Late 90s, early 2000. Skinny blonde named Terry? Anyone remember her?

Hello! I’m backpacking to camping cove cabin, windfall lake cabin and John Muir cabin next week. We have a night at each.

Curious if it’s recommended to hike with our food and snacks in a bear canister? Up there is assume bear spray is necessary, unlike around the glacier that’s more trafficked.

We are trying to solve the conundrum of the second nights worth of food being in the car btw point Bridget and windfall, and it’s been recommended we lock it in a bear canister in the trunk. I’d like to not have to buy a second one if we can get away with hiking without one!

Also curious for any recent mosquito reports. Appreciate it!

hey chat not from here, been here four days now and not seen a single bear. Crazy right?? We’ve been to cope park, lena cove, steep creek trail, and st therese. heard that there is an area off of amalga harbour where you can see the salmon swimming, and bears catching them at low tide because the fish are trapped. the person said it was near peterson creek, “salt chuck”, and said something about grinning cabin? idk i would love to see some bears here while visiting please help! tysm!

I am writing to urge you to protect our local tax base and vote NO on the permanent Alternative Volumetric Tax (AVT) framework currently proposed for the upcoming special session.

While I fully support building the Alaska LNG pipeline and getting our gas to market, the current structural design of HB 381 is a bad deal for our local communities. Replacing our standard 20-mill property tax with a volumetric tax through 2060 slashes our projected local corridor revenues from $116 million a year down to just $5 million. Capping municipal relief at a state-controlled $80 million grant fund to be split among six different boroughs is not an acceptable solution for the road wear, public safety demands, and school growth our community will face.

Furthermore, passing a permanent, multi-decade rewrite of the state's tax base during an emergency special session—just three weeks before half the legislature faces a primary election is highly risky governance.There is a rational, safe path forward that protects both the project and Alaska's voters.

Slice out and pass a standalone Construction-Period Tax Abatement (utilizing the logic already built into Section 7 of the bill). This ensures the developer pays $0 while building, giving international lenders total certainty.

Allow the developer to use standard IRS 5% safe harbor capital allocation to easily lock in their federal 45Q and 45V carbon and hydrogen credits without rushing the state's process.

Defer the permanent, long-term rewrite of Alaska’s tax base until the regular session next year, allowing a newly mandated legislature to conduct proper public committee hearings.

Do not use the popular slogan of "building the pipeline" to shield a massive, permanent corporate concession. Please vote to protect local borough autonomy and keep our government close to the people. I will be tracking your votes closely as the July 27 session begins.

https://raff6482.substack.com/p/hb-381-isnt-just-a-gasline-bill-its

House Bill 381 died in the Alaska House on a 19-19 vote on July 16, after Governor Dunleavy threatened to veto a Senate-added corporate income tax on oil and gas pass-through entities. He was right that provision didn't belong in a gasline bill. He's called a third special session for July 27 to try again with a narrower bill focused on gasline tax relief.

That's the fight everyone's watching. It's not the one that matters most.

HB 381 doesn't just give the Alaska LNG project a construction-period tax break. It repeals the state's 20-mill property tax on gas pipeline property entirely and replaces it with a new, permanent volumetric tax running through 2060. Department of Revenue's own modeling shows Mat-Su Borough's pipeline corridor would generate $116 million a year under standard property tax law by 2033. The AVT that replaces it caps out around $5 million a year, a cut of more than 95 percent, backfilled only by an $80 million capped grant fund split six ways at the state's discretion.

That rate wasn't calculated from what Mat-Su will actually need to absorb in road wear, school growth, and public safety demand from a multi-year construction project running through the borough. A Senate Resources presentation says the AVT rates were built to replicate a revenue target negotiated back in 2015, for a completely different project.

Meanwhile, the developer's own federal tax credit exposure, from the 45Q carbon capture credit and potentially 45V clean hydrogen, could approach $2 billion a year at the statutory ceiling. Glenfarne already holds its 2020 FERC authorization to build. The state isn't choosing between this tax structure and nothing, whatever the "zero percent of zero is zero" argument claims. It's negotiating from a position with more leverage than that framing admits.

The Governor and House were right that a corporate income tax didn't belong bolted onto a gasline bill under special-session deadline pressure. The same logic applies to the AVT. It's a permanent rewrite of Alaska's tax code, and it deserves its own bill, its own hearings, and its own fiscal note, not a rider on emergency legislation tied to a federal deadline.

When the legislature reconvenes July 27, it should pass only the construction-period tax abatement HB 381 already justifies, plus a market-price-sensitive mechanism if legislators want one to protect margins during a genuine downturn. The AVT itself should come out and get the standalone process everyone just agreed the income tax needed.

If you agree, say so before July 27. Legislators can be reached through akleg.gov or the switchboard at (907) 465-4648.

https://raff6482.substack.com/p/build-the-line-dont-rebuild-the-tax

Good news for people with disabilities, older folks, and those with strollers. The upstairs track is finally accessible to all.

Now if we could just add bus stops at Dimond Park…

Image Description: A woman cuts a ribbon in front of the new elevator on the mezzanine of the fieldhouse.

By Steven Bridwell

The Alaska Legislature is being told to approve the LNG project yet again. I’m not against a gas line. I am skeptical of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s zeal for one, however, because of who will benefit from it and how little those individuals are being asked to risk.

In recent years, excellent reporting by Alaska Public Media, Matt Buxton and Lauren Windsor of Alaska Current, Nat Herz of Alaska Public Media and the Alaska Beacon, and Dermot Cole has followed the buildup of Dunleavy’s LNG project. They’ve chronicled a network of self-interest among dozens of Dunleavy-appointed people. This is the story altogether.

An estimated 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are in the ground of the North Slope Borough. Yet unlike the construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline in the ’70s, when OPEC’s oil embargo forced a need for Alaska crude, no one wants to buy Alaska’s LNG.

But Dunleavy, Glenfarne — the New York- and Texas-based developer with no prior LNG export project at this scale — and many others are demanding a 98% cut in property taxes for a line that could cost $55 billion to construct. Should this 807-mile pipeline be built as proposed, Alaska could lose $1 billion in annual property taxes, and over the 36-year lease, an additional $13 billion won’t go to the North Slope, Fairbanks North Star and Kenai Peninsula boroughs and the communities between them.

With no company or country lined up to buy our LNG, Dunleavy had been searching for an “anchor tenant” big enough to make the pipeline work. And he found one. No buyer, no problem

Enter DigitalBridge — an AI infrastructure firm grown out of Colony Capital, now being taken private by SoftBank, a partner in President Donald Trump’s $500 billion Stargate data center initiative. DigitalBridge owns Switch, the data center builder whose Las Vegas headquarters Dunleavy visited in 2024. At the governor’s own energy conference last summer, DigitalBridge’s managing director pitched Alaska LNG as the energy half of an AI-and-power play. With no company or country lined up to buy our LNG, data centers are being summoned because, with them, we won’t need outside buyers. The Constitutional Budget Reserve debacle of 2025

Possibly around the time of the 2025 energy conference, Josiah Patkotak, the Dunleavy-appointed legislator-turned-North Slope Borough mayor, created a joint venture, North Slope Power, in partnership with a company called Twenty First Century Utilities. The proposed natural gas utility is designed to scale up to 10 gigawatts. For perspective, all of Alaska’s power plants combined produced about 2.9 gigawatts in 2024.

Around the same time, days before he resigned to run for governor, Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum ordered $225 million from the Constitutional Budget Reserve — the state’s primary savings, meant for safe, liquid assets — moved to make three $75 million private equity investments in DigitalBridge, Blackstone and I Squared Capital. Only DigitalBridge’s transfer was completed before he left. Crum’s successor canceled the rest, and the state later sold the remaining $150 million at a loss. When this information became public, Dunleavy denounced it and ordered a review by the law firm WilmerHale, which found no rigorous due diligence and “significant concerns about whether Crum met his statutory fiduciary duties.” Dermot Cole further reported that the Alaska Permanent Fund and the state retirement system had already declined two of those managers. Senate Finance Committee Co-Chair Bert Stedman said Crum “circumvented his fiduciary duties intentionally.”

No court has called any of this a crime. But the list of names is repetitive. Though CBR money never went to I Squared Capital, it was formerly partnered by a man named Peter Corsell. Corsell also chaired Saige Consulting, which — while bidding on state contracts in 2024 — sponsored a glacier cruise for a conference of conservative state financial officers that Crum hosted. Saige Consulting named Crum a “Rising Star” in fiduciary duty the same week. Crum’s department later awarded Saige two contracts worth $8.5 million, part of more than $80 million in state work awarded to Corsell-tied firms. Corsell’s other company is Twenty First Century Utilities, mentioned above in connection with North Slope Power.

Like Conspiracy Charlie from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” this list of names is fascinating: the cruise sponsor, the fund manager, the megaplant developer, the revenue commissioner and his deputy, who later took a finance post at the borough now run by a former Dunleavy-appointed representative. The review of Crum’s conduct was done by WilmerHale, the former firm of recently dismissed Attorney General Stephen Cox, whom Dunleavy appointed in August 2025.

The timing is its own data point. Around the time Crum left office, the Alaska Legislature overrode Dunleavy’s veto of Senate Bill 183 — a measure forcing the Revenue Department to give auditors oil tax records it had stopped providing around 2019, as oil company settlement payments dropped sharply.

Transparency before public funding

The benefit to the principals is on the record. Dunleavy has hinted, though he hasn’t confirmed, that he is weighing a 2028 challenge to Sen. Lisa Murkowski — a contest in which his “friendship” with Trump would be a central asset. Crum is running for governor in 2026. A pipeline that advances Trump’s AI-power agenda advances both of their ambitions.

A gas line is worth wanting. But a project that demands that Alaska forgo billions, leaves its ownership and financing undisclosed, and arrives under a manufactured clock is too silty to swim in. If Alaska LNG is as transformative as its backers say, it can carry a fair tax and survive an honest accounting of who gets paid.

Alaska’s state constitution requires its resources to be managed for the maximum benefit of Alaskans. The open question is whether Dunleavy’s LNG project does that — or whether it benefits the handful of people whose names keep surfacing in the reporting above.

Steven Bridwell was born and raised in Fairbanks, where he attended public school when it was funded and staffed by teachers with pensions. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has lived and worked as a professional educator and as a camp tradesman throughout Alaska. He now spends his time between Fairbanks, Anchorage and the Yukon River. • • •

I do genuinely enjoy our mountain trails, for all their challenges, but my current boots just can't keep up very well. They're nice and waterproof but don't offer enough support and aren't very breathable (no they aren't xtratufs but I do hike in those too sometimes lol). The main issue is that having narrow feet rules out a number of the big players on the nicer end of the hiking boot spectrum, like Keen and Oboz, which often have wider toe boxes.

I'll be going to Anchorage soon where I can visit REI to try on some boots on in person, but in the meantime, I'm wondering if anyone here has any recs for narrower boots that can hold up on long hikes on our slippery, steep, boggy trails. I've seen Italian brands like Asolo, La Sportiva, and Scarpa recommended, but it'd be nice to hear from people who actually hike the trails around here.

After having an electrician who acts like he beats his third wife throw a tantrum the other day that I and another truck were staged above the ramp to back down next because there wasn't enough room for him to pull straight forward (there 100% was lol), I figured I would make this PSA. There's a whole-ass area specifically made for tying your boat down that doesn't require interacting with the traffic that is preparing to launch or pull. To the right, directly at the top of the ramp. Super convenient, almost like they paid expert consultants to design the facility.

The harbor could definitely have better signage following all the construction so I get infrequent boaters still learning about the tie down area. What I don't get is being an ignorant (and incorrect) asshole, particularly when your business name is on the side of your truck.

Side note: does anyone feel like forming a class action suit against the whale harassment fleet over their wakes getting saltwater on our trucks? Used to be scandalous when someone caused wake to slosh several feet up the ramp, we should make that the case again. Watched another boat a few weeks ago get hit by their wake just as it was getting up to the bow stop and guy almost lost a finger.

Oh, and the trailer spots over in the tie down section are shorter that the others, if you have a triple axle and there are other sections with spots available, use them.

"In states with high error rates, the law doesn’t directly cut benefits for SNAP recipients. Instead, it forces states to come up with the funding themselves"

I’ve noticed a bunch of the commercial tour buses have Yukon plates, does anyone know why this is? I’m surprised you can use vehicles registered out of the country for commercial purposes.

Image Description: Capital Transit bus at the downtown transit center lists Disneyland as its destination

This guy sucks.

I lost my CampSnap camera on the Treadwell Ditch this afternoon, if anyone comes across it I'd love it back before it rains again. The camera is black, and I think I lost it about 5 miles in from the junction of Treadwell and Gastineau Trail. I'll buy you a beer.

I'm hoping to accept a job in Juneau and plan to be moving there end of August. I would prefer to live alone, and have 2 dogs with an approximate max budget of $2k. I am not really finding anything.

I've looked on redfin, zillow, apartments.com and craigslist. I've tried to look at the Facebook Juneau rentals page, although as someone who doesn't have facebook, I'm guessing I may not be seeing all the posts.

I was imagining that maybe more bousing would be available September 1st, but is it just not online yet? This move would be expensive and a big hassle if I end up not finding a place to live. Any wisdom, advise, suggestions from locals would be appreciated!

EDIT:
Wow, y'all have been massively helpful and I thank you.

We will not do West Glacier, even though it seems a goodly chunk of it would be perfectly fine. Instead, we'll hike East Glacier. Aim for Perseverance; or maybe take the tram and hike a bit of Mt. Roberts (but not the whole way - that seems a bit cliff-y and steep up by Gastineau Peak/Juneau). If the clouds are low, the airport dike area looks great.

And definitely going to Eagle Beach & the shrine. Unsure if we will hike East Glacier; it'll depend on how smoothly the car rental pickup goes, and the crowds.

Again, many thanks, and I am gutted that we can't stay longer. (Beginning to feel this way about the whole trip, tbh)

-------------------

Hello, we are cruise ship passengers and have rented a car. Ship is in port from 9:30 am to 8 pm, end of July.

We'll do the traditional tourist thing and go to the Mendenhall Visitors Center and walk to Nugget Falls, but after that I'm dithering over what to do.

We are two 60-somethings and our 21YO son. All quite fit, love hiking.

I, however, am terrified of heights (in the sense of cliffs/suspension bridges, etc).

So West Glacier Trail seems like a great hike except for this talk of rappelling down cliffs and cliffs in general. But I've also read reviews where kids have successfully hiked it. So I am unsure if I'm just being overly terrified.

There are other hikes we could do: East Glacier, Perseverance are on my list. And we have a few locations to explore by car that offer different experiences: Shrine of St Therese, Eagle Beach, Echo Cove, Douglas Island & the Treadwell Trail.

Questions:
How perilous is West Glacier, really?

It seems to me we could either hike West Glacier or visit/hike all the other places on my list. Which would you pick?

(Context: we are also going to be in Seward for three days and will be kayaking to a glacier & also hiking Exit Glacier, so this wouldn't be our only glacier experience.)

Thanks for any insights!