B.C. climber missing in Alaskan mountains
VANCOUVER • An accomplished B.C. alpinist spent 10 years training for the Alaskan mountain range where he disappeared last week, a family friend said.
Marc-André Leclerc, 24, of Squamish, B.C., and his climbing partner Ryan Johnson, 34, of Juneau, Alaska, have been missing for nearly a week.
Bad weather in southwestern Alaska has delayed the air search for the two men.
Treya Klassen, a close friend of Leclerc’s father, said the young man has had his eye on climbing Mendenhall Towers for years.
“He’s seasoned to do this. He’s trained to be able to survive a lot. He trained, so hopefully he’s holed up in a cave, waiting out a storm,” she said.
On Wednesday morning Alaska State Troopers were alerted that Leclerc and Johnson had not returned from climbing the mountains, which are located in the Mendenhall Ice Field north of Juneau.
They had been dropped off near the mountain ridge on March 4. Leclerc posted an Instagram photo from near the summit of the 2,100-metre main tower the following day, but officials said he hasn’t been heard from since, even though they were supposed to hike and ski back to Juneau by Wednesday evening.
There was a significant snow storm in the region on Wednesday and neither of the men were equipped with a satellite phone or emergency beacon.
Some of the men’s gear has been found, but the search for the men is ongoing.
Megan Peters, a spokeswoman for the Alaska State Troopers, said if the weather allows, a helicopter would try to reach the north side of the Mendenhall Towers some time on Monday.
Poor weather on Friday and Saturday hampered the air search, but a helicopter crew was able to fly over the south side of the towers on Sunday before the weather closed in again.
Peters said rescue efforts remain dependent on the weather.
“Sometimes we have situations like this where people are unaccounted for and we don’t yet know why, and hopefully we will find them and they’ll be OK. But until we find them, we won’t have a better idea of what transpired,” she said Monday.