The Alaska Long Trail is a work-in-progress, 500-plus mile multimodal route connecting trail systems from Seward to Fairbanks. Apart from planning and constructing new segments, the AKLT project ...

As they ask legislators to support 21 projects, advocates of a 500-mile trail network say there’s been enough progress to draw long-distance hikers this summer.

Dunleavy in 2022 vetoed $10.5 million in Alaska Long Trail funding that lawmakers had approved for the 2023 fiscal year. That left seven projects with $4.22 million in funding in that year’s budget.

Eventually the Alaska Range relents and gives way to the boggy interior of Alaska. On the other side of the last set of mountains is where it intersects with the Stampede Trail.

The Alaska Long Trail was initiated a couple of years ago by Alaska Trails, a nonprofit organization headed by Steve Cleary, working with longtime trail advocates. It would be a 500-mile overland ...