Rachel Marsden

Whilst we were initially, you know, thinking things might be okay, I think the concern at the other end probably quickly mounted and, yeah, the decision was made to go.

You know, she's five foot two. She's pretty stoic. She's not a needy person. She would never ask or want to impose herself. They agreed someone should go with her. I was the only sibling not working in a job. It was the easiest for me to up and just leave like that.

And I just spoke to Jeremy about not, you know, about mum and not wanting her to travel alone and feeling concerned for her emotional well-being and that I didn't want her to do that by herself.

It's very scenic, and that's the whole reason Art was walking the highline.

To the west of Porcupine Pass, the Uinta Highline crosses the Oweep Basin. Oweep is a Ute Indian word that means grass. The floor of this basin explodes with greenery and wildflowers during the brief alpine summer. That makes it a popular place for sheepherders. Art looked down into the basin and saw a trampled mess.

A huge herd must have recently moved through the Oweep, chewing all that grass right down to the dirt. The Highline Trail disappeared among countless paths etched into the turf by hooves. Art's mind went to Eric. He had probably come to the Uintas with an assumption.

Eric knew a fair bit about sheep. They're a major part of Australia's agriculture economy. Same with New Zealand. And Eric had trekked around sheep in both places. But those ecosystems are a lot different than the alpine tundra of the high Uintas, where vegetation is very slow to recover from the impacts of grazing.

Eric probably hadn't anticipated needing to tell the highline apart from countless sheep trails.

Art and Dan descended from Porcupine Pass and began crossing the Oweep Basin. As expected, they soon found the highline proved impossible to follow.

They went along this way for a while, finding and losing traces of the High Line, before coming to a tall wooden post standing alone in the tundra. It marked an intersection where another trail met the High Line. But the signboards were cracked in half, sitting on the ground. They were illegible, having been worn smooth by the elements. Art was outraged.

I wasn't very good at that. The flight was full, and the crew couldn't accommodate an upgrade. To make matters worse, Marilyn's travel agent hadn't been able to book two seats side by side, so Rachel and Marilyn were seated apart. But they eventually managed to talk one of the young men into swapping places. Rachel looked at Marilyn.

No, they don't. The U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report in 2013 saying the Forest Service had a persistent backlog of deferred maintenance on its trail system. It amounted to more than $300 million in work that hadn't been done.

That hasn't improved in the decades since, and areas deep within the backcountry, like the Uinta Highline Trail, are less likely to see routine maintenance because of how difficult and costly it is. Art realized this dilapidated trail intersection could have confused Eric, sending him off on the wrong path. He made a mental note of the spot.

Art and Dan kept moving west, following the Highline Trail, when they could find it. They eventually caught up to the sheep herd at a place called Lambert Meadow. The meadow's enclosed on three sides by high ridges, making it a sort of natural corral. The Duchesne County Sheriff had seen the same herd during his helicopter flyover the day before.

His chief deputy had checked with the Forest Service, which manages grazing in the Uintas, to find out who owned the animals. They belonged to a rancher in Wyoming, but that's not who Arden Dan found tending the herd.

Many of the herders who tend flocks on the forests and rangelands of the Western U.S. are migrant laborers from Latin America. They come to the States on temporary visas and are entirely dependent on their bosses for food, supplies, and communication. They have very little contact with the outside world. Art asked if the herders had seen an Australian man with a red backpack.

He didn't get a straight answer, but it wasn't clear if the shepherds even understood the question.

I wanted to talk to their employer myself, but he died in 2013, so I have no way of identifying these herders or hearing their side of this story, assuming they are still in the country. All I can say is they showed no interest in joining the search for Eric, but there's a good reason for that. Tending a flock is a 24-7 job, and shirking that responsibility could have got them fired and deported.

They also probably wanted to avoid attention because sheep grazing in the Hayuintas is controversial.

She had witnessed her mom go through some hard experiences in life, including the breakdown of the marriage to Rachel's own father. Having been divorced in a complicated process. She had also watched Marilyn find her independence and discover new love with Eric.

The Hayuintas are wilderness. That's not just poetic language. It's a legal term. But what does that mean? And why are there sheep in the wilderness? The answer has everything to do with a concept called multiple use, and it has its roots in the history of the Hayuintas. The Uintas are the ancestral lands of indigenous Shoshone and Ute peoples.

The word Uinta even comes from a northern Ute word that translates as pine forest. A band of Utes known as the Uinta Ats hunted and gathered in these mountains for centuries before European contact. But in the 1820s, fur trappers entered the Uintas in search of beaver pelts. They were followed a decade or so later by Mormon pioneers.

The Mormons were religious exiles who founded their new Zion, Salt Lake City, just west of the Uintas. Their numbers swelled, putting them in direct competition with the indigenous tribes for land and resources. Bad blood soon boiled over into open warfare. the Mormons petitioned the U.S.

government to intervene, so in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln set aside the south slope of the Uinta Mountains and a vast arid stretch below as a reservation. Ute Indian bands were relocated, sometimes at gunpoint, to this reservation. The interior of the Uinta Range was only vaguely known to Anglo-Americans at the time.

They didn't start filling in their maps until a series of government surveys in the 1870s People in power soon realized the range was a rich resource. Tens of thousands of sheep and cows poured into the mountain meadows.

the ecological damage went beyond erosion. Ranchers exterminated all of the gray wolves and grizzly bears in the Uintas. Livestock fouled water sources and spread invasive weeds. Something had to be done. So in 1897, the federal government created the Uinta Forest Reserve, one of America's first national forests.

The government tried to ban sheep from the reserve at first, but that prompted fierce pushback. So the feds relented and agreed to allow grazing with some limits on when, where, and how many animals were allowed. In practice, almost nothing changed.

President Teddy Roosevelt opened the lands of the Ute Reservation to homesteaders in 1905, and he seized back the tribe's lands in the Uinta Mountains.

That scratchy old recording is actually President Roosevelt's voice from a speech more than a century ago. It sounds terrible because it was recorded on a wax cylinder. What Teddy was saying was the government needed to promote prosperity in rural communities by making farms and ranches more productive.

Theodore Roosevelt's often remembered today for protecting America's national parks, prioritizing conservation and recreation.

It hadn't all been roses and romance. Eric's drive to hike and his desire to have Marilyn by his side caused friction, as you've already heard.

But President Roosevelt also formed the U.S. Forest Service and gave that agency a mandate to manage national forests for multiple uses, not just recreation. The Forest Service was supposed to balance the competing interests of industry, local communities, wildlife, and the environment.

The agency immediately started making trails in the Uinta Mountains on behalf of sheepherders, hunters, and hikers.

By the 1920s, people were also petitioning the Forest Service to provide roads to the most scenic mountain spots, like Mirror Lake in the high Uintas. Let's have the road through that wonderland, one newspaper writer demanded. The government obliged. It started construction on what is today the Mirror Lake Highway. But some within the Forest Service began to worry.

They saw roads were like rabbits, rapidly reproducing. Pavement threatened to pierce every last wild place. One of these rangers put together a horsepacking trip into the heart of the High Uintas in September of 1930. He wanted to define the boundaries of a proposed primitive area where no new roads would be allowed. And he invited his 19-year-old daughter, Dorothy Rutledge, to come along.

Dorothy wrote this account of the trip, read by a voice actor.

I love Dorothy's story because she went out in the wild during a time when that was not expected of proper young ladies.

This lovely basin is the same place Blake Summers told the Duchesne Sheriff he wanted to look for Eric Robinson. The basin below Dead Horse Pass. The quartzite rock of the Uinta Mountains varies in color from tan to pink to purplish-gray. The hues around Dead Horse are dreary, like the color of a bruise.

Dorothy started up the pass the next morning. The trail went up the face of a steep, rock-strewn slope. It did a switchback on the top of a cliff, where the quartzite gave way to crumbling beds of blue-green shale.

At one point, her horse slipped on the shale, almost tumbling over the cliff.

But in the end, Dorothy made it over safely. And she gushed about the whole experience.

Several newspapers published Dorothy's story. Articles about the new High Uintas primitive area said all forms of business enterprise were to be excluded within its boundaries. But then, in fine print, they acknowledged cattle and sheep grazing would be allowed to continue. The principle of multiple use gave the Forest Service no other choice. A few decades later, in 1964, the U.S.

Congress passed a law called the Wilderness Act. It defined wilderness like this.

The new law allowed Congress to create wilderness areas. Wilderness lands were supposed to be places where the greatest priority was protection of the natural environment, and they were more permanent than primitive areas, which could be easily undone. The Forest Service immediately proposed protecting the Hyuintas as a wilderness area, but that pitch went nowhere for political reasons.

Western states that were home to most of the nation's public lands were often hostile to the creation of wilderness areas. Opponents accused conservationists of trying to kill off the sheep and cattle grazing industries. During the 1970s, several western states even tried to seize control of federal public lands, an effort called the Sagebrush Rebellion.

It failed, but the rebellion tends to flare up again every decade or so. The lack of formal wilderness designation didn't stop hikers and horse packers from pouring into the Uintas in ever greater numbers.

Long-distance hiking underwent a renaissance during this same period, as equipment became lighter and smaller. But going on horseback never went out of style.

It took 20 years, but a Utah-specific wilderness bill finally made it through Congress in 1984. President Ronald Reagan signed it into law.

With that signature, the High Uintas Wilderness came into being.

The High Uintas were already spoiled in the eyes of many wilderness advocates, but they cheered having stronger protections against new roads, logging, and mining. Still, they didn't get all they wanted from the new law. It didn't restore the native wildlife, like gray wolves and grizzly bears that had been exterminated from the range.

And the law explicitly said multiple use meant grazing would be allowed to continue. You may be wondering why I've taken you on this tangent about sheep. It's with purpose, I promise. Sheepherders will come up again later in our story, and I think it's helpful to understand the fault lines that sometimes divide different groups of outdoor enthusiasts.

I live in Utah, a state blessed with amazing mountain and desert landscapes. Anyone who spends time exploring those places develops strong opinions on how they should be managed. I have talked to sheep ranchers who see themselves and their families as responsible stewards of those lands. In many cases, they are.

But I have also seen the impacts of overgrazing in the high Uintas, trail damage, erosion, litter. I even came across the remnants of a sheepherder camp during my hike on the High Line, following Eric's footsteps.

Piles of pine needles in the fire rings told me no one had been there yet that season. Abandoned junk from summers past was scattered around.

I guess I should take a photo of the garbage. If you have ever visited a national park in the U.S. or camped in a national forest, you've probably seen a sign that said, Leave No Trace. That public relations campaign has roots in the Hayuintas.

The Forest Service first teamed up with the Boy Scouts of America back in the 1980s to teach scout troops that were headed into the Hayuintas how to minimize their impact on the land. I was one of those Boy Scouts, and I took the message to heart. My wilderness ethic is embodied by the slogan, take only photos, leave only footprints.

But I found more than footprints during my hike on the Uinta Highline. At one spot, I came across a huge food cache.

I wasn't mad at the ribeye or the 24-pack of Budweiser, just baffled. The meat and alcohol were bobbing in icy water at the inlet of a small lake, deep in the wilderness. Someone placed it there to keep it cold. It was too heavy to have been carried in by a backpacker, so it must have come in on horseback. But there were no people or horses in sight.

Whoever dropped this cash intended to come back for it. But when? They didn't leave a note. I imagine they planned to build a big bonfire on the delicate tundra, scarring the earth, leaving their empty aluminum cans scattered about.

Now that love and loyalty faced their toughest test.

There is a responsible, discreet way to leave a food cache. This was not it. Look, I know I'm giving off old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn energy right now, but I'm passionate about this. Wilderness matters to me, and not just because I enjoy solitude. We protect these spaces on behalf of other living creatures, too. That's the sound of Wapiti, the Rocky Mountain Elk.

I made this recording at a spot on the south side of the Uinta Crest. At the time, domestic sheep herds were still far away on the north slope. I wouldn't have caught these elk otherwise because they won't share space with sheep. That is so cool. It was a large herd, moving through a lush meadow about 100 meters or 350 feet away.

Even at that distance, some of the elk were alert to my presence and stood guard protecting their calves and yearlings.

Elk were nearly hunted out of the Uintas in the late 1800s. They've rebounded, but a Uinta Highline hiker is still far more likely to run into thousands of sheep than they are just a few elk. Eric Robinson's outdoor ethic mirrors my own. He intended to leave no trace. But that meant when he disappeared, the people who went out to search for him had very little to go on.

Marilyn Kulstra didn't sleep on the flight from Australia to the United States, and not just because of the bachelor party boys seated all around her. She felt unsettled about what awaited her. That made the hours stretch.

All this urgency and uncertainty, while every minute that passed only increased concern for Eric. My name is Dave Cauley. You are listening to Uinta Triangle, an audio documentary from KSL Podcasts. This is the fourth episode. No trace. Time was turning against Eric Robinson.

Marilyn felt exhausted by the time they taxied to the gate at LAX. She and her daughter Rachel were among the last off the plane. They went along like sheep in a herd of hundreds of other passengers, all headed toward customs. The line stacked up, meaning Marilyn and Rachel had to wait. And wait. As they shuffled forward, Marilyn considered the questions the customs officer might ask.

What's the purpose of your visit? Business or pleasure? I'm here to look for my missing husband. What does that count as? How long do you plan to stay in the United States? I don't know. They made it through customs at last, then headed for baggage claim. They needed to retrieve their checked bags and recheck them onto their connecting flight to Salt Lake City.

But when they reached the carousel, their bags weren't there. Maryland had brought a big empty suitcase because she feared Eric might be dead and she would need the space to transport his possessions back home. But that suitcase, and her own, were nowhere to be seen. She hadn't even made it to Utah yet, and already she felt as if she had failed.

She sank to her knees. The overhead lights glared off the cold, hard floor. Other travelers stepped around her, no one taking notice or stopping to ask if she was okay. But Rachel reached out to remind Marilyn, you're not alone.

Rachel's encouragement reminded Marilyn of the day she had crossed the Rong La Pass with Eric in Nepal. She heard his words in her head. You can do it, hen. She took a deep breath, stood, and embraced her daughter. The two of them then went in search of their luggage. It didn't take long to sort out what had happened.

They had taken so long getting through customs that the airline staff pulled their bags off the carousel.

Marilyn laughs about it now.

But she came very close to her breaking point. Marilyn and Rachel were in the air again a short time later, headed for Salt Lake City. They arrived there on the afternoon of Thursday, August 11th, day four of the search for Eric.

They hadn't reserved a rental car or booked a hotel. They had come on Julia Geisler's invitation alone.

Devin had arrived in Utah the day before from San Francisco. Devon actually came and picked us up. Devon had Julia's car. Marilyn and Rachel got in, then Devon started the 45-minute drive to Park City.

Rachel expected to find a hub of activity at this home base, but the house was empty.

The nearest edge of the High Uintas Wilderness was another hour away by car, up the Mirror Lake Highway. The search headquarters, in Duchesne, was at least 90 minutes away. They tried to call the Duchesne Sheriff, only to be told he was unavailable.

Search and rescue missions in Australia are usually coordinated at the state level. Rachel didn't understand the American system, where it happens at the county level. And she didn't realize rural Duchesne County had such a limited staff.

Eric was overdue from his hike on the Uinta Highline Trail. He'd missed his pickup at noon on Sunday, August 7th, 2011. It was now dawn on Wednesday the 10th, day three of the search. Julia Geisler and her partner Blake Summers felt a deepening sense of urgency because the search area kept getting bigger.

Unlike her mom, Rachel had never met Devin or Julia, but Devin was gracious, offering to help however Rachel thought best.

Julia had left contact information for the local news stations. Devin suggested they invite reporters to come interview Marilynne.

Her reluctance wasn't just about going off the cuff. She had almost lost her nerve just a few hours before. Her emotions were still raw. Marilyn, the stoic, didn't want to expose herself like that.

So they called KSL TV and invited them to send a reporter to interview Marilyn. Art Lang and Dan McCool left Lambert Meadow, where they had encountered the sheep herd, on the morning of Thursday, August 11th, day four of the search for Eric Robinson. The Highline Trail drops down a hill there and meets the Lake Fork River.

The trail then makes a 90-degree turn to follow the river up to its source at the bottom of Red Knob Pass. The craggy face of Mount Lavinia dominates the view to the right, rising so abruptly you can't see the summit from the trail. Art and Dan ran into a group of hikers from Indiana somewhere in this area. The Hoosiers were headed the opposite direction. They warned Art to turn around.

They said he shouldn't push his luck by going over Red Knob and on to Deadhorse. Dead Horse Pass, they said, was too dangerous to cross because of snow.

And it looms large in the minds of hikers on the Uinta High Line. I still remember the first time I set eyes on Dead Horse Pass, years ago. It intimidated me. Just the name Dead Horse tells you why. I've literally found horse bones and bits of old bridle leather in the rocks at the bottom of the pass. It doesn't seem like a likely place for a trail.

I wanted to find out who first crossed it, and who named it. That research introduced me to a figure from history, a Mormon pioneer named George Beard. He came to Utah as a boy in the mid-1800s and started venturing into the Uintas in search of inspiration.

Beard was an amateur painter. He and his wife Lavinia often traveled into the Uintas together. Beard later described their first trip in a letter, read here by a voice actor.

They left their mark on maps we still use today. George named Grandaddy Lake, a popular Uinta camping spot. And one of the highest Uinta peaks, a place I mentioned a moment ago, bears the name Mount Lavinia. Beard carried a camera and captured some of the first known photos of the high Uintas. I've gone through hundreds of them. One shows a group of men leading horses over Dead Horse Pass.

Towering walls of vertical rock rise above them. A steep slope falls away below. Beard painted that same scene. The Salt Lake Tribune wrote about the painting, quoting Beard as saying the person who first forged the trail over Dead Horse left a sign that read...

Blake had spent the first two days of the search hiking out from the end of the trail, looking for Eric. He'd gone to Rocky C Pass, the last of the seven passes Eric would have had to cross on his hike. But Blake had returned with bad news. He hadn't found Eric. It was still possible Eric was just behind schedule, but that seemed less likely with each passing day.

I'm half-convinced Beard made that up himself. I also suspect he might be the one who named Dead Horse Pass and created the mystique that still influences you into Highline hikers more than a century later.

That backtrack is no small thing. The group from Indiana recommended Art take a detour that I'm going to call the Granddaddy Bypass. It would involve leaving the Highline Trail and dropping down to the south, looping through the Granddaddy Lake Basin and returning to the Highline near Naturalist Basin.

That detour would skip both Deadhorse and Rocky Sea Passes, but at the cost of adding significant distance to the trip. We're talking two or three full days of extra walking, most of it through mosquito-infested forest far from the beautiful alpine tundra. Art didn't like that idea. The Hoosiers were insistent, though. They thought Dead Horse looked that scary.

Art waved off the group from Indiana. Then he and his hiking partner Dan continued on their way toward Red Knob Pass. They soon caught up to some other hikers. One of them asked Art if he had seen an Australian man with a red backpack by the name of Eric Robinson. At that time, I knew he was missing. The couple introduced themselves, Julia Geisler and Blake Summers.

They said they were personal friends of Eric's who were involved in the search.

Art told them his story, how he had learned of the search for Eric a couple of days earlier near Kings Peak, how he had encountered dangerous snow on Anderson Pass, how he had struggled to follow the Highline Trail across the Oweep Basin because of sheep damage. Julia paused every few steps to call Eric's name.

The reason was Blake's hunch about Dead Horse Pass. Blake figured Eric might have reached Dead Horse, seen that it was snowbound, and decided not to risk crossing it. If so, Eric might have then reversed course, back over Red Knob Pass, into the Lake Fork drainage, looking for another way around.

Art, Dan, Julia, and Blake were all headed the same direction, going westbound on the highline, ascending Red Knob Pass on their way to Deadhorse. So they walked together and before long reached the top of Red Knob Pass, which is broad and flat. You can stand there, look out to the west, and see Deadhorse Pass a couple miles away.

Art saw the bottom two-thirds of the pass were snowbound, along with a short section toward the top. But there was more bare ground than he had expected. When I looked at it, I said, hey, that's not too big a deal. Art told me Julia and Blake were not so encouraged.

Julia doesn't dispute saying it, but she told me the entire experience is a jumble in her memory. That makes sense. She was exhausted, under extreme stress, and hyper-focused on her mission. I've stood at that same spot, peered across at Dead Horse, and thought, nope. Dead Horse Pass just looks scary, even when it's not covered in snow.

The two parties made their way down from Red Knob, into the cirque between Red Knob and Dead Horse Passes. They hiked a few miles through a forested stretch of trail before reaching Dead Horse Lake. From the shore, Art looked across the milky blue water and eyed the snowfield stretching up the cliffy slope on the far side.

It still looked intimidating, but even more doable than it had appeared from a distance.

Art felt a surge of confidence and relief he hadn't taken the advice of the Indiana group about the Granddaddy Bypass. Deadhorse would go.

Art and Dan said goodbye to Julia and Blake, who were going to search for Eric around Deadhorse Lake, stay the night there, then hike out the next day. The two parties exchanged contact information and promised to update one another when they'd both returned to Civilization. Art and Dan then made their way around the lake, to the toe of the snowfield. Art stepped onto the snow.

Julia had watched Eric pack his bag before starting his hike. She knew he had the right clothing to stay warm and dry.

It wasn't soft and powdery, but instead dense and icy. The angle was mellow enough, at least here at the bottom, he could walk straight up the snowfield like a ramp. If he fell, it wouldn't be that bad. He wouldn't slide all that far before coming to a stop.

but the angle increased the farther he went. Soon, Art and Dan were kicking in toe holds, then leaning forward into the slope to use their hands as well. The most dangerous spot on Dead Horse Pass is about two-thirds the way up, where the trail runs directly above a band of cliffs. A fall there could kill you, and the danger only increases when that spot's covered with snow.

Art remained focused as he approached this crux. He could see it was mostly clear. He reached the top of the snowfield and found the muddy, slippery stripe of the Highline Trail. The trail there's narrow and off-camber, meaning you have to lean to one side to stay upright. But that's still far safer than vertical snow. The rest of the way up was a breeze.

Art and Dan made it to the top of Dead Horse safely. But Art wondered how much worse that snow might have been a week or so earlier when Eric Robinson might have encountered it.

The glare of a video light shined in Marilyn's eyes, blinding her to the view of a TV news camera pointed at her face. She sat in a leather armchair in a home that wasn't her own, trying not to think about how odd the situation was. A reporter asked when she had last seen her husband Eric. Here is what she said, straight from the archives of KSL TV.

Eric carried extra food, maps, a GPS unit, and an emergency beacon. He had tools to navigate if lost and the ability to summon help if injured. But Eric hadn't hit that panic button, which meant he either didn't think his situation was that bad yet, or he couldn't reach the beacon. Julia hoped Eric was still alive. If he was, his extra food would by now be just about gone.

like he could turn up at any moment and chastise her for causing a scene, just as he had after his delay on the Cascade Saddle in New Zealand. She had been on the floor at LAX just a few hours before, ready to give up, but she gave no sign of that despair in this interview. Now, I was not personally in the room for this interview.

I wouldn't meet Marilyn until years later, but I have seen the video countless times. Marilyn smiled for the camera. Watching this clip now, when I know Marilyn well, I see subtle signs of fear etched on her face.

She didn't tell the reporter about waking up in the middle of the night a week or so earlier with an awful sense of feeling alone. She didn't acknowledge having brought an empty suitcase. Rachel watched from the other side of the camera.

The TV reporter wrapped up the interview and left, rushing off to put together the story. Marilyn wondered who might see it. Would anyone notice? Would anyone care?

A scoutmaster with a story about running into Eric, far from where he was supposed to be. 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 uintatriangle. 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.

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 Jessica Lowell and Aaron Mason.

Uintah Triangle is a production of KSL Podcasts and Lemonada Media. My personal thanks to the following past and present members of the KSL Podcast's team. Aaron Mason, Amy Donaldson, Felix Bunnell, Josh Tilton, Kellyanne Halverson, Nina Ernest, Ryan Meeks, and Trent Sell. Finally, from me to you, please remember, wherever your life's trail takes you, none of us ever truly walk alone.

Julia and Blake were at the headquarters of the Duchesne County Sheriff's Office, ready to join the search. In the United States, responsibility for search and rescue often falls on county sheriffs. Search and rescue, or SAR teams, are usually made up of volunteers who operate under a sheriff's supervision. But the Uinta Mountains span more than one county.

Summit County covers most of the north side, Duchesne County most of the south. Julia hadn't been thinking about this when she first reported Eric missing.

She's right. The Highline Trailhead where Eric was supposed to finish his hike is in Summit County. But only just. You can stand in the parking lot and throw a rock and it'll land in neighboring Duchesne County. Truth is, the Uinta Highline Trail spends most of its time in Duchesne. So, the Summit County Sheriff's Office decided Eric's disappearance wasn't their case.

They handed it off to Duchesne. And that was a consequential decision, because Duchesne has far fewer search and rescue resources.

Dushane County's home to only about 20,000 people. That's about half as many as live in Summit. And the demographic differences go deeper. Park City, the beating heart of Utah's ski tourism industry, is in Summit. Park City's also home to celebrity mansions and the glitz of the Sundance Film Festival, which means there's a lot more money flowing through Summit than Dushane.

The difference became apparent as Julia looked around the room. She saw the sheriff, his chief deputy, and a handful of volunteers. She and Blake had come dressed like lightweight hikers, fleece, nylon, trail runners. The Duchesne volunteers were ranchers in thick denim and leather cowboy boots. Julia wondered how such a small team was supposed to mount an effective search.

A problem made worse by the sheer size of the search area. Each of these volunteers knew only bits and pieces of the Uintas, say their favorite fishing hole or a campground close to a road. But the Highline Trail was terra incognita for almost everyone in the room. They hadn't traveled it themselves. Julia's partner Blake probably knew more about the High Line than all the rest of them combined.

So the sheriff put a map in front of Blake and asked, where do you guys want to go first? Blake said Dead Horse Pass, the most notorious, intimidating place on the Uinta High Line Trail.

Blake thought Dead Horse was the most likely place for a highline hiker to have trouble because it's steep and high consequence if you fall. The sheriff agreed. He'd viewed Dead Horse Pass from the air the day before, during his helicopter flight, and saw a troubling amount of snow there. They came up with a plan.

A helicopter would fly Julia and Blake up to the highline, dropping them about a day's walk away from Deadhorse. They would follow the trail, the same direction Eric was supposed to be traveling, searching for him along the way. They'd go as far as the base of Deadhorse Pass, questioning anyone else they came across. The sheriff gave them until 6 p.m.

on Friday to complete their search and report back. It felt surreal to Julia.

Julia and Blake grabbed their packs and headed out to board the chopper. It lifted off, carrying them toward the forested flank of the Uinta Mountains. Julia peered out the window, and the aerial perspective overwhelmed her.

She saw an endless number of possible hiding places in a mountain range known for keeping its secrets.

My life seems to straddle two extremes. Am I in the office or in the mountains? I might need a sun hoodie one day and a sports coat the next. Now, I'm not overly trendy, but I do want to wear stuff that's good quality and ethically produced. I recently placed an order with Quince because their summer lineup has that good balance of luxury appearance and feel without the markup of other brands.

One of the quince pieces I'm looking forward to wearing is a merino wool t-shirt that should be a perfect base layer for an afternoon hike. I also ordered a soft-shell fleece-lined vest, so if the temperature dips during an evening out to dinner afterward, I can easily add a layer. Everything from quince is like half the cost of a comparable piece from some other brand.

Rachel Marsden couldn't sleep. She was on a plane somewhere over the Pacific. The drone of jet engines filled her ears, punctuated by bursts of laughter.

And that means more money for me to invest in my next adventure. Stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from Quince. Go to quince.com slash uinta for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash uinta to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash uinta The helicopter carrying Julia and Blake skimmed low over the trees.

Julia's eyes were glued to the ground, scanning for any sign of Eric.

The helicopter was crossing terrain in a matter of minutes that it would take hours or days to travel on foot. The interior of the Uinta Range is devoid of roads. It's a swath of wild land owned and managed by the federal government as a national forest.

The wildness of the place brought up all kinds of fears. Maybe a tree had fallen on Eric. Maybe he had been attacked by a wild animal. Julia even wondered...

A murder in the mountains might seem far-fetched, but it's not entirely without precedent. In 1983, a pair of Forest Service workers smelled what they thought was an animal carcass at a place called Christmas Meadows. They went to investigate and found the partially decomposed body of an unidentified man. He had been shot in the back of the head, execution style.

This man's never been identified, and his killer has never been caught. A sheepherder traveling through the same area a year later came across a skull and collarbone. These were from a different person, not the John Doe I just mentioned. Dental records proved the skull belonged to a young man from England. He'd also been murdered, but no one's ever faced criminal charges in that case.

Julia wasn't aware of any evidence, suggesting a stranger might have attacked Eric on the trail, but she couldn't rule it out. That thought lodged in the back of her mind.

The helicopter slowed as it neared the spine of the Uinta crest. The pilot circled, looking for a good place to land. Julie wasn't sure exactly where they were, aside from knowing the spot where the chopper landed was near the Highline Trail.

A Bucks do goes by another name in the U.S., Bachelor Party. Rachel and her mom Marilyn were flying to the United States on their way to join the search for Marilyn's missing husband, Eric Robinson. They were deep in economy class, surrounded by boisterous young men. It was hideous.

I can tell you from official reports, they were in the upper reaches of the Lake Fork drainage, about two-thirds the way along Eric's intended path. Julia and Blake were going to follow the trail west, the same direction Eric would have been traveling. About a half-day's walk would take them to Red Knob Pass, which they would cross on their way to Dead Horse Pass.

That's the spot on the map Blake had pointed to, where he thought it was most likely Eric could have had trouble. The helicopter lifted off, leaving them alone. Julia and Blake hoisted their backpacks and started moving, going slow while searching through forested areas beside the trail.

At the same time, Art Lang and Dan McCool were continuing their own trek on the Uinta Highline Trail. We met Art and Dan before. They're the two guys who were just hiking the highline for fun and who started their walk about a week after Eric. They had learned about Eric on Tuesday before crossing Anderson Pass. It was now Wednesday, and they were watching for Eric as they moved along the trail.

They'd seen one dangerous spot already, those unexpected snow drifts at Anderson Pass. Now they came to another pass called Porcupine and were relieved to find it was free of snow. Porcupine is number four of the seven passes Eric would have had to cross. It sits way above Timberline, and it's surrounded by some of the highest peaks in the range.