Jenna Schnuer

Anchorage Daily News: From Wee Tots to Trained Professionals, There’s Room for Every Artist at the Alaska State Fair

Enter the Alaska State Fair through the green gate and there’s no avoiding the instant assault on your senses. Even before the flashing lights of the rides and games fan out in front of you, the scents of sugar and barbecue smoke smack you headlong. Yet on this grim gray afternoon, it took the stunningly loud pop of the Mash-a-Mouse game’s oversized balloons to snap me out of what had become an overwhelming desire to take a nap.

Even a Monday at the fair can feel very Monday.

Gray day or not, I maintain that any adult in need of a one-day pre-winter vacation from reality should head out to Palmer on the second Monday of the fair season. Solo.

Read the piece.

National Geographic Travel: The breathtaking beauty of Alaska's Gates of the Arctic National Park

Close your eyes. Imagine an Arctic landscape. What do you see?

Even for an experienced tundra traveler like photographer Kiliii Yüyan, the 13,238-square-mile Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve—which sits in the Alaskan interior, above the Arctic Circle—can be hard to picture.

“I think there’s this sense that the Arctic is a vast, barren plane,” says Yüyan. But the park, which protects parts of the 600-mile-long Brooks Range, is ridged with “incredibly photogenic and majestic” mountains unlike the coastal plains that make up most of the Arctic. “You’re in a true wilderness.”

Read the rest of the piece on NationalGeographic.com.

National Geographic Travel: Retracing the Explosive History of a Remote National Park in Alaska

Standing on a beach in late May 2018, surrounded by her team members and gear, Laura Stelson thought, “What have I gotten myself into?”

An archaeologist who started working for Katmai National Park & Preservetwo years earlier, Stelson was about to lead a four-week expedition, retracing historic routes by a National Geographic explorer in the 1910s. The modern-day expedition’s goal was to find and manage evidence of the trips a hundred years ago as well as the populations that had lived in the area before it was forever changed by a massive volcanic explosion. Stelson’s expedition would cover at least 200 hiking miles, using eight different base camps along the way.

Read the rest of the piece on NationalGeographic.com.

Fortune.com: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Impacts Seasonal Tourism Businesses

When you run a seasonal tourism business, there’s no making up the revenue later.

Colleen Stephens, president of Stan Stephens Glacier & Wildlife Cruises in Valdez, Alaska, grew up with that knowledge. 

As the coronavirus epidemic started to spread this past winter, Stephens watched carefully to see how it might end up impacting Alaska’s short tourism season. The company—which has three other full-time employees and a team of seasonal employees, all from the town of Valdez (population 4,000)—usually sends day cruises out between mid-May and mid-September. That’s just four months to take in a year’s worth of revenue with the company’s two 149-passenger vessels. Approximately 75% of the day-cruise passengers come from outside Alaska.

Fortune spoke with Stephens for a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, to find out how she’s navigating the pandemic for her business and crew.

Read the Q&A on Fortune.com.

Edible Alaska: Farm UFall 2017

When the new crop of farmer hopefuls arrived at Calypso Farm in Ester last April, there was no soil in sight. The farm’s acreage remained buried under thick snow. “Everything was dead,” says California native Holly Brookings. Interior Alaska doesn’t give up on winter easily.

The Farmer Training Program would start May 1, but for several weeks more, the students would just have to imagine climbing up and down the soil terraces, planting rows of flowers, vegetables, herbs, and, soon enough, crouching down to thin and weed the plants to encourage abundance.

Read the piece, the second of a four-part series, on Edible Alaska.

The New York Times: Outside Anchorage, a Chef Makes the Case for Local Alaskan CuisineOct. 29, 2017

Twenty-three miles south of Anchorage on the Seward Highway, the first glimpse of Froth & Forage’s turquoise roof comes two mountainside highway curves ahead of the restaurant’s gravel parking. Though the weathered wood building looks like the barbecue shack it was in a past life, it is now home to a 22-seat restaurant headed up by a chef who wants to prove that a restaurant in south-central Alaska can thrive using local ingredients or, at least, other small local purveyors, instead of goods delivered from, as Alaskans call it, Outside.

Read the rest of the piece on The New York Times site.

Edible Alaska: Home SliceSept. 2, 2017

During the first couple of years after moving to Anchorage from the east coast (NYC, mostly), I cobbled together a list of restaurants that could quell at least some of the missing-there and homesick-for-certain-restaurants feelings and hunger pangs that welled up.

One thing that seemed like it should be fairly easy to find eluded me: why couldn’t I find a pizza place that felt a little more like those back home?

Find out where I found my perfect NYC-in-Alaska slice.

Delta Sky: Time Out: AnchorageJune 2017

With Anchorage’s snow and chilly temps lasting far longer than those of most lower 48 cities, locals take their summers very seriously. While the rest of America slows down once the season hits, Anchorageites go full tilt. Nature offers up extended hours of daylight—22 at the summer solstice—making it easy to go, go, go. There’s no time to be tired and no excuses for not doing some learning, hiking and plenty of tasting. Although more cosmopolitan than first-timers expect—there’s a Nordstrom and a sizable performing arts center—the city never lets visitors forget they’re in Alaska. The Chugach Mountains rise high to the east, bush planes zip overhead and, now and again, a moose wanders downtown.

What to do if you have a day off in Anchorage? I've got answers.

Edible Alaska: Farm USummer 2017

The first of four pieces that will take readers through a year of the farmer training program at Calypso Farm & Ecology Center. The Ester, AK-based program "brings together traditional in-the-field education with an extensive curriculum ranging from farm business plans to animal husbandry, blacksmithing, and seed saving. 'The main thing I left there with was this confidence and inspiration and drive to go out and start farming on my own. And I did,' says Stephanie Stallman, a Minnesota resident who went through the program's launch year."

Read the piece on the Edible Alaska site.

Sierra Magazine: The Best Backpacking PodcastsMarch 22, 2017

Whether you’re still knee-deep in snow (as we are here in Alaska) or already stopping to smell an abundance of spring flowers (show-offs), backpacking should be on the brain. It’s just about high season for hitting the trails, and there’s no time like the present to start gathering your gear and upping your skills. Not sure how to get started? Hit Play on these podcasts. And if you’re a seasoned backpacker seeking to go bigger this season—hitting tougher terrain for longer periods of time—you’ll find wisdom in these episodes, too.

Read the piece on SierraClub.org.

Extra Crispy: Cancer Bites, So I Bit BackNov. 7, 2016

The cookies—neatly frosted half black, half white—came in a brushed metal tin stamped with the Dean & Deluca logo. They were thick, dollar-coin-sized versions of the normally super-sized, cakelike black and white cookies that, as a New York City-area kid, had long been my go-to comfort food. Rugelach and macaroons rated high too, but I’m sure Jewish kids from the Los Angeles area remember them fondly as well. Montrealers too. And all of America owns chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies. Black and whites belong to NYC, and I was in need of of as much comfort as I could get.

After opening the tin that came with the day’s mail, I cried. I was weeks into a new role: breast cancer patient, 43 years old and just 11 months into my life in Alaska—which I’d finally moved to after falling in love with it a decade earlier on an expiring frequent flyer miles-motivated trip. My new home city, Anchorage, is 4431 driving miles away from NYC’s delis, bagel bakeries, and bodegas. This was the cookie version of my friend coming over to sit with me, to just listen.

Read the essay on Extra Crispy.