A search is underway for American journalist Alec Luhn following his disappearance during a solo hike in Norway.
Luhn, a climate journalist from Wisconsin based in London, was reported missing by his wife Veronika Silchenko on Monday after he didn’t board his flight home.
She said she last spoke to him on July 31 before he set off on a backpacking trip in the remote Folgefonna National Park in southwest Norway, according to CNN.
According to Silchenko, Luhn was planning a four-day hike with several stops at huts on a glacier. She told CBS Chicago that Luhn sent her a picture from his last known location.
“Alec is basically obsessed with the Arctic. 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,” Silchenko said.
The Norwegian Red Cross said on social media that the search and rescue operation expanded on Tuesday, but heavy rainfall had made navigation difficult.
Local police told public broadcaster NRK that drones and sniffer dogs were being used in the search along with volunteers. The search will continue early on Wednesday.
“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.
Luhn, 38, has written for Scientific American, National Geographic, The Guardian, The New York Times and The Atlantic, among other outlets.
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