Seward, Alaska, located 125 miles (201.2 km) south of Anchorage, is a favorite getaway for Anchorage residents, and the Fourth of July Mount Marathon Race draws a large crowd of spectators. During the Mount Marathon race, runners climb from sea level to Race Point, 3,022 feet (921.1 m) above the city, and then they run back downhill and race past the cheering crowds along Fourth Avenue in Seward. July 4th, 2012 was rainy and chilly in Seward, but the weather did not dampen the spirits of racers and spectators. People lined the race route up and down the mountain.
Most of the Mount Marathon runners finish the race in about two hours. Michael LeMaitre was in good shape, but he was slower than most of the runners in the 2012 race. Race officials saw him still heading toward Race Point, the turnaround point, three hours after the race began. They estimated he was approximately 200 feet (61 m) below Race Point when they talked to him. They said he was moving slowly but seemed fine, and they told him to go to Race Point, turn around, and follow them down the mountain. Michael LeMaitre was never seen again.
At 6:30 that evening, LeMaitre’s wife began worry about her husband, but race officials told her to wait until 8:00 pm, and if he still wasn’t down the mountain by then, they would begin looking for him. They began searching at 9:00 pm and then notified the Alaska State Troopers. The Alaska Air National Guard joined the search with its Pavehawk helicopter equipped with heat-sensing technology, but no warm bodies were detected on the mountain. For three days, people combed the mountain searching for LeMaitre, but not even a scrap of his clothing was found. The search officially ended after three days, but friends and relatives continued to search for another month with no luck.
Some runners speculate LeMaitre might not have seen the rock marking Race Point and continued up the trail toward the summit of Mount Marathon. Race Point is often referred to as the top of Mount Marathon, but it is actually 1800-feet (548.6 m) below the peak. If LeMaitre didn’t realize where he was supposed to turn around and start back down the mountain, he might have continued up the trail and fallen off a cliff. Race Point Rock was in the clouds that rainy day, and since most of the racers had already completed the race, no spectators or race officials would have been at the turnaround point when LeMaitre reached it. With this scenario in mind, searchers have combed gullies and areas where LeMaitre could have fallen to his death, but so far, no trace has been found.
Missing at Sea
Commercial fishing in Alaska is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and commercial fishing boats perish in Alaska waters every year. Often when a vessel sinks, the fishermen disappear into the icy depths of the north Pacific, and their families must speculate about what happened to them and the agony they endured during their last few minutes.
On January 30th, 1998, the fishing vessel La Conte with her crew of five men was fishing on the Fairweather Grounds in the Gulf of Alaska, 80 miles (128.7 km) northwest of Graves Harbor. The La Conte was a 77-foot-long (23.5 m), wooden-hauled boat built in 1919. The skipper, Mark Morley, ignored dire weather reports in his haste to get back to the fishing gear his crew had deployed a few days earlier. The weather was supposed to improve, and Morley believed the La Conte could handle the 40 Knot (46 mph or 74 km/h) winds and 30 ft. (9.1 m) breakers currently reported on the Fairweather Grounds.
The crew of the La Conte knew the boat had a loose plank on the stern hull, causing the boat to leak, but the vessel was equipped with state-of-the-art electric bilge pumps, so Morley was not concerned about the leak. The boat also had an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) with a water-sensitive switch which sends out a radio signal if the ship goes down. Each crewman had his own personal survival suit, a type of waterproof dry suit designed to protect the wearer from hypothermia if he is forced to spend several hours in the frigid waters of the North Pacific after abandoning a sinking ship. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, a man wearing a survival suit has an 83% chance of surviving 2.6 hours in water temperatures of 38⁰ F (3.3⁰C). Those odds drop to 51% after 4.7 hours.
The La Conte was also equipped with a life raft, but as Morley piloted the boat into the heart of the storm and heavy seas, a rogue wave apparently ripped the life raft from its mount. The crew did not realize the raft was gone until the engine room of the La Conte began taking on water faster than the bilge pumps could remove it, and Morley told the crew it was time to abandon ship. Morley ordered his crew to don their survival suits, and then he sent out a MAYDAY call over the radio and stuffed the EPIRB inside his suit. Since they no longer had a life raft, the men tied themselves together with rope and crawled along the floor as the deck planks buckled. They made their way to the bow where each man threw a leg over the railing. Morley counted to three, and the men jumped just as the ship began to roll. The La Conte sank soon after they entered the water.
The five men bobbed to the surface in violent seas. The collar of a survival suit is designed to inflate and keep the wearer’s head above the surface of the water, but David Hanlon’s survival suit was too big for him, and its collar failed to fill with air. He began swallowing water and lost consciousness. His buddies tried to keep his head above water, but the task proved impossible in the huge seas. Before long, Hanlon slipped out of the rope harness and disappeared beneath the waves. Morley bounced off the hull when jumping from the ship and ripped a hole in his survival suit. Cold water flooded inside his suit, and he began to suffer the effects of hypothermia.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard received the signal from the La Conte’s EPIRB and launched one of the most epic search and rescue missions in its history. Three separate helicopter crews battled winds gusting to 120 knots (132 mph or 212 km/h) to rescue the crewmen. Three of the men were rescued, but Captain Mark Morley fell to his death when he was too weak to hang onto the helicopter’s rescue basket. David Hanlon’s body could not be found.
Seven months later and 650 miles (1046 km) away, on Shuyak Island, a small island north of Kodiak Island, two teenage boys were deer hunting when they spotted something red lying on a bear trail. They walked closer to the object and realized it was a neoprene mitten with teeth marks on the cuff. One of the boys picked it up, and when he noticed it felt heavy, he sliced open the palm of the mitten with his hunting knife and found part of a human hand inside the glove. The boys continued down the trail a short distance, and draped over a bear’s bed, they discovered the top half of a survival suit. The boys called the Alaska State Troopers, who recovered skin and bone fragments from the survival suit and sent this evidence plus the fingers found in the mitten to the Alaska state crime lab. The name Tomboy was stenciled on the back of the survival suit, and troopers soon learned the suit had been loaned to one of the fishermen on the La Conte. Eighteen days later, the medical examiner confirmed fingerprints from the fingers found in the mitten matched those on file for David Hanlon. The counterclockwise current in the Gulf of Alaska had carried David Hanlon’s body from the Fairweather Fishing Grounds 650 miles (1046 km) to Shuyak Island where it washed up on the beach, and a Kodiak Bear dragged away what was left of the body.
Recovering even a small part of David Hanlon’s body was nothing less than a miracle. If he hadn’t washed up on Shuyak Island, his family would know he drowned, but they would have nothing of him to bury. The cold north Pacific usually does not give up its dead, and it is not uncommon for ships to be lost without a trace. Like the interior of the state, the ocean surrounding Alaska waits for humans to make a mistake and then devours them without mercy.
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