Francois Guinot , ‘the crazy Frenchman”, was born in Maiche, France about 1979. He first appeared in Seldovia in late 2012. He told people he had walked, canoed and bicycled across Canada and through Alaska, and planned to reach Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
In January 2012 he turned up in Mayo, Yukon after getting lost on a solo trek that became a harrowing adventure.
After wintering in the Yukon, he crossed into Alaska and made it to Fairbanks. Then he found a bicycle at a Fairbanks dump, pedaled to Homer and made his way to Seldovia.
Francois spent about about a year in Seldovia, living in makeshift shelters, empty cabins and his tent. He got to know everyone in town and often visited right around dinner time! He borrowed skis and bicycles and had more harrowing adventures, all the while trying to work out a way to navigate to Russia.
Someone gave him an old aluminum skiff that he tried to turn into a sailboat, with a wooden mast and plywood rudder. Someone else offered to let him use his pedal-powered boat.
Eventually, he found two busted kayaks at a dump and somehow used the parts to make one whole kayak seaworthy enough to navigate across Cook Inlet. In the fall of 2013, he was bouncing around the Lake Iliamna area.
He spent much of the winter living in Kokhanok, on the south shore of Lake Iliamna, taking care of a small dog team and sleeping in a tent on Gary Neilsen’s property.
“Sometimes when it was too cold he slept in my steam bath,” Neilsen said.
Guenot’s English was strong and he was pleasant to talk with, Neilsen said. “We’d stay up until 3 a.m. talking philosophy.”
He worked hard. But in some ways, he seemed to be dangerously naive, Neilsen said. “He once told me he was going to turn my dog team loose after feeding them (on a mushing trip) so they could play,” Neilsen said. “I said, no, no, no.”
Once, he said he was going to go on a walk. With minimal gear, he left to circumnavigate Lake Iliamna on foot, traveling over rotten spring ice, Neilsen said. He was gone for about three weeks but came back in one piece. “We told him he was the luckiest man in the world. That he should be playing the lottery, he was so lucky.”
In May, Guenot set off on another adventure. He first told Neilsen that he intended to kayak to Perryville, hundreds of miles away on the south coast of the Alaska Peninsula.
“He could not get it into his mind the distances involved here,” Neilsen said.
It’s not clear where Guenot settled on going. But he had a kayak, personal gear and about two months of food, Neilsen said.
He was last seen alive in early May in the Bristol Bay area, immediately northwest of Kodiak across the Shelikof Strait.
After that, there was no trace of Francois until June 20, when park rangers from the Katmai National Park found what is thought to be the kayak that was used by the Frenchman. The kayak was found along an area known as the Shelikof Strait. Further search resulted in the discovery of a waterproof bag that was found around three miles south. Following the discovery of these objects, the U.S. Coast Guard used an aircraft and a vessel to search the area. The search was eventually called off, as there was no sign of Francois.
By August, it was clear that Francois Guenot was in trouble, as no one had heard from him in four months. This led to his brother and father traveling to Alaska to inquire about the whereabouts of their loved one. His family was reassured by the fact that none of Francois’ personal items were found – pointing towards the fact that he could still be alive.
On September 8, the decomposed remains of a person were discovered on a beach on Shuyak Island. A volunteer with the Kodiak Island Trails Network came across the remains while he was cleaning marine debris on the beach. Upon further investigation, and the matching of dental records, it was eventually deduced that the human remains were indeed of Francois Guenot.
It wasn’t until November that the State medical examiner could confirm Guenot’s identity through dental records.
Everyone who knew Francois agreed that he seemed to be doing exactly what he wanted to do – he told Neilsen once that he had worked in a bank in France and hated it.
“His philosophy was ‘I’d rather die in the ocean than die chained to a desk like a dog.’”
Outside Magazine published a very lengthy, full-color article about Francois