All eyes in Alaska this week are on the 1,000-mile race between Willow and Nome. But off the Iditarod Trail, conversations and debates were under way about the state's future and what, exactly, it might look like.
News this week: Dispatch staff writer Craig Medred heads out on the Iditarod Trail, conservatives revive abortion wars in Alaska Legislature, a big jet lands at little Merrill Field and Alaskans get a debriefing in a medically-recognized condition known as "Arctic hysteria."
It's that time of winter in Alaska when productivity peaks: policy gets a vote or dies, SnoGo warriors road trip across the frozen tundra and canine athletes get ready to run 1,000 miles or longer.
Stories that mattered in Alaska this week: Gov. Parnell announces another deadline is met in his quest for a gasline, a look at the Alaska GOP's infighting, a new exhibit that "finally tells the story of Alaska aviation" and a school janitor puts a face on school district cutbacks.
Winter endurance training, Alaska Republican in-fighting, Wayne Anthony Ross and Yukon Quest: Here's a look at the biggest, boldest and most popular stories from Alaska Dispatch for the week of February 2-8, 2012.
From oil taxes and the governor's State of the State Address to wood-paneled fireworks at Alaska Republican Party HQ and restoring a new, delicious, wild species to Alaska's wilderness. Miss a week and miss a lot.
Wild Alaska reared its head this year, as Alaskans enduring record snowfall, bitter cold and, briefly in Fairbanks, dangerously polluted air. But weather wasn't the only thing happening during 2012.
From the jump-off to Alaska's 2014 U.S. Senate race to the suicide of a confessed serial killer to a significant temblor in Alaska's largest city, the first week of December was one of big headlines on the Last Frontier.
