Dave Cawley
Appearances
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
I'm going to take this metaphor one step further by adding trails. Trails are the nerves of the Uintas. They form a network that links many different points. The Uinta Highline Trail is the central nerve, the spinal column. It parallels the backbone of the Uinta crest, from one end of the range to the other.
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Many other trails branch off of it, descending out of alpine tundra through the forested canyons.
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An injured person traveling alone would likely find it difficult to go 10 meters, let alone 10 miles. Keep in mind, Art's perspective is a product of his extensive experience in the Uintas. He doesn't see the range the same way someone like Eric might.
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Maybe so, but that doesn't mean the Uintas are without risk. I told Art I knew of several cases involving people who disappeared in the Uintas. I had come to think of the range as the Uinta Triangle, a place where most visitors come and go without trouble, but where an unlucky few vanish without explanation.
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By backcountry, Art means primitive land, places that require hiking or horsepacking to get to, where the only amenities are the ones you carry with you. Frontcountry, by comparison, is where you can camp right out of your car, with conveniences like fire pits, picnic tables, outhouses, and paved walking paths.
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Most of the Hyuintas qualifies as backcountry, so Art's asking, do people really disappear in those far-flung places, never to return? From my research, I can say it happens. Not often, but more than you might think. Early in my career as a news reporter, I covered the story of a boy named Garrett Bardsley. Twelve-year-old Garrett went on a camping trip with his dad Kevin in August of 2004.
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They visited the Coubrant Basin, a hanging valley a few miles off the Mirror Lake Highway. Here's how former Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmonds described the area at the time.
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Garrett's dad, Kevin, left camp to go fishing one morning. Garrett tagged along, but he slipped at the lakeshore and soaked his feet. Kevin told Garrett to go change into dry socks. Camp wasn't far, just through the trees. Garrett walked into those trees, but didn't emerge on the other side.
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Hayden Peak looks like a massive, derelict castle. The mountain's west face is composed of crumbling buttresses and cliffs, topped by a triangular summit block. It's a prominent landmark that looms over the Highline Trailhead, where Eric Robinson was supposed to finish his hike on the Uinta Highline Trail.
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People poured into the Couberint Basin to look for Garrett over the next few days. The weather took a turn, though. Cold, soaking rain fell. It's possible to experience winter-like conditions any time of year in the high Uintas because of the elevation.
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One night, a dusting of snow covered the nearby peaks. Hope of finding Garrett alive faded.
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Still, the search went on to locate Garrett's body. All the searchers found was a single sock in a boulder field about a mile from where Garrett was last seen.
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The search ended after 10 days of intense effort. At the conclusion, the sheriff offered this advice to anyone who might visit the Uinta Mountains.
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Garrett Bardsley's remains have to this day never been found. His disappearance left a deep impression on me as a young journalist. I'd camped and hiked in the Uintas as a boy myself. I couldn't comprehend how he could just vanish. In the years that followed, I covered stories about other missing people in the Uintas. Some were found alive.
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Okay, let's go back to that question Art Lang asked me during our interview.
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I've tried to pin down the precise number of people who have gone missing in the Uinta Mountains and to determine how many were never found. But that's proved difficult. There are a bunch of jurisdictional boundaries, with different agencies responsible for searches in different parts of the range. Not every disappearance gets reported. Record-keeping gets worse the farther back in time you go.
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And, as I discovered, some missing people are simply forgotten. During my research, I stumbled across the story of a missing man named Lynn Simmons. Lynn was working on a government survey crew in the summer of 1940. The crew was measuring and mapping a square of federal land in the Hyuintas. Lynn had taken this tough job to support his wife Rita and their eight-month-old son.
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Lin wrote about cold mornings where shrouds of vapor hung over the meanders of the Bear River. He talked about a sheepherder who was camped nearby.
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The sheepherder claimed it was a grizzly, but that wasn't possible. Grizzly bears were by that point exterminated from their native habitat in these mountains. There were still black bears in the Uintas, though.
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Julia dropped Eric off at a bus stop 10 days earlier and agreed to pick him up here at the end of his journey, at this day and this time, noon on Sunday, August 7th, 2011. She pulled to a stop in the trailhead parking lot. She looked around but couldn't see Eric, so she and Blake settled in to wait.
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This wasn't Lynn's first experience in the woods, but the Uintas felt more wild than almost any place he had ever been.
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About two weeks after Lynn wrote those words, he and three co-workers went to the top of a mountain called Lamotte Peak. I've been there myself. It's a barren pile of rocks that towers more than 2,000 feet or 600 meters over the surrounding river valleys. And it's where one corner of this cruise survey project sat. A storm came up while they were on Lamotte Peak that afternoon.
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The party hurried down from the summit along a narrow ridge, but Lynn lagged behind. At one point, the others looked back and saw him about a mile away. They waved. He waved back. The surveyors who were in front then descended out of the alpine tundra into thick pine forest. They thought Lynn would follow, but he never made it to camp that night. A search started the next morning.
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It went on for more than a month. Hundreds of people helped comb the mountain until October snow forced them out. Lynn Simmons was never found. I discovered Lynn's story while scouring old newspaper archives. It rattled me because I'd previously stood right where Lynn was last seen without realizing it.
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I filed public records requests, hoping to learn more, but was told all of the original reports were lost. I connected with some of Lynn's relatives, who knew only fragments of the story passed down as a campfire tale. We worked together to get Lynn added to NamUs, the central database for missing persons in the US.
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I share all of this because Lynn's disappearance, like Garrett Bardsley's, shows just how easy it is for someone to fall victim to the Uinta Triangle. Most people who go missing in these mountains are quickly found, but those who aren't run the risk of never being found at all. Julia Geisler kept busy as day one of the search for Eric wound down.
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She pulled out her photos from the John Muir Trail, found a few good shots of Eric, and used them to make a missing persons flyer on her computer. She sent the file to some friends and asked for their help. printing them off on home computers and putting them wherever we could. She gave a stack to Jonathan McCauley.
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Jonathan's the guy Eric and Julia met on the JMT, who had brought pizza in to celebrate Devin's birthday. Part of that trail family. Jonathan was going to drive out to the start of the Henry's Fork Trail, a popular path that intersects the Yuma to High Line at about the midway point. He'd start hiking in first thing the next morning.
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And Julia's friend Devin from San Francisco was booking a flight to Utah, eager to help any way she could.
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That included keeping Eric's wife Marilyn informed. But that was a struggle. It was really difficult to communicate. Julia couldn't get her phone to connect to an Australian number. like it was a nightmare trying to dial for some reason. Instead, she turned to email. For Marilyn, the time difference meant it was already Tuesday morning.
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She was at work, at her job as principal of Volkstone Primary School.
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Waiting for updates by email was agonizing. She felt powerless, unable to help from half a world away. In one email, Julia extended an invitation, telling Marilyn she was welcome to come and stay in Park City while they sorted all this out. The idea felt a bit crazy. Marilyn had responsibilities. Who would manage the school if she were to leave? My assistant principal was overseas at the time.
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Julia knew Eric wasn't the speediest hiker, so missing his deadline by an hour or so didn't arouse any alarm.
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Plus, Eric might pop up at any moment. She didn't want to be stuck in a plane somewhere over the Pacific when that happened. Marilyn had a thought. What about Eric's beacon? He'd bought that EPIRB, the satellite distress signal. She emailed Julia, asking her to ask the sheriff whether they could track the beacon.
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Julia called the Dushane County Sheriff's Office first thing on the morning of Tuesday, August 9th, day two of the search for Eric. She demanded to talk to Sheriff Travis Mitchell.
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Mitchell told Julia the beacon could only be tracked if Eric hit the panic button. That hadn't happened.
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Sheriff Mitchell said his deputies hadn't found Eric at any of the trailheads the day before. Now the first wave of searchers were just about ready to depart on horseback. And Mitchell was going to board a helicopter to fly over and personally inspect each of the passes of the Uinta Highline Trail from the air. They agreed to talk again later that afternoon.
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After hanging up with the sheriff, Julia started calling the local news stations. You know, trying to get people to come forward. She hoped someone, anyone, who'd seen Eric would give her some indication where he might be. It's clear we need more resources and more help. Julia sent another email to Marilyn.
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I'm going to start calling friends to get more people out there, and then hopefully get out there myself, she wrote. I wish the news were better. Art Lang and his buddy Dan McCool were continuing their hike on the Uinta Highline Trail. They were behind schedule, at least according to Art's plan.
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They were on a portion of the trail through a place called Painter Basin, headed for the highest point on the highline, Anderson Pass. Anderson would have been the second major hurdle of Eric's hike. And it's a place he might have run into other hikers because the pass is also a waypoint on the route to the highest mountain in Utah, King's Peak.
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Julia hadn't packed a lunch, and she started to get hungry. Rather than keep waiting, she and Blake drove down the mountain, got something to eat, then returned to the trailhead. All told, it took a couple more hours. Still, no sign of Eric. Noon had turned into afternoon, and now evening. Shadows of the pines were growing long, and a seed of concern sprouted in Julia's mind.
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King's Peak sits on one of the ribs I described earlier. Anderson Pass crosses that same rib just to the north of the peak, in a notch between the peak and the spine of the Uinta Crest. Art and Dan were on their way to Anderson Pass when they heard the rumble of another helicopter.
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Art had crossed Anderson Pass several times before, and he knew Kings Peak was a hotspot for accidents.
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This helicopter passed low enough, Art could see it belonged to an air ambulance company. It bobbed about like a bumblebee drunk on nectar, then moved off to the west, the sound fading as it disappeared over the horizon.
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Art and Dan reached Anderson Pass and were treated to a sweeping view of the next drainage to the west, the Yellowstone Basin.
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Looking down into the Yellowstone Basin from the pass, you feel like you could step off the edge and fall straight down to the bottom of the bowl, a thousand feet or 300 meters below. If you instead look out into the distance, the ribs of the Uinta Range seem to stack one after another, like waves on the ocean, all the way out to the horizon.
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Art took it all in, wondering if Eric might be somewhere within his field of vision.
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Coming off Anderson Pass to the west, the Uinta Highline makes a long traverse on the south face of the Uinta Crest. It's a dramatic stretch of trail cut right into the side of a steep slope way above the floor of the Yellowstone Basin. The trail's just a narrow footpath through talus. That's a geology word describing the piles of shattered rock that form below cliffs.
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Again, remember, Art's used to this kind of place. If you're afraid of heights, this portion of the trail might feel a bit more spicy, especially considering what happened next. There was a couple fingers of snow, steep snow slopes. High-angle snowdrifts, slashing across the trail.
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Most hikers on the Uinta Highline never encounter these drifts because the snow is usually melted out by the start of July. But as I've said before, 2011 was an abnormal year for snow in the Uintas. These fingers of snow were still there in mid-August. They were only 100, 150 feet wide. About 30 to 45 meters. Art looked to see if anyone had cut or stomped a path across the first drift.
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Mountaineers use ice axes to chop steps or as a handhold when traversing steep sections of snow. But they are also crucial safety equipment. Say you slip on steep snow and start sliding. You keep accelerating, unable to stop yourself. If that snow field ends in a cliff or a rock pile, there's a good chance this slide kills you. That's exactly what happened to Eric's friend Alan Beck.
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A trained mountaineer with an ice axe can drive that axe into the snow while sliding, using it like a brake. It's a skill called self-arrest. Art hadn't brought an ice axe or crampons on this hike. He hadn't expected needing them. Neither had his hiking buddy Dan. If either one of them slipped crossing this drift, they wouldn't be able to self-arrest.
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Glissading is a sort of controlled slide, like skiing without skis. But Art could see the talus in this area was too big to glissade on. What's more, Art knew there were bands of vertical cliffs between where he stood on the trail and the basin floor far below. It's uncomfortable to go down at that point. Uncomfortable being Art's way of saying unsafe.
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Down-climbing cliffs without any ropes or anchors while wearing a heavy pack is dangerous.
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But Art figured there had to be a better option. He looked up the slope, to the top of the snowdrift. It seemed he could scramble up that way easier than going down. So that's what he did.
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Crossing this moat would be like walking a balance beam covered with ice. A fall to the left would send you sliding out of control down the snowdrift. A fall to the right would drop you into that chasm between the top edge of the drift and the rock wall, a hole you'd be unable to escape without the help of rescuers with ropes.
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There's no cell service at this trailhead or almost anywhere in the High Uintas. So Julia couldn't call Eric. She told Blake they needed to head home where they could call the local sheriff and report Eric overdue. They came down the mountain at dusk and made that call.
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They made their way back down to the trail on the far side of the first drift. They walked a short distance, then ran into the second one. This snowfield was wider than the first, but a bit less steep. They again considered their options.
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So they traversed straight across the face of the second drift. To do this, they had to kick toeholds into the smooth, crusty surface of the snow, testing each step as they went, compacting the snow under their body weight and hoping it would hold firm. It did. They made it across without problem and completed their descent from Anderson Pass.
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Once at the bottom, Art thought again about the missing hiker, Eric Robinson, he'd learned about just a couple hours earlier. He was a week ahead of us. Which meant the snowdrifts would have been even wider when Eric encountered them, if he'd made it that far. Art and Dan made camp at a spot with a clear view looking back at Anderson Pass. From a distance, the snow looked insignificant.
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But Art couldn't help but wonder what that missing Australian backpacker might have done. Did Eric have the knowledge and experience to find a way around?
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Would Eric have backtracked, gone off trail? Or did he try to cross the snow, slip and slide out of control, landing somewhere in the jumble of rocks below? A boulder pile like that is full of nooks and crevices that could hide a body from view. Which meant Art might be looking in Eric's direction without realizing it.
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It's July 28th, 2023, exactly 12 years to the day since Eric Robinson started his hike on the Uinta Highline Trail. I'm sitting in an SUV with audio producer Nina Ernest as we bounce our way up the long dirt road to the trailhead at Chapita Lake, the very place Eric started his hike.
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We're making this long, dusty drive because I want to try and hike Eric's same itinerary to cross the Uinta Highline Trail. The idea of doing this hike came to me around the start of April. At that time, snow conditions in the Uintas looked a lot like they did in 2011. It was setting up to be another record snow year. I thought I could gain some insight about what Eric might have experienced.
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You've heard me try this approach once already, in New Zealand, and it didn't go so great. I bailed on that hike when it started to feel unsafe. But here I am again.
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Because of the late hour and the lack of evidence pointing to an urgent emergency, the sheriff's office decided not to launch an immediate search. It would wait until the next morning. In the meantime, Julia thought she should let Eric's wife Marilyn know, but she didn't have Marilyn's phone number.
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I hope it works, because I've... Oh, a little thunder roll there. That's fun. I'm not thrilled at feeling a patter of rain on my arms, or at seeing black clouds just off to the west.
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That's a good question. That's actually what I was just thinking of. So, yeah, I've been pretty nervous about this for... A long time. Nervous because of snow. The U.S. government has a network of remote weather stations spread out across the western states. They're called SNOTEL sites, and a bunch of them are in the Uintas. I've been checking the Uinta SNOTELs almost every day.
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Right up to the start of July, it appears I might run into dangerous conditions on the trail, just like Eric.
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I don't think I'm tempting fate, but it doesn't mean that I want to be flippant about the risks either. I put on my pack and prepare to start walking. Nina comes along. We're only a few minutes in when we encounter a problem. Well, that's fun. The trail is flooded out. A heat wave has sent the Uinta snowmelt into overdrive. Water's inundated a section of the trail.
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My plan was never for Nina to accompany me on this entire journey. She's just here to record sound of the send-off. I can tell Nina's not willing to walk away while I'm still wandering around this flooded-out meadow. But I find a place where the water funnels into a little stream I can hop over.
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You know, when there's water across the trail, like, shin-deep water, I don't want to soak my feet right from the get-go. So yeah, you got to kind of work your way around. But it's fine. The highline is actually just on the other side of the stream. It's not like a big turnaround or anything. You've said. I'm sure. Yeah, I'm positive. Nina makes a face at me, a mix of concern and a little doubt.
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I step onto a rock in the middle of the stream and shout goodbye. I'm looking at rain over North Pole Pass. Well, I got to get moving, but... I'll see you in a week.
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I'm on my own from here. Starting from Chapita Lake, a westbound hiker on the Uinta Highline has to cross seven passes. These are the places where the trail climbs up and over the ribs of the Uinta Range, or the spine of the Uinta Crest itself. You've already heard me describe one of them, Anderson Pass, where Art encountered those dangerous snowdrifts.
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The passes are, in order, North Pole, Anderson, Tungsten, Porcupine, Red Knob, Dead Horse, and Rocky Sea. I repeated these names like a mantra as I walked. North Pole Pass. Anderson Pass. Tungsten Pass. Porcupine Pass. Red Knob Pass. Dead Horse Pass. Rocky Sea Pass. That's a lot to remember, so don't worry if those names don't stick just yet.
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For the moment, let's just focus on the first one, North Pole Pass. From Chapita Lake to North Pole Pass is a long uphill ramp. You gradually rise out of the trees into alpine tundra. The top of the pass is a barren plateau. It's no place to dawdle when the weather's bad. The Uintas rise high enough that they make their own weather. Thunderstorms boil up almost every afternoon during summer.
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Remember, Devin is Julia's friend from San Francisco. She looked Marilyn up on Facebook. I'm assuming this is the same Marilyn who is the wife of Eric Robinson, Devin wrote. There's a 16-hour time difference between Utah and Victoria, so Devin's message hit Marilyn's inbox at about 5 p.m. on Monday in Melbourne.
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Lightning strikes are a very real danger if you get stuck in a storm above Timberline, so most hikers aim to cross the passes early in the day. I don't have that luxury as I head for North Pole Pass. It's already late afternoon, and I'm determined to reach my destination on the far side. I push my pace, but end up overdoing it and collapse right at the top.
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At an elevation of about 12,250 feet, give or take. And I gotta be honest, I'm not doing so great. The storm fizzles, thankfully. But I feel like I'm going to puke. I just had to lay flat on my back for about five minutes, just kind of letting my body settle. I'm not conditioned for this hike.
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Earlier in our story, I talked about how I started hiking in my twenties as a way of dealing with some emotional baggage. My first few solo trips felt pretty awkward. It can get boring having no one to talk to for days at a time. On the other hand, being alone forced me to meet someone new. Myself. I started conversing with my own inner monologue. That voice wasn't always the most kind.
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It'd say things like, you've really done it this time, stupid. But other times, I discovered it could be surprisingly compassionate. Hey, that stuff that happened to you as a kid, it wasn't your fault. In this moment, atop North Pole Pass, that inner voice speaks back to me. You'll be all right. Don't give up. I steady my breathing, stand on wobbly legs, and pick up my heavy pack.
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I have a ways still to go in order to reach my intended campsite at a place called Fox Lake. Once there, I pull a microphone and audio recorder out of the backpack. This isn't the kind of gear most backpackers carry. It's heavy and bulky, but I want to be able to record my experiences in the moment and share them with you right from the trail.
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Even though I'm feeling pretty wrecked right now at the edge of Fox Lake, the sunset here tonight was absolutely fantastic. And there's nobody else here. I'd wanted to get here before sundown, because I needed enough daylight to find a specific spot along the lakeshore. I'm camped approximately where I believe Eric Robinson spent his second night on the Uinta Highline.
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Early in the search for Eric, as the local news media started spreading the word, a man named Carmi came forward to report seeing Eric at Fox Lake on the morning of July 30th. That was day three of Eric's walk. Carmi had snapped a photo of Eric. It showed him next to his tent, squinting into the rising sun, holding a mug of tea. It is the last known photo of Eric.
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And I now know exactly where it was taken. This tells me something significant. Eric didn't go far off the trail to make camp. He didn't wander in search of the best vista or the most solitude. It also tells me Eric wasn't moving very fast. It took him a day and a half to travel the same distance I did in a matter of hours. So I've skipped one night and I'm already ahead of Eric's schedule.
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I'm paying a price for that, though. I've got a headache, and I feel a bit nauseous, which could be from dehydration or a symptom of something worse, altitude sickness. That would be a trip-ending problem, so it's imperative I take care of my body in this moment. I hope you'll forgive me. I'm going to make my dinner as I talk here because the sun has gone down, the temperature is...
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dropping and I want to get some food in me and then tuck into bed. I need food, water, electrolytes, and rest. Tonight we are having instant rice, dehydrated refried beans, dehydrated chicken, a little hot sauce, and some cups of water in there, and some crunchy jalapeno slices. The last traces of lavender and gold fade from the clouds as twilight deepens.
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I click on my headlamp and notice the fog of my breath in its beam. It gets cold fast after sundown up here, even in summer. Steam rises from my dinner as well. It's hard to be patient with this rehydration process. I want to just grab it and eat it. But there's nothing worse than dry marshmallow dehydrated chicken chunks, and crunchy instant rice. So we wait.
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My thoughts turn to Marilyn as I wait. I sought her blessing before beginning this journey.
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I'd told Marilyn I hoped to gain insight about Eric's experience, which I could then share with her. Sitting here now, right where Eric did 12 years before, I wonder if he also watched stars emerge while making his dinner. Did he hear a moose foraging in the forest behind, like I do? Or was his mind occupied, thinking of the challenging path ahead?
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Did he harbor any doubt in his ability to make it to the end? Back in 2011, on day two of the search for Eric, Marilyn felt the extreme distance tearing at her. She checked her email over and over, hoping for some word from Utah. Her mind kept going back to Julia's invitation. The idea of dropping everything to fly across the world started to seem less crazy.
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But Marilyn's second-in-command at Volkstone Primary School was still out of the country, not due back for more than a week.
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On the phone, Julia told Marilyn how she had waited all day for Eric.
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It was already Wednesday in Melbourne. Surely her staff could manage a couple of days without her. Marilyn made up her mind. She would travel to Utah.
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She called her kids, who all seemed unenthused with her plan. They reminded her what had happened when Eric was overdue in New Zealand. This was probably the same. He'd turn up soon. If anyone could survive a few days alone in the mountains, it was Eric.
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But Rachel Marsden, the second of Marilyn's four kids, recognized a troubling tone in the messages coming from Eric's hiking friends in the United States.
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Rachel told me she and her brothers, Marty, Jonathan, and David, all worried about their mother's emotional and physical well-being.
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Deja vu. It reminded Marilyn of the call she had received three years earlier when Eric was overdue in New Zealand. She had reported him missing then, only to have him show up a couple days later perfectly fine. He had chided her for overreacting. This would probably end the same way. Or would it? Marilyn felt uneasy.
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Rachel had three kids of her own, the youngest only a couple of years old, but she figured her husband Jeremy could manage.
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Jeremy said he'd take time off work, so Rachel called Marilyn and told her she was coming too.
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Their flight would depart Melbourne at 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, August 11th. That would be Wednesday afternoon in Utah.
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You had to... throw yourself to the universe and just say, I'm getting on a plane and I'm going across the world to look for Eric. That's a lot.
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At this point in our interview, Marilyn paused. as if considering whether she wanted to say the next words out loud. She then started telling me about something that had happened a few days before Eric went missing.
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Uinta Triangle includes immersive field recordings made in real outdoor locations. For the best listening experience, please consider using a good pair of stereo headphones. And if you'd like to build a better picture of the places we visit, you can find maps, photos, and video at uintatriangle.com. That's Uinta, spelled U-I-N-T-A, triangle.com. Find us on social media using at Uinta Triangle.
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Bringing you this story has been an effort years in the making. To support this kind of work, please follow the show and share it with your friends. You can also help us by subscribing to Lemonada Premium right in your podcast player. It gets you access to exclusive bonus episodes. Here's producer Andrea Smartin with a peek at the latest bonus.
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She looked over at the flowers Eric had sent when he departed for the United States more than two weeks earlier. They were wilting.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Uinta Triangle is researched and written by me, Dave Cauley. I also did the field recording. Andrea Smartin is lead producer and sound designer, with contributing producers Ben Kebrick and Jenny Amint. Our main score and original music are by Allison Leighton Brown. Additional voices in this episode from Larry Sespooch and John Smith.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Uintah Triangle is a production of KSL Podcasts and Lemonada Media. My personal thanks to the following past and present members of the KSL Podcasts team. Aaron Mason, Amy Donaldson, Felix Bunnell, Josh Tilton, Kellyanne Halverson, Nina Ernest, Ryan Meeks, and Trent Sell. Lemonada executive producers are Jessica Cordova-Kramer and Stephanie Wittleswax.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
And for KSL Podcasts, our executive producer is Cheryl Worsley. Finally, from me to you, please remember... Wherever your life's trail takes you, none of us ever truly walk alone.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
My name is Dave Cauley. You are listening to Uintah Triangle, an audio documentary from KSL Podcasts. This is the third episode. It's called The Tyranny of Distance. Julia Geisler and her partner Blake Summers returned to the Highline Trailhead at first light on Monday morning, August 8th, day one of the search for Eric Robinson.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
But Eric wasn't there. Julia figured if Eric had come out during the night and hitched a ride into town, he would have left a note.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Julia opened the register box, took out the notebook, and flipped through the pages. She didn't see anything from Eric. Blake was stuffing food and gear into his backpack. He had decided to hike out eastbound on the Uinta Highline Trail, the opposite direction Eric was traveling. He had a goal in mind. Try to start contacting people that were on the trail at the time.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
With any luck, he would find Eric or someone who had seen him. Blake told Julia he'd hike as far as Naturalist Basin, a popular spot about a half day's walk from the trailhead. The basin's near Rocky Sea Pass, the last major hurdle on Eric's walk. It's where Eric might be if simply running behind schedule. So that would have been like his last camp.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Blake set off down the trail as Julia scrounged for supplies to make a sign. She found a scrap of cardboard and wrote the words Hiker Missing on it, along with Eric's name and a phone number to call. She taped the sign to the trailhead kiosk with neon pink duct tape. Then she headed home. On the drive, she realized she couldn't say whether Eric had even made it to the start of the trail.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
The last time she had seen him, a week and a half earlier, he was getting on a bus. Anything could have happened after that.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Maybe the bus had crashed. Or maybe the guide Eric had hired to shuttle him from the bus to the start of the trail robbed him and dumped him somewhere. More likely, Eric might have had some kind of trouble on the trail. Snow conditions in the Uinta Mountains were extreme that summer. The prior winter had packed a record-setting amount of snow in the range.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Slick and dangerous. Julia had never hiked the Uinta Highline herself, so she wasn't sure if portions of the trail might still be buried. If they were... It's technical.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Eric didn't like snow, and he hadn't prepared for it. Julia wondered what he'd do if he encountered it.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
There are at least 20 official trailheads scattered around the perimeter of the Uinta Mountains. Some are hours from the closest town, down rough, unpaved roads with no cell service. Maybe Eric had bailed and hiked to one of those other trailheads. The first thing sheriff's deputies did on day one of the search was drive out to each of those trailheads to check. But Julia wasn't yet aware of this.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
When Julia made it home, she pulled out a copy of Eric's itinerary. It included the name and phone number of the guide he had hired to shuttle him to the start of the trail. Julia called that man, Jeff Stagg, who confirmed he had taken Eric to the Chapita Lake trailhead 11 days earlier.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Stagg promised to immediately go back to Chapita Lake and personally travel the first stretch of the trail looking for Eric. The distance involved meant he wouldn't be able to report back for at least a full day, possibly more. It was already after noon on day one of the search, and Julia wasn't sure what else to do.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
At that very moment, the sheriff of Duchesne County was calling out his search and rescue team. They had orders to head into the Uintas on horseback, but it would also take them time to muster. Meanwhile, a helicopter belonging to the Utah Department of Public Safety lifted off on its way to fly over the Uinta Highline Trail in search of a missing man carrying a ruby red backpack.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
A pair of hikers moved along the Uinta Highline Trail on the afternoon of Monday, August 8th, day one of the search for Eric Robinson. Art Lang and Dan McCool were their names. We were walking the highline just for the adventure and challenge of doing it. That's Art. He's a friend of mine, but I didn't know his personal connection to the Eric Robinson story when we first met, years ago.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
I only learned of it when I saw his name in an official report about the search, and told him we needed to talk. Art and his hiking buddy Dan had started their trek about a week after Eric started his. They were crossing a forested stretch of the trail, a bit west of Chapita Lake, when they heard a helicopter overhead.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
The same chopper I mentioned a moment ago, on the first flight in search of Eric. I think at that point we had six more days to finish. And I want you to hear Art's side of this story, because he saw the search unfold right from the trail. First, though, let me tell you a bit more about Art.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
The air smelled of pine as Julia Geisler drove up the Mirror Lake Highway. The winding two-lane road is the easiest and most popular way for people to access the western portion of the Uinta Mountains. Its highest point is Bald Mountain Pass, where the road makes a hairpin turn on an outcropping of rock right at treeline.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
He's a mountain goat, adept at finding his way through the trickiest of terrain.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Art knows the Uinta Mountains better than anyone I've ever met. But this hike in 2011 was his first time walking the Highline Trail from end to end.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
But as I've said, 2011 was an unusual year. The Uinta Mountains aren't well known outside of Utah, but we're going to spend a lot of time in the Uintas, so it's important to develop a picture of the place. Imagine you're orbiting above the Earth, looking down on the western United States. You see the Rocky Mountains running north to south across Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
The Uintas are a sub-range of the Rockies, a finger that juts out to the left from Colorado into Utah.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Zoom in and you'll notice a barren stripe of elevated rock running through the middle of the range. This is the Uinta Crest, an unbroken spine of ridges and peaks rising above Timberline. It's the backbone. Spurs branch off the crest to both the north and south. They are the ribs.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
The rocks that make up these bones were formed hundreds of millions of years ago when sediment buried deep underground transformed into a rock called quartzite. Then, tens of millions of years ago, a warp in the Earth's crust pushed that buried quartzite upward. As the rock rose, glaciers formed on it, ice chewing away, carving deep basins between the ribs. These basins are called cirques.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Many cirques in the Hyuintas are today above timberline, home to an ecosystem called alpine tundra.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Rounded peaks rise above the forest there, like hulking icebergs floating in a sea of evergreen. So it's pretty striking. It's beautiful terrain. Julia and her partner Blake Summers cruised over the pass, driving by campgrounds, trailheads, and several little lakes.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
The glaciers that sculpted the Uinta Mountains have been extinct for thousands of years. You can still see evidence of them, though, in many little lakes scattered across the range. These lakes are called tarns, and they form the headwaters of creeks and streams, each flowing down out of the tundra into subalpine forest, cutting river canyons.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
If the rocks are the bones, these waterways are the veins. Each cirque, creek, and canyon forms a system called a drainage. That's an area where all the precipitation, all the water drains to a single source.
Uinta Triangle
What Happened to Eric Robinson?
and how far any of us are willing to go for the people we love.
Uinta Triangle
What Happened to Eric Robinson?
From KSL Podcasts and Lemonada Media, this is Uinta Triangle. Follow Uinta Triangle, that's U-I-N-T-A Triangle, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Uinta Triangle
What Happened to Eric Robinson?
From the heights of the Himalayas to the ice fields of Patagonia.
Uinta Triangle
What Happened to Eric Robinson?
But when this Australian trekker travelled solo to an obscure corner of the American West... Eric goes, I'm going to go under this trail, right? Can you go? Yeah, OK, off you go. He disappeared into the wilderness of the High Uinta Mountains.
Uinta Triangle
What Happened to Eric Robinson?
My name is Dave Colley. I'm a journalist and outdoorsman with a passion for missing people. I've followed Eric's footsteps across continents. Scrambling down that rock pile looks like a nightmare. Trying to solve an impossible puzzle. He had a GPS locator with him, which does not appear to have been activated.
Uinta Triangle
What Happened to Eric Robinson?
Along the way, I've discovered this story is about more than a man missing in the mountains.