The air in Anchorage sliced with a kind of cold that felt personal, a cold that didn’t simply chill the skin but pressed into the bones.
At 28 years old, Nina Caldwell was built for it. Competitiveness was her oxygen; adventure, her compass.
Her battered trekking backpack had followed her across five continents. Her iconic red North Face sleeping bag — always tied to the top — had become a symbol among her followers. To her audience, Wandering Nina was more than a travel blog. It was a manifesto of fearless movement.
She wasn’t alone on that trip. Her partner, Robert Hale, a photographer with an eye for wilderness and a heart tethered to Nina’s unpredictability, documented their journeys with quiet devotion. They planned to spend two weeks hiking part of the Chugach Range, a notoriously rugged sweep of peaks outside Anchorage.
They never finished the route.
Nina never came home.
The last confirmed sighting of Nina was at the Crow Pass Trailhead, laughing, adjusting her gloves, and telling Robert to hurry up because “the mountains won’t wait.”
Hours later, a storm rolled in — sudden, violent, and disorienting.
When Robert contacted Alaska State Troopers two days later, Nina had been missing for 48 hours. Search teams fanned out across the range. Helicopters scanned valleys. Dogs traced the snow-packed terrain.
They found nothing.
No footprints.
No gear.
No dropped camera.
It was as if the wilderness had swallowed her whole.
Robert was interrogated relentlessly — a boyfriend always is. But no evidence tied him to wrongdoing. He stayed in Anchorage for months, organizing volunteer searches, handing out flyers, and pleading with authorities to continue the effort.
But winter came early that year.
And Nina’s case went cold with it.
In the years that followed, Wandering Nina transformed from a thriving travel blog into a digital memorial. Followers posted tributes; some organized amateur expeditions, hiking the Chugach in hopes of finding something — anything.
But time erodes urgency.
Even grief loses its sharpness.
By 2019, Nina Caldwell had quietly joined Alaska’s long list of wilderness disappearances, becoming another mystery in a state that collects them like snowdrifts.
