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StrangeOutdoors 11/22/17 StrangeOutdoors 11/22/17

The strange disappearance of Thomas Seibold from Gates of the Arctic National Park

Thomas Marco Seibold disappeared September 27, 2012, Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska

Revised July 2024

Thomas Marco Seibold lived in Three Lakes, Wisconsin and traveled to Alaska in June 2012 to put years of survivalist training into practice in the state's backcountry. A native of Germany, Seibold had spent the previous six years teaching and training at the Teaching Drum Outdoor School. This survivalist education center teaches Native American values, weather forecasting, shelter building, and primitive hunting and gathering techniques.

During this time, Thomas almost died in the Minnesota Boundary Waters due to injuring his leg with an axe. He nearly bled to death before emergency personnel could reach him. While his friend went for help, he told him to stay put so that his leg would not bleed as quickly, but Thomas tried to walk out on his own anyway. He had a risky side to his personality.

During the wintertime, he would spend days or weeks at a time in the forest, and he would live in primitive, handmade shelters and live off a handmade snare line. He made his clothing and gear from animals he had eaten. In summer, he would stay out for an entire month in the wilderness, which he had been doing for years in the Wisconsin Northwoods. He was described as incredibly capable in the wild, quiet and kind and cheerful, a gentle soul with a powerful drive to live the way he believed was best.

He spent much of this time under the tutelage of the school's founder, Tamarack Song, who described Seibold as a very experienced outdoorsman and a "wandering spirit."

To make the trip to the Arctic Seibold took a six-month leave of absence from the outdoor school. In September 2012, Thomas headed for a cabin just outside the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Alaska. He left and headed into the National Park, where he was never seen again.

Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.

Thomas Seibold’s trip to the Brooks Range

Thomas began his trip at an Alaskan Native fish camp in the state's southeastern part and traveled north along the Tanana River near Fairbanks, all while living on the land.

By September 2012, Seibold had arrived in the northwest Alaska village of Ambler. From there, he trekked about 30 miles up the Ambler River to the cabin home of a woman and her 13-year-old son, whom his mentor, Tamarack Song, at the outdoor school had connected him with.

The cabin was in the Brooks Range just outside Gates of the Arctic National Park. The Schiebers, who owned it had built a comfortable home where they lived for almost 20 years, from 1984 to 2003, and raised four sons.

What is and where is the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve?

Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve is a U.S. National Park in Alaska and is the least visited national park in the United States. It is the northernmost national park in the U.S. (the entirety of the park lies north of the Arctic Circle) and the second-largest at 8,472,506 acres. The park consists primarily of portions of the Brooks Range of mountains. It was first protected as a U.S. National Monument on December 1, 1978, before becoming a national park and preserve two years later, in 1980, after the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act was passed. The park has no roads because of its remoteness and lack of supportive infrastructure.

The trip to Gates of the Arctic and the disappearance

On September 27, 2012, Thomas said goodbye to the Schiebers and headed to the Gates of the Arctic National Park. That was the last time he was ever seen.

He was expected to be back in touch between the end of October and the beginning of November, with November 10 being the cut-off date to catch his flight back to Wisconsin on November 15. Something happened that prevented Thomas from following his plans of trekking 30 miles to Kobuk, where he would take his plane back to Fairbanks and then on to Wisconsin.

The search for Thomas Seibold

Alaska state police were alerted on November 11, 2012, when he failed to attend the flight. They quickly focused their search near the Ambler River and Ulaneak Creek confluence, where they believed Seibold may have built a base camp.

Searchers at the Kotzebue post, headed up by Sgt. Duane Stone immediately launched a search and was initially confident in finding Thomas. He had camped alone in extreme northern wintertime climates before, including reindeer hunts in Norway in minus 25°F temperatures. Thomas was highly trained in primitive survival skills, including building snow shelters, ice safety, making fire, and orienteering without a map or compass.

The journal in the cabin

Troopers found Thomas's diary in a cabin. The last entry was on October 7, when he stated that he was preparing for a multi-day exploration trip. The Troopers found no evidence of him being at the cabin after that approximate date. In it, he described hiking and camping higher up in the mountains to explore a potential campsite. He also talked about cleaning and preparing wood at the cabin for the colder weather ahead, suggesting he was planning to return there.

The SAR (search and rescue) team inspected the cabin and found that he had taken most of his gear, including at least one 22 caliber rifle and enough meat and provisions to last him a while, but found no sign to guide them to his whereabouts. Due to the severe weather conditions (-23 degrees F), the short daylight hours, and the area's remoteness, the search faced big logistical issues in getting planes to the target areas. Snowmobiles could not be used in the search because there were only 3 inches of snow on the mountainous terrain.

On November 20th, the Alaska State Troopers made one last effort to find Thomas. Until then, they had been flying a two-seater Super Cub, a slow-flying plane ideal for the valleys. However, it had trouble negotiating the winds in the highlands, where Thomas was drawn. They used a Piper Navajo, a six-seater, to put four or five spotters up in the air.

After three days of searching, one plane found a circle drawn on a gravel bar far up the Ambler River, 8 miles N of Ulaneak creek. They landed and checked whether it could be the “O” from SOS, yet found no indication that the circle was connected to Seibold. Thomas could have made the sign for himself to mark a place where he left provisions. Because the circle has such a solid meaning to Thomas, it seems more than possible that he etched the sign. The plane returned to the site a day later to explore the surrounding area for more clues and to take photos. But there was nothing found.

After six flights over 13 days, the Troopers suspended their search on November 24 as temperatures hit minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit. However, family and friends took up the task after they had read about successful rescues of others who survived in Arctic conditions for up to 49 days without food, equipment, or training, and Thomas had at least some of all three. The family and friends contracted privately with two of the bush pilots previously employed by the Troopers.

From the beginning of the search for Seibold, whose disappearance is one of the most mysterious in Alaska, questions had centred on where exactly he was headed when he last left the cabin on or around October 7. He probably headed to the upper Ambler River drainage, also called the "highlands".

Analysis of belongings

On November 29, the Troopers handed over Thomas's remaining belongings from the cabin to the next of kin. An assessment of those belongings and subsequent interviews with Ambler-area residents who met Thomas revealed three new clues:

A missing map section that Thomas may have had with him indicates he was interested in exploring the headwaters of the Imelyac, Amakomanek, Cutler, and Redstone Rivers, along with the Ambler.
When he left the original cabin, Thomas handed the owner a book he had just finished reading: The Last Light Breaking by Nick Jans. A well-worn section describes the traditional Eskimo routes through the same headwaters area as on the missing map.
Area residents told Thomas alluring stories of the headwaters area's beauty and wildlife, and Thomas read several other books on the area, including Seth Kantner's bestsellers.

A quote from Thomas's last diary entry: "After I've read a lot about…this area, it's exciting to actually be here, and to see the things with my own eyes."

Seibold also wrote about the possibility of rafting down the Ambler River, up which he'd traveled in an outboard-powered canoe, to catch a flight out of the small village of Ambler itself. Usually, this would be easy to do.

Alaska Pacific University wilderness instructor Roman Dial, who had paddled the Ambler in a small, one-man inflatable boat called a pack raft, describes the river this way: "Below the Ulaneak (Creek), the river slows and then braids and slows on its way to Ambler." However, October 2012 was not a normal year in Northwest Alaska. The region had heavy rain from late August into September. So, although he had built a raft, reports indicate he believed it was too treacherous of a challenge.

What happened to Thomas Seibold?

Seibold's decision to abandon the idea of floating out because of changing water conditions illustrates a man thinking rationally and coherently about the realities of travel in the Alaska wilderness. It would strengthen the assumption that Seibold was not a wild-eyed adventurer but someone who did not take undue risks.

Was Thomas injured whilst hiking, succumbed to hypothermia, or was he attacked by wolves or bears? Most wildlife, like bears, would be safely tucked up in their dens or hibernated at this time of the year, so an animal attack would be unlikely.

All these things are possible in the Arctic, and when the temperature drops so low in the area, there is no room for error. But Thomas was carrying a firearm, it seems. Seibold's story likely ended like that of Chris McCandless, whose body was found in an abandoned bus not far off the George Parks Highway in 1992. McCandless was a young man from a well-off East Coast family who starved to death on the edge of the Alaska wilderness. His story was later made famous by author Jon Krakauer's 1996 book "Into the Wild'', which was made into a movie by director Sean Penn in 2007.

Controversy about the disappearance

There was some controversy about the search efforts and the reluctance to engage with the Native American population.

Ricko DeWilde, a young Alaskan entrepreneur who grew up in the Athabascan village of Huslia, south of the search area, and ran his own Fairbanks-based clothing business, said, "From what I talked to people, they didn't even know someone was missing out there."

Some village search-and-rescue volunteers in the area told Alaska Dispatch they were never asked to help in the search, although they did hear about it through the grapevine. Respected Native elder Walter Sampson, once the head of Kotzebue's now-closed Civil Air Patrol unit, admitted he and a friend flew their own search because they thought too little was being done.

DeWilde said, "Just flying through the air isn't going to do shit. You gotta get some foot soldiers in there. ... But troopers, they've got so much pride. They never want to work with Natives. Those guys living there, they've got ways to find people, and even if the guy was not from out there, I think the Natives would want to get his body out of there."

Will Thomas’s remains ever be located? In this huge area of nearly 8.5 million acres, it seems unlikely. Once you enter the Gates of the Arctic National Park with the few that venture there, it’s straightforward never to come out again.

Thomas Seibold’s case remains unsolved, and he was declared legally dead in 2013.

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