Search called off for Alaska man missing near Canadian border

State troopers in Alaska have called off the search for a man who went missing several weeks ago from a wilderness lodge near the Yukon border.

John Wipert, 60, has not been seen for the past three weeks. Owners of the Ptarmigan Lake Lodge, where Wipert had been working as a caretaker, reported him missing earlier this month.

The lodge is located about eight kilometres from the U.S.-Canada border, near Beaver Creek, Yukon. Wipert was on his own at the remote site, but somehow disappeared, taking two horses with him.

After a two-week aerial search on both sides of the border, Alaska state troopers say they're scaling back the air search for now.

"Once the foliage and the leaves fall off the trees and clear the way, we'll probably put some planes back up in the air and see if we can see anything that way," trooper Megan Peters said Tuesday.

"We can actually see the ground once the leaves are gone."

Guides working for the lodge say there are many boggy areas and few trails, making travel difficult.

Peters said the troopers will continue conducting a ground search closer to the lodge, to see if they can pick up any hint of which direction Wipert may have been travelling.

"We're going [to] do some searches closer to the home. Maybe he just went to go cut down some trees or something for firewood and maybe perhaps met his demise that way," she said.

"There still is a chance that he just rode out. It's a small possibility, but it's there. But it seems like it's more likely to believe that he went out in the woods and something happened to him."