FYI: We just got our American Airline award reservations for MUSH. We got First/Business class awards. No problems at all. Plenty of availability right now.

American has 3 flights daily from Dallas to Vancouver and 1 flight daily from Chicago to Vancouver.

I checked www.expertflyer.com and came up with the following availability:

Aug 25 & 26:
DFW-YVR: 2 out of 3 flights available in biz; 3 out of 3 flights avail in coach
ORD-YVR: flight is avail in both biz and coach.

Aug 27-30: All flights from both DFW and ORD to Vancouver have seats in both Biz & Coach available for awards.

For the return, you'll have to use your American miles on Alaska Airlines. I'm not 100% sure how to check availability on Alaska, but I had no problem getting 2 first class seats from ANC-ORD.

1st/biz class seats are 45,000 miles each. Coach is 25,000 miles each.

Good luck. Let me know if you need me to check Expertflyer for specific availability.