The perplexing disappearance of Paul Michael LeMaitre from the Mount Marathon race
Paul Michael LeMaitre, disappeared July 4, 2012, Mount Marathon, Seward, Alaska.
Revised July 2024
65-year-old Michael LeMaitre was competing in the Mount Marathon race in Seward, Alaska, south of Anchorage. This was an extreme event, and he was last seen on July 4, 2012, about 200 feet from the top of Mount Marathon, a 3022-foot peak. He was never seen again, and his body was never located despite extensive searching. He was lost without a trace, not even clothing—black shorts, a black T-shirt, and a black headband.
Michael LeMaitre and the Mount Marathon race
Michael was competing for the first time in the 85th running of the Mount Marathon race, with participants running up the mountain surrounded by thick forests and creeks over 3.1 to 3.5 miles. Starting in downtown Seward, racers run a half-mile to the bottom of Mount Marathon, then scrabble about 2,900 vertical feet straight up cliffs and mud and shale before getting to Race Point, an artificial summit point. Then, participants go downhill over snowfields, rock fields, waterfalls, and crags until they reach the finish line and return to the streets of Seward.
There is an entry limit, and around 90 percent of the participants are returnees. A coveted lottery ticket system is in place.
Unusually, in this 2012 event, three people were hurt, including one man who suffered severe head injuries. But until this year, no one had ever died or gone missing on the race.
Tim Lebling warned the racers at the pre-race safety talk, “If you have not been up that mountain before, you should consider going home right now, and you should not be in the race.” But LeMaitre was undeterred. He was fit and healthy, having been a regular visitor to the gym and had finished a 12K event a month earlier. Still, despite the warning, he had never visited the course, and he chose to continue. It was a big mistake with the benefit of hindsight.
Michael LeMaitre vanishes
The race's second wave, including LeMaitre, started at 3.15 pm. At around 5.45 pm on the race day, Tom Walsh, a race steward, saw Michael ascending to the turnaround point with about 200 feet to go.
At this point, the area was getting foggy and cold, but Walsh saw no reason to be concerned about the runner's condition. Walsh asked LeMaitre for his bib number, and he replied, “Five-four-eight.” As he descended back towards the town, he texted race officials: Bib number 548 would be home in about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, it was not to be!
Hours later, his wife, Peggy, called search and rescue teams onto the mountain at around 8 p.m., as temperatures were falling and rain was worsening.
The search
By 2 am, an Alaska State Troopers’ helicopter equipped with infrared radar was scanning the mountain. Searchers worried that if he wasn’t already injured, he probably had hypothermia because of his light clothing, exhaustion and the freezing weather.
The following day, July 5, the 210th Rescue Squadron of the Alaska Air National Guard, which specializes in searching for crashed pilots and missing hikers, arrived with its HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter for another infrared scan.
A team of up to 60 searchers scoured the mountain, looking everywhere, even the other side, away from the race course. But there was no sign of Michael.
Four days after LeMaitre disappeared, the official rescue attempt was called off, though the Seward Volunteer Fire Department kept looking. A cadaver dog was sent into the area, and friends paid for and analyzed high-resolution mountain photographs.
Mountain rescue experts, firemen, state troopers, search dogs, and LeMaitre’s family spent thousands of hours searching the area without a single clue being found.
Even after the official search was called off in mid-July, volunteers continued to search the mountain, including LeMaire's daughter Mary Anne, saying, "Seward has so much meaning to my dad, so here he is, looking out. He's on Mount Marathon somewhere."
Litigation by the LeMaitre’s family
In July 2013, LeMaitre’s widow sued the Seward Chamber of Commerce, which organizes the race, for $5 million and eventually settled in October 2014 for $20,000. Race organizers instituted several new safety measures in 2013, including mandatory signed statements from runners that they’ve completed training runs on the course, a one-hour time limit for racers to reach the summit, and sweeps of the mountain by volunteers after each race wave.
What happened to Michael LeMaitre on Marathon Mountain?
Everyone involved in the Marathon Mountain event asks, how does someone disappear during a three-mile race and be lost forever without a trace?
He was seen near the ascent and, with only 1.5 miles to go, downhill. Several years after Michael disappeared, not one piece of physical evidence has surfaced. He literally vanished off the mountain. Perhaps he fell off a cliff or into a crevice, never to be seen again.
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Sources
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2186377/Michael-LeMaitres-wife-gives-hope-finding-alive-5-weeks-vanished-extreme-mountain-race.html
https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a20793251/michael-lemaitre-and-the-mount-marathon-race/
https://www.adn.com/crime-justice/article/seward-lemaitre-settle-case-missing-mount-marathon-runner-20000/2014/10/15/
