(NEW YORK) — A search operation is underway in Norway for an award-winning American climate journalist, Alec Luhn, who went missing in bad weather while on a solo hike in the remote Folgefonna National Park.
Luhn, 38, who has worked for The Guardian, The New York Times and The Atlantic, was reported missing on Monday to the Norwegian authorities after he did not appear for a scheduled flight from Bergen to England.
Luhn had been on vacation with his family in the days before he set out on the hike. In England, Luhn lives with his wife, Veronika Silchenko, an Emmy-winning television journalist, who posted on social media urging anyone who may have seen Alec to get in touch.
He set out alone on the hike five days ago, on July 31, from the town of Odda on the northeast edge of the Folgefonna, a wilderness park in western Norway that is home to the country’s third-largest glacier.
Local police told Norway’s public broadcaster NRK that a volunteer search and rescue team, as well as the police, sniffer dogs and drones had renewed the search for Luhn on Tuesday before being called off due to weather conditions.
Bad weather the night before had forced the search with a helicopter to be suspended overnight, local police said.
“The weather started to get really bad around midnight. At that time, it was not reasonable to continue the search up in the mountains,” Tatjana Knappen, an operations manager at Western Police District, told NRK. Knappen said a strong gale was forecast to continue on Tuesday, but it was hoped there would be a possible window for the helicopter to operate.
The search will continue again on Wednesday, police said, according to NRK.
The Norwegian Red Cross said search operations had been ongoing throughout Tuesday. Seven Red Cross volunteers were taking part, it said, noting the search teams were local and familiar with the terrain, describing it as “particularly challenging due to difficult conditions and demanding weather.”
Silchenko said she had last heard from her husband on Thursday afternoon. Luhn sent a photo of himself and said that he was going to try to head towards a hiker’s hut at Holmaskjer on the edge of the glacier, she said. Luhn said he had planned to walk from Holmaskjer to another hut at Breidablikk, and then to Bondhusbreen, during the four-day hike, Silchenko said. But she said it was possible his plans could have changed. It was unclear if he would have attempted to cross the glacier.
Raised in the Midwest, Luhn graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2010 and worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow for around a decade, primarily for The Guardian and The Telegraph newspapers. He later switched to focus on covering the effects of climate change. Luhn is a Pulitzer Center reporting fellow and currently writes for the Scientific American magazine. Along with a number of awards, Luhn also has two Emmy nominations.
Luhn is an experienced hiker who regularly travels to remote and challenging environments as a reporter, also often spending his vacations seeking out wildernesses, his friends and family said. He has trekked as part of a scientific expedition deep in the wilderness in Alaska and visited the Arctic in both Canada and Russia. He has also worked in conflict zones, including in Ukraine and Somalia.
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