On Monday Alaska State Troopers in Nome were alerted to two overdue snowmachiners that had scheduled to travel from Teller to Nome and initiated a ground search comprised of searchers from both Teller aand Nome.

The Teller team was initially unavailable according to AST but the Nome SAR team successfully made it to mile 23 before stromy conditions forced them to turn back without locating the travelers. A helicopter was chartered by AST to take up the air search but it too was hamp[ered by the storm and could not fly the search area.

An Alaska National Guard C130 was deployed to search the area and would soon locate the snowmachine near mile 41 of the Bob Blodgett Highway between Nome and Teller, but did not detect any signs of the riders, identified as Charlene Habros, age 34 and Dustin Gologergen, age 55 both of Nome.

On Monday night/Tuesday morning Searchers from Teller attempted to make it to the location where the snowmachine was spotted but were again turned back by poor weather.

Road-clearing crews out of Nome attempted to get to the area, but they were too hampered by the poor weather conditions. They continued to work to reach the area however.

On Tuesday afternoon, searchers were able to reach the snowmachine site and would find both Habros and Gologergen deceased. With the assistance of the Alaska Army National Guard and Nome SAR the bodies were recovered and transported to Nome. The remains are being sent to the State Medical Examiner’s office for autopsy.

Next of kin were notified of their passing.

  deceased, gologergen, habros, nome, search, teller