(Rashah McChesney/Chilkat Valley News) Jimmy Thomsen and Kevan Duer process dozens of crabs on a sunny afternoon for the opening of the season’s reopening of the Captain’s Galley food truck on Friday, June 20, 2025, in Haines, Alaska.

Haines holds the record for the hottest temperature ever reported to the National Weather Service in Southeast Alaska. On July 31, 1976, a gauge in town clocked a scorching 98 degrees. 

Friday was the first day of…

Rashah McChesney is a multimedia journalist and editor who has reported and edited newsrooms from the Deep South to the Midwest to Alaska. For the past decade, she has worked in collaborative news as the...