Tennessee family continues search for man who went missing near Deadhorse in 2022

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Steven Keel was excited when he planned his first caribou hunting trip to Alaska. He and his hunting partner — both of whom hail from Dover, Tennessee — had gone on multiple long-distance hunts in Colorado and Wyoming before, but Alaska was brand new.

Two years after that trip, however, Keel’s wife Liz is still searching for her husband.

“You know, you always worry when they’re going on a long-distance hunt,” she said. “But [this] was just another long-distance hunt – going to have a great time, come home in a couple weeks, and have a lot of stories to tell and some caribou meat to share.”

Liz said she trusted the pair were well within their abilities to survive the long-distance trip west of the Dalton Highway near Deadhorse. Keel and his partner, she said, departed Fairbanks on Aug. 19, 2022, traveling north up the Dalton in a rental van they eventually parked alongside the highway to hike into the wilderness.

They set up tents for the week and embarked on multiple trips from that base camp, searching for caribou herds. According to Liz, Keel’s partner carried an InReach satellite device to keep their loved ones back in Tennessee updated on their progress.

“Steve was not interested so much in electronics,” she explained, “and so, his hunting partner, Bryan, pretty much handled the satellite phone and would just send messages out [that] everything’s OK.”

Those types of messages were sent throughout the week, informing Liz that both Keel and his partner successfully managed to bag a caribou.

Nearly 10 days after their hunting trip began, though, Liz received a disturbing message stating her husband was missing.

“Brian reported to me that Steve was missing; then, he hit the SOS on his satellite phone, which alerted authorities,” Liz said. “They did a plane and helicopter search, you know, and they had all the heat-seeking tools ... and basically found nothing.”

A few days after Keel’s hunting partner returned to Tennessee, Liz said he talked to her in person about the events leading up to Keel’s disappearance.

According to her recollection, he said the pair were hiking back from their farthest hunt site, with Keel carrying a heavy amount of caribou meat in his backpack. The weight of the backpack was becoming too much for Keel to continue carrying, so he set it down intending to return for it the next day.

“They proceeded to their original campsite,” Liz said, “ate and got cleaned up and spent the night.

“Then, in the morning, Steve decided to go back after the backpack with meat in it — which was about 7/10ths of a mile from their campsite — and just disappeared, vanished.”

According to Liz, local authorities never conducted a ground search for Keel, focusing instead on an aerial search that resulted in locating Keel’s tent and the backpack full of meat he had set down two days prior.

Immediately after Liz received the message that Keel was missing, two of her sons flew up to Alaska to help his hunting partner search for him.

They went through his tent, taking inventory of all his items, before searching around the lake at the campsite, as well as the area where the backpack had been left.

There was simply no sign of him.

The following summer, in August 2023, a team of volunteers was conducting another ground search of the area in an effort to find Keel, when a cadaver dog alerted the group of something in the lake.

The alert — along with a sonar image indicating something was indeed in the lake — prompted Alaska State Troopers to send the Alaska Dive Search Rescue and Recovery Team to the area.

A search by divers of the lake’s floor determined the object in the sonar image depicted something that was “not human remains,” according to a written statement shared by the State of Alaska Department of Public Safety in September of the same year.

Still, the Keel family still hasn’t given up hope of finding Steven and bringing him home.

Another search was conducted by volunteers this past summer, which Liz said provided some additional insight. There was no assistance from local authorities in that search.

Liz said she hopes her husband’s disappearance, and the struggle she and other loved ones have faced trying to find him, sheds light on the lack of search-and-rescue resources in the state.

“I understand it’s a very large state, a very vast area, and I know a lot of people go missing,” she said. “I just feel that the state as a whole really needs to look at dedicating more resources to missing people.

“There’s the problem that’s been presented,” she added, “but who’s working on the solution?”

After the news of Keel’s disappearance started spreading, Liz said perfect strangers — from local Alaskans to people down in Florida who traveled north to assist — came out of the woodwork to volunteer time, effort, and equipment in the search for her husband.

She said she’s grateful for the help she has received, and said her family will continue their efforts toward bringing Steven home, conducting searches in the area he was last seen until they find him.

“We just want to bring him home,” Liz said. “There’s nothing in it for us except to bring him home, where he belongs.”

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