The American journalist who vanished after venturing out for a solo hike along a glacier in Norway was found alive by a search and rescue crew six days after he went missing.
Alec Luhn, a 38-year-old Wisconsin native, was found Wednesday and airlifted to a hospital after disappearing inside Norway’s Folgefonna National Park on July 31, the local Red Cross branch said.
The award-winning reporter was on vacation with his family when he set out on a multi-day trip to backpack across the national park.
But he failed to meet back up with his relatives on Monday.
Luhn’s wife, Veronika Silchenko, said her husband was an experienced outdoorsman, so she wasn’t initially worried when he failed to check in with them over the weekend.
“Alec is basically obsessed with the Arctic,” Silchenko, an Emmy-winning TV journalist, told CBS News.
“He loves glaciers and snow, and he loves explorers, and he’s a climate journalist, so for him it is always that story that now because of the climate change they’re all shrinking, and he’s trying his best to go to the coldest countries,” she said.
But when she still hadn’t heard from him, she reported her husband missing, and local officials launched a search and rescue mission surrounding the Folgefonna glacier.
The search, however, ran into trouble when bad weather forced the team and their helicopter to suspend the operation Monday night.
A volunteer search and rescue team, police, K-9 units and drones renewed the search on Tuesday before it was again suspended due to the weather.
“Difficult terrain, poor visibility, rain and high water levels have complicated access to key areas,” the Norwegian Red Cross said in a statement just a few hours before the crew found Luhn.
“He was located by helicopter crew and has now been transported for medical treatment,” the organization posted on X.
Officials did not comment on what condition Luhn was in.
Luhn, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has reported for various outlets, including The Guardian, The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Scientific American, TIME, CBS News Radio, and VICE News TV.
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