(Rashah McChesney/Chilkat Valley News) Alaska Department of Transportation equipment operator Justin Cox pulls Kristen Brumfield’s car down from the top of an avalanche near 16 Mile of the Haines Highway on Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, near Haines, Alaska.

At about 8:15 a.m. Friday, Haines school counselor Kristen Brumfield was in her Nissan Xterra about halfway through her 34-mile commute south along the Haines Highway. Then the whole world turned white. 

“I took my foot off…

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...