Searchers find body of missing man in Herbert River

The man found dead Tuesday from an apparent fall on the Herbert Glacier Trail was a nursing supervisor at Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Forty-two year old James “Steven” Reese had worked at the hospital about ten years. Bartlett Spokesman Jim Strader says he was popular with both patients and staff, and the whole hospital is shaken by his death.

“They’re talking today about his sense of humor, his sense of caring, his sense of giving,” Strader said. “A lot of people consider Steve to be so typical of the best quality in nurses, a person who thought more about other people than he did himself.”

Strader says Reese had two children.

He helped out with the annual Project Homeless Connect event put on by the Juneau Economic Development Council, and was a member of the Juneau Human Rights Commission from 2005 to 2007.

Reese was reported missing at about 1:30 Tuesday morning when he failed to show up for work. Juneau Police found his car at the Herbert Glacier trailhead and notified Alaska State Troopers. Searchers from Juneau Mountain Rescue and SEADOGS found his body eight hours later in the Herbert River, below the glacier.

The body is being sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Anchorage for an autopsy.

Reese is the second person to die on the Herbert Glacier Trail this summer. In June, 30-year-old Adam Webb of New York was found dead, also from an apparent fall.

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