By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
A Kake man who went missing near his Kupreanof Island community Thursday was found dead Monday morning after a weekend search effort that drew support from Kake, Sitka and Juneau.
Alaska State Troopers said David Dalton, 55, died from exposure to the elements. He was found dead near Sitkum Creek, several miles south of Kake.
“He was a very nice person, always smiling at everybody,” Joel Jackson, president of the Organized Village of Kake and incident commander of the four-day search, told the Sentinel by phone today. “He was a very nice guy. He was always ready to smile, always ready to help. The kind of person no matter who you come across, he’d talk to them and laugh.”
Abigail Brown, the acting fire chief in Kake, said the search began Thursday afternoon when Dalton didn’t return from an outing.
“We got a phone call Thursday at 6:30 p.m. that he was overdue by a day and we went out,” she recalled. “I had started calling my fire department and the mayor to start getting people to go look...We were informed that he had taken off while his girlfriend was at work and left a note saying, ‘I love you and I’ll see you after,’ so we were thinking he may have gone for a hike.”
Dave Dalton. (Photo provided)
Starting from where Dalton was last seen in town, search parties found Dalton’s car on a forest road with a thermos of coffee on top and warm clothing inside, Brown said.
“He likes to hike, he likes to camp, he’s spontaneous with his hiking and camping,” Brown said of Dalton. “He had a lot of friends here, you can see him around town all the time. “No matter how his day was going he always had a smile... My husband and him were good friends.”
Dalton’s body was found Monday two and a half miles from where his car had been located. There had been freezing weather in the area during the time he was missing, Brown said.
“It’s been overcast and some clear skies. I do know for sure that Friday night was 24 degrees,” Brown said.
The terrain of the search area is rough and broken, complicating rescue efforts, Jackson said. “It’s about the roughest country you could possibly come across,” Jackson said. ‘“I don’t know you’ve been out there in Sitka, our terrain is similar to that though you guys have more mountains… This place was flat for the most part but has a lot of broken ground, there are gullies… and sometimes you don’t see them in the dark. So it’s very broken up and brushy, a lot of devil’s club – that’s terrible terrain.”
Local searchers looked for Dalton without any luck on Friday, stopping after dark when there were still 20 people searching the woods.
“It wasn’t a very good night,” Jackson remembered.
Efforts stepped up over the weekend as a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter ferried four members of the Sitka Mountain Rescue team to Kake. The chopper crew combed the search area with a forward-looking infrared sensor, which detects heat signatures, USCG spokesperson Lexie Preston told the Sentinel.
“For us, that entailed having one of our helicopters do a search pattern in the area and then there was another instance where we transported one of the ground search and rescue teams from Sitka to Kake to assist with the search,” Preston said.
Sitka fire chief Craig Warren said the local mountain rescue team was responding to a request by the troopers.
“The state troopers are the ones who are charged with search and rescue in Alaska, and when they ask, we’ll be available to go. We’ve sent dive rescue teams, search and rescue teams, fire rescue teams all over. We’re always here to help out,” Warren said.
The team flew over on the Coast Guard chopper Sunday afternoon and were back in Sitka by Monday morning, Warren said.
A Seadogs team from Juneau found Dalton’s body, the state trooper report says.
“Those Seadogs, I can’t say enough about them, they did a great job... One of the things that seems to be common from people from the outside was how lucky Kake was to have so many volunteers and caring people to come out for this rescue,” Jackson said.
“Kake’s well known for this, no matter what’s going on,” he said. “Like the search and rescue, we had over 40 people there, probably about 30 in the woods and 10 support people. People just come all out and it’s the same way with funerals. Before COVID the whole community gym would be full, and that’s over 200 people easily and after a funeral we’ll have a potluck,” Jackson said,
“We’ve had a tough 2021, we’ve lost a lot of people,” he added. “None of it was from COVID, just people that were sick.”
“We really appreciate all the outside help. They responded very quickly and we’re very appreciative of Sitka Mountain Rescue crew. They were a great help, a great crew,” he said.
Jackson said the community pulls together when there’s a need.
“Every thing’s a community operation. When help is needed, everybody’s there, no matter what. People at home were making coffee, making sandwiches whatever and they send it out to the searchers and keep them fueled up,”Jackson said. “But I can’t express my gratitude to those people who were in the rough searching, because I know that was a very rough job.”
