Alaska State Troopers say that their death investigation into the death of a Fairbanks man who died outside of Selawik Hot Springs currently shows no suspicious circumstances.

27-year-old Travis Loughridge, of Fairbanks departed Shungnak at approximately noon on Saturday on his way to Fairbanks. When he departed, he was on a black Ski-Doo 800 and was towing a blue plastic sled.

Loughridge intended to travel to Fairbanks via Huslia and Galena. 

Two days later, on Monday, Loughridge was reported as overdue when he did not show up in Fairbanks as scheduled.

A Hasty Team deployed from Shungnak and took to the trail between that community and the Selawik Hot Springs. No sign of Loughridge was detected between Shungnak and Selawik Hot Springs, which is itself about halfway to Huslia.[xyz-ihs snippet=”adsense-body-ad”]On Tuesday, ground-searchers, this time from Huslia, set out on the trail in an effort to locate Loughridge. At about 7 pm, searchers located the frozen remains of Loughridge close to the Selawik Hot Springs. A further search would locate Loughridge’s Ski-Doo nearby at a water crossing.

It appears that Loughridge had attempted to cross the water and broke through. As a result, in the frigid temperatures, Loughridge succumbed to hypothermia sometime later.

Although Loughridge’s next of kin has been notified of the circumstances of his death, his remains, as of Wednesday, have yet to be recovered because of extreme low temperatures.[xyz-ihs snippet=”Adsense-responsive”]

  death, fairbanks, hot springs, huslia, hypothermia, search, selawik, shungnak, ski-doo