*** "Odd Arnie" Walks out of Alaskan Bush ***

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 14:12:12 -0900
From: Bruce_Bowler@dot.state.ak.us (Bruce Bowler)
Subject: Good News
     
By PETER PORCO
Daily News reporter
  The saga of "Odd Arnie" turned a trifle odder but a lot happier
Saturday when the Norwegian adventurer, nearly a month overdue
from a long solo trek through Interior Alaska, walked into the
village of Koyukuk - bushed, blistered and 40 pounds lighter.

  Oddarne Skaldebo, a 51-year-old geologist and the object of a
nine-day air and river search that Alaska State Troopers called
off the day before he appeared, was in good condition Saturday
evening, spending the night in a Fairbanks backpackers' hostel.

  The veteran hiker spent two months walking in the Bush. He
suffered had large blisters on his feet but was otherwise in sound
shape, according to those who saw him Saturday on his way from
Koyukuk to Fairbanks. Skaldebo has traveled alone through wild
country on five continents - the reason his friends dubbed him Odd
Arnie - but he had never taken such a journey in Alaska before,
said trooper John Brown.

  Despite being a month overdue and the subsequent search,
Skaldebo wasn't lost. He just underestimated how unwalkable muskeg
tundra and lowland brush can be. "He said the first bit of his trip
was really soggy, really hard for him to walk through," said Danny
Sparrell, a reporter for station KIYU-AM, who interviewed Skaldebo
inside a plane at the Galena airport. "Then it was very thick brush
and he could make only a mile a day.

  Altogether, Skaldebo trekked about 300 miles - 100 more than he
planned - starting Aug. 18th from Wrench Lake, 75 air miles
northwest of Koyukuk. He had planned to finish the journey Sept.
22nd and return to work in Norway three days later.
  
  Rescuers, however, didn't start to look for him until Oct. 9th
because they knew the nature of the country Skaldebo had to cross,
said Mike Spindler, a member of the Galena Search and Rescue team.
"When he was a week and a half overdue, people decided we'd wait
a little longer just because it was such rugged country," Spindler
said.

  The search included 50 hours and 5,000 miles of flying, said
Spindler. Troopers used an infrared system and even flew in the
dark using night-vision goggles. Skaldebo had a GPS - Global
Positioning System - device, but it broke early on, trooper Brown
said.

  That wasn't the only thing that went wrong. At the end of
September, despite rationing, Skaldebo ran out of food. He ate
blueberries and rosehips and then, a two-day walk away from
Koyukuk, found a cabin on a tributary of the Koyukuk River.
"He stayed there for a week so his feet could heal up," Brown
said. The day he left the cabin, he punched a foot through the
river's new ice. He made camp that night, continuing toward
Koyukuk the next day.

  Three miles from the village, he again went through the ice, but
this time up to his waist. "He said he used every last bit of his
strength to make Koyukuk because he realized that if he made camp
he might die," Brown said.

  The first person to see Skaldebo since a Bush pilot dropped him
off at Wrench Lake two months ago was Ernie Esmailka Jr., a 32-
year-old trapper. Esmailka walked out of his house early Saturday
afternoon to tend to his dogs when he saw the leather-clad hiker
sitting in the yard.   Esmailka had never seen a picture of the man
and had no idea what he looked like, but after the commotion the
river search caused a week earlier and the man's tired condition,
Esmailka knew who he was.   "Whoa! You must be that geologist that
was missing," Esmailka said he told him. "I asked him how he was
doing, and he said he was hungry," Esmailka explained. "I said,
'Come in the house. Do you want some coffee? I'll fix you some food.'"

  Skaldebo wanted to dry his boots because he had fallen in the
water. Esmailka gave him sweat pants and dry socks to wear.
"I cooked him about six eggs, he said he wanted it sunny side
up. I made him some toast and gave him some coffee. He told me his
tent was kind of wet and I brought that in," Esmailka said.
Skaldebo had worried before the trip that he might have to shoot
a bear, but he told Esmailka and others that although he ran into
about a half-dozen grizzlies in the bear-infested country, none
threatened him.

  "The first week he was scared of bears," Esmailka said. "He made
noise and whistles and after a week, he got tired of that and just
stopped." What he did want to shoot were birds - so he could eat
them. Although he carried a .44 handgun, he didn't bag a bird. He
will take a shotgun next time he comes, he told the Galena reporter
He'll also take an axe and an emergency locator beacon so searchers
will not have to fly so much looking for him, Sparrell said.

  "He plans to be back next year and he even talked about wanting
to move here," Sparrell said. "He's been wanting to do this for
about 10 years." Skaldebo plans to stay in Fairbanks about a week
before heading back to Norway, troopers said.

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