“On November 1, 2025, at 11:20 am, the Alaska State Troopers received a report that three men riding one snowmachine, and two 4-wheelers north of Kotzebue went through the ice near Lockhart Point. One of the men made it safely to shore, one of the men was rescued by searchers and medical personnel and is now being transported to a local area health clinic, and the third man is missing. All three men are from Kotzebue. Prior to AST being notified, multiple local EMT personnel and local community members were already on scene, rendering aide and searching for the third man. The Northwest Arctic Borough Search and Rescue and Kotzebue Fire Department are responding,” said the Alaska State Troopers C Detachment in a statement on Sunday.

In an update they later wrote that one of the men, 46 year-old Elmer Brown, had died after being rescued from however the hell they found him. Kotzebue is north of the Arctic Circle, the sun will rise at 10:02 AM local time and stay up until 5:04 PM, giving the locals seven hours to do something to try to find the other guy. What that is was not explained. Guess they have to go through the motions and say they’re looking for him by some means other than driving snowmobiles on the goddamned sea ice which he fell through. Maybe it’s just sending drones up to do laps and see if his hat might be floating in another hole in the ice. Then they can take a closer look to confirm it’s a hat.

That could be a promising lead on whether the man’s body might be somewhere under the ice near where the hat was spotted. It would be something like a form of closure for his family and friends.