This week’s featured missing person is Jondalar Washington, a Native American youth of 17 years old who vanished from St. Michael, Alaska on May 19, 1998. St. Michael is a tiny town (pop. 401, sez Wikipedia) on the central Alaskan coast.
As to what happened to Jondalar…from what he was carrying when he went missing, I would guess he was going hunting/camping. It seems highly likely that he got lost or injured in the wild. As I’ve said before, Alaska is a very rough place and basically eats people from time to time.