of the Kenai River this summer, only a few miles upstream from where he was last seen tumbling in the surging flow after the boat in which he was riding hit a rock, another boater went for an uncomfortable and unplanned swim.

CRAIG MEDRED

Hunting laws need to apply to all, even troopers

As a hunter and a conservationist, it's hard to decide what is more disturbing about the brouhaha in which Gov. Sarah Palin and Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten now find themselves involved:

CRAIG MEDRED

Sending the wrong message about recreation

Americans are losing touch with the land, and The Economist magazine now contends a significant part of the problem rests with today's environmental community.

CRAIG MEDRED

Aggressive black bears deserve to be eliminated

Thirty years later, I can still remember Don McKnight, then the director of wildlife research for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, talking about the bear he had to shoot.

CRAIG MEDRED

It's summer, but you sure can't tell by the weather

Global warming, the experts tell you, isn't necessarily about warming, it's about "climate change."

CRAIG MEDRED

When fear overpowers reason, then you're lost

Unless you have been lost -- really, truly lost -- it is easy to dismiss Abby Flantz and Erica Nelson as a couple of twentysomething ditzes.

CRAIG MEDRED

Head down upper Yukon River to find nothingness

65 degrees 22 minutes N, 142 degrees 30 minutes W-- Almost no one comes to this spot in the Alaska Interior anymore, and it is the same for miles and miles and miles and miles upriver and down.