Rescuers in Norway have continued the search for an award-winning environmental journalist who has gone missing in bad weather during a solo hike in the remote Folgefonna national park, home to one of the country’s biggest glaciers.
Alec Luhn, a US-born reporter who has worked for the New York Times and the Atlantic, and was a regular Russia correspondent for the Guardian from 2013 to 2017, was reported missing on Monday after he failed to catch a flight to the UK from Bergen.
Norwegian media said Luhn, 38, was holidaying with his sister in Norway and had set out on the four-day hike alone on 31 July from the outdoor centre of Ullensvang on the northern edge of the park, a 550 sq km wilderness in the west of the country.
Local police told the public broadcaster, NRK, that a 30-strong volunteer search and rescue team from the Red Cross, dogs, drones and police were all involved in the search on Tuesday after the operation had to be suspended late on Monday night.
“Weather conditions started to get really bad around midnight,” when a rescue helicopter was recalled amid strong winds and heavy rain, said Tatjana Knappen, an operations manager from Vestland police. “It was not reasonable to continue the search up in the mountains.”
Police said late on Tuesday afternoon that volunteer rescuers had been pulled out because of fast-deteriorating weather conditions but the search would continue into the evening. “We have to put rescue teams’ safety first,” the police chief Svein Buer told VG newspaper.
Luhn is an experienced mountain walker, fit and well-equipped, police said. His wife, the Emmy-award winning journalist Veronika Silchenko, posted on social media on Tuesday asking anyone who had seen him or had information to contact her.
Luhn, who among numerous awards also has two Emmy nominations, was based for many years in Moscow, then Istanbul and now lives in the UK. Specialising in climate journalism, he is a Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Network fellow.
Folgefonna, the third largest icecap in Norway, is on a peninsula famed for its fjords, mountains, rivers, lakes and icefalls. It has been a centre for wilderness adventure since the 19th century, but parts are desolate and can be treacherous especially in poor weather.
