Ketchikan: The Trails of Ketchikan By MARIE L. MONYAK - Trails, trails and more trails. Ketchikan has no shortage of trails. So the proverbial sixty-four thousand dollar question isjust how many hiking trails are there in Ketchikan? How many can you come up with?

Unfortunately the answer isn't all that easy. There are trails accessible by the road system and trails accessible only by boat. There are developed/improved trails, developed trails, handicapped accessible trails and trails that are just cleared and brushed. Then there are the primitive trails.

Members of the Ketchikan Outdoor Recreation and Trails Coalition (KORTC)- From left to right: Harold Adams, Jim Mitchell, John Dickinson, Kathy Wiechelman, Mike Sallee. Photo by Marie L. Monyak

Some trails are on Forest Service land, some on State land, some on Borough landwell, you get the picture. The number of trails varies, depending on the location and type of trail.

If you had been at the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center last Friday night for the presentation by the Ketchikan Outdoor Recreation and Trails Coalition (KORTC) you would have learned everything you ever wanted to know about hiking the trails in and around Ketchikan.

The answer to the previously asked, sixty-four thousand dollar question is16. It's generally accepted that there are 16 developed trails which are accessible by the road system in the Ketchikan area.

It's amazing that no matter how long you live in Ketchikan there is always something new to learn. Did you know that the trail above the Third Avenue Bypass has a name? Did you know it's called Rainbird Trail? - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Top Stories U.S. News U.S. Politics Alaska Ketchikan

National: Counterterror Plan Must Have Media-Savvy Component, Rumsfeld Says By David Anthony Denny - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says an element of the war against terrorism is being waged through the media around the world.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age," he told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York February 17.

To illustrate how the enemy thinks, Rumsfeld read a statement by Osama bin Laden's strategist, Ayman al-Zawahiri: "More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media . We are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of [Muslims]."

Rumsfeld said the extremists who have targeted the United States and its allies have become "highly successful at manipulating opinion elites" through "media relations committees" and other means. Some of today's "most critical battles," he said, may not be taking place "in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq, but in newsrooms" of key capitals like New York, London and Cairo, Egypt. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Science: Greenland's glaciers moving faster to the sea By LEE BOWMAN - The amount of ice that Greenland's southern glaciers are dumping into the Atlantic Ocean has nearly doubled in the last five years because the glaciers are moving faster, according to a study published Friday.

Using information from satellites to track glacier movement from space, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., calculate that some of the island's glaciers have recently doubled the velocity of their flow to more than eight miles a year.

Taking the faster glacier speeds into account, the researchers calculate in the journal Science that Greenland contributes a half-millimeter a year to the annual global sea-level rise of 3 millimeters a year. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Science: An extra 25 years of healthy life? Scientists say it's possible By LEE BOWMAN - Scientists have demonstrated they can manipulate genes and tweak biological chemistry to slow aging in yeast, nematodes, fruit flies and mice. They anticipate that the same sort of adjustments would work for the aging clocks of humans, but some also caution that more complex creatures may pay a price for living longer.

Aubrey de Grey, a gerontologist at the University of Cambridge, England, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Friday that he feels science needs to make a more coordinated push toward anti-aging medicine.

He compared his approach to restoring storm damage to a house. "This means that an individual who is already middle-aged or even older can in principle be restored ... to a biologically more youthful state."

The researcher said he feels there's a 50 percent chance that, within the next two decades, scientists could develop a line of therapies that would give middle-aged people an extra 25 years of healthy life. "Making 80 like 60 is a reasonable goal, but extending lifespan is really only a side effect to therapies that keep people healthy and robust as they grow older." - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Science: What makes people snore and what to do about it By JANICE GASTON - A snore can rip through the quiet of night like a thunderclap on a cloudless day.

Snoring disrupts sleep and fractures relationships. It causes resentment and hurt feelings. It can drive couples apart, both physically and emotionally.

According to a poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation in 2005, 59 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 65 reported that they snore. More than half of those who reported snoring said that their snoring bothered others. And 7 percent said that their snoring was loud enough to be heard in adjacent rooms. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

The research test facility of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center is under construction in a low spot south of the main University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. Photo by Ned Rozell

Alaska: "Alaska tough" test facility on the rise By NED ROZELL - When the average temperature was colder than minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit for a recent January, appreciation for heated buildings among the 100,000 tropical animals living in Interior, Alaska, known as humans, was boosted.

"That cold spell put shelter in perspective," said Jack Hébert, a homebuilder in Fairbanks who has seen the best and worst of Alaska construction during 30 years of work. He's now using that experience as president of the new Cold Climate Housing Research Center, an organization dedicated to finding products and building methods that work best in the cold.

Hébert recently gave a tour of the research center's test facility, a building workers are now putting together using some of the best cold-weather materials and building techniques known. The biggest names in the business have donated triple-pane windows, wall and roof insulation, vapor-barrier sheeting and other materials for the building. Besides being a place where manufacturers can test their products in Alaska, the building is itself an experiment. There are tiny thermometers known as thermisters running through the walls and foundation, and deep into the soil, to show how materials perform. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters One if By Land... By Dave Kiffer - Friday PM Legendary Groceryman By Coleen Scanlon- Friday PM Dreaming By Charlotte Tanner- Friday PM Wake Up By Kayleigh Martin- Friday PM One if by land, Two if by Sea!! By A.M.Johnson - Thursday PM Eulachon Fishery By George Jackson - Thursday PM A Father's Respect By Rick Grams - Thursday PM Legislation Makes Ethics Process Work By Sen. Ralph Seekins - Thursday PM The Cheney Feeding Frenzy By Bob Cinimel - Thursday PM Laws Can Shield Seniors From Fraud by Rep. Tom Anderson - Thursday PM Gravina Island By Bill Thomas Sr. - Thursday PM Dream or Nightmare? Ketchikan's Bridge to Nowhere By Robert D. Warner - Thursday PM Head in the clouds... By Patrick Branco - Thursday PM In answer to Don Hoff Jr. By Martha J. Gallagher - Thursday PM Kayhi's athletic program By Brad Groghan - Tuesday PM The news from the Muslim world really is scary By Bob Condor - Tuesday PM Isn't that just typical? By Darlene Guzman - Tuesday PM Ooligan By Bill Thomas Sr. - Tuesday PM Free Library Services? By Robert D. Warner - Tuesday PM Best reason to start buckling up By John Maki - Tuesday PM "Thanks" By Jerry Cegelske - Tuesday PM Honoring Our Youth at Elizabeth Peratrovich Celebration By Janice Jackson - Tuesday PM My First Day in Ketchikan By Alan Rudolf McGillvray - Tuesday PM RE: CALLING ALL SEATTLE MARINER BASEBALL FANS By Debbie Otte - Tuesday PM RIDICULOUS bridges By Charlotte Tanner - Tuesday PM Thanks for leaving the porch light on! By Scott Davis - Monday PM A Bridge to Possibilities By Patrick Branco - Monday PM Unleashed! By Pamela Lind - Monday PM Islamists don't understand us ... At all! By Mark Neckameyer - Monday PM Reuniting Communities By Irene Dundas - Monday PM Better ways to spend our transportation dollars By Emily Ferry - Monday PM Gas Prices? By Chuck Moon - Monday PM CALLING ALL SEATTLE MARINER BASEBALL FANS By Carolyn Wilsie - Monday PM Alaska to the rescue! By Bob Harmon - Monday PM What is the cost to our freedom? By Jay Jones - Monday PM My condolences By Susan Smith - Monday PM More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Political Cartoonists Political Cartoons Ketchikan February Calendar Today's Forecast Ketchikan Weather Data New Current AK Weather Map City Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements February 2006 Click on the date to read the stories published on that day. S M T W T F S    30 31 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28         Front Page Archives

Bill Steigerwald: T. Boone Pickens, oil tycoon - T. Boone Pickens Jr. -- who in 1983 as president of Mesa Petroleum mounted an unsuccessful corporate takeover of Gulf Oil -- no longer runs his own independent oil company. But the self-made tycoon from Oklahoma still is very much on top of the day-to-day madness of the global energy business, where prices are spiking, world oil production is said to have peaked and Americans live in daily terror of unfriendly despots in the Middle East and South America.

These days Pickens, 77, is running BP Capital, a successful hedge fund that invests primarily in oil and gas futures, alternative energy and energy-related companies. I talked to Pickens -- who says he went after Gulf Oil not to move it out of Pittsburgh but because he thought it was being so badly managed -- by telephone on Thursday from his offices in Dallas: - More....
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Dave Kiffer: Just a touch of gas - It's safe to say now that the bottom end for gas prices in town is now around $2.70

Sure, there's still a lot of up and down (mostly up, very little down here) to go but you can say that we've had our paradigm shifted enough to accept $2.70 a gallon for gas in Ketchikan.

We still use our cars for umbrellas. We still buy big trucks and SUVs as if they were going out of style. As if!

And while we do blanch a little when the Texaco and Chevron slot machines ring up $60, I don't see folks driving any less. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Preston MacDougall: Chemical Eye on Genes Made for America - Choices. Sometimes you have them, sometimes you don't.

For instance, when my wife started going into hard labor during the delivery of our first child, at one point the pain seemed to increase exponentially. Our Lamaze classes had prepared for us for a "natural" birth, but at the moment I saw fear in her eyes, and sensed she was thinking of escape. I tried to focus her thoughts by matter-of-factly telling her that she "had no choice", and that I would stay and help her through it. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Bob Ciminel: Been There; Done That; Didn't Get the T-Shirt - Back in the mid-Sixties when I was a twenty-year-old submarine sailor, the Navy Submarine Service had a tradition similar to those practiced by many fraternal organizations in those days. When a sailor qualified in submarines and was awarded his "dolphins," the metal insignia worn on the chest, he was expected to undergo a rite of passage known as "drinking your dolphins" the next time the ship entered port.

Once liberty commenced, the newly qualified submariners and the old salts headed for the closest bar, usually the enlisted men's club, to conduct the ceremony. Each former NQP (non-qualified puke) had his dolphins removed and dropped into the largest glass in the bar, which in some cases was a Kool-Aid pitcher. The container was then filled with a shot of everything behind the bar and the lucky sailor had to upend the container and catch his dolphins in his teeth without spilling the contents. The results were predictable. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006  

Michael Reagan: Bruised Egos - The pellet wounds suffered by Vice President Cheney's hunting companion Harry Whittington were mere scratches compared to the damage done to the egos ­ and reputations ­ of the crybabies in White House press corps. They have been mortally wounded, and the wounds are self-inflicted

While the Democrats and the rest of the hate-Bush crowd are joyfully proclaiming the hunting accident as another nail in the administration's coffin, it was the mainstream media who provoked the ire of most Americans who have been treated to a reality show of big media's inflated egos. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006  

Dale McFeatters: Why we celebrate - So what exactly is this holiday we celebrate, in the loosest sense of that word, on Monday?

It is popularly, widely and wrongly called Presidents Day, but the certainty of that designation is belied by the fact that sometimes it is Presidents' plural and sometimes President's singular. It is neither. It is Washington's Birthday, although unless the holiday falls on Feb. 22 it isn't really that either.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management says it is Washington's Birthday and since it is a federal holiday and this is a federal agency talking, OPM has the last word - not that anybody is listening. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006