Uinta Triangle: Investigation of Australian hiker’s 2011 disappearance in Utah’s backcountry
Eric Robinson’s friends and family spread these missing persons fliers after he failed to return from a hike on the Uinta Highline Trail during the summer of 2011.
By Dave Cawley
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KAMAS, Utah (KSL, KSL Podcasts) — It seems to happen almost every summer: a hiker or hunter ventures into the Uinta Mountains but fails to return on time. Concerned friends or family sound an alarm, and searchers rush into the high country in hopes of finding the missing and bringing them back to safety.
As long as help arrives quickly, odds of survival are good. But even minor missteps in the Uinta Mountains can be deadly. The natural hazards, from dangerous lightning to crumbling cliffs, challenge hikers, especially those who venture deep into the backcountry. Most people who go missing in the Uinta Mountains emerge, eventually, alive or dead. A smaller number are never found.
Among those who’ve vanished without a trace are Lynn Simmons, Garrett Bardsley and Melvin Heaps. The circumstances of how each disappeared differ. They varied in age, from 12 to 74, and arrived in the Uintas with far different levels of experience. They are all presumed to be dead, but their remains have never been located.
The Uinta Mountains have a reputation for keeping their secrets. They’re a place where most people come and go without trouble, but where an unlucky few enter and never return. A Bermuda Triangle of the Utah backcountry.
The Uinta Triangle There’s another case of a person missing in the High Uintas Wilderness that illustrates better than any other how someone can enter that rugged expanse and fail to return, leaving no trace of their passing.
In July of 2011, an Australian trekker named Eric Robinson arrived in Utah with the intent of hiking the Uinta Highline Trail. That primitive track crosses one end of the Uinta range to another. Robinson, 64, planned to spend 10 days hiking solo from Chepeta Lake to the Highline Trailhead along the Mirror Lake Highway.
Robinson did not arrive as scheduled at the end of his hike. His contact in Utah notified the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, along with Robinson’s wife, Marilyn Koolstra. She traveled to Utah to take part in the search, hoping to find her husband and bring him home.
“That was the first time I’d been in the Uintas,” Koolstra said in an interview for the new KSL Podcasts series Uinta Triangle. “I appreciated why Eric wanted to be in that space.”
The grandeur of the High Uintas was tinged with intimidation for Koolstra, though, as she came to understand the challenge of looking for a missing person in that mountain wilderness.
“A missing person can be missing forever,” Koolstra said.
From the COLD podcast team
The new KSL Podcasts series Uinta Triangle was produced by the same team behind COLD, the true crime series that over three seasons has investigated the cold case disappearances of Susan Cox Powell, Joyce Yost and Sheree Warren.
Uinta Triangle took COLD’s approach of deeply researched narrative storytelling and applied it to the disappearance of Eric Robinson. Reporting for the podcast required traveling halfway around the world to meet Robinson’s family and friends in Australia. It involved learning about Robinson’s motivations and justifications for hiking alone. It also included walking some of Robinson’s favorite trails in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
The podcast sought to answer lingering questions about what happened to Robinson, while also exploring the geographic, cultural and jurisdictional barriers that hampered the search.
“It’s a story of a missing person, but it’s also a legacy to that person for the love of what they did and acknowledgment of a life that was well lived,” Koolstra said.
The first two episodes of Uinta Triangle are available on May 20 with additional episodes to follow each Tuesday. It is free to listen through Apple Podcasts, other major podcast providers, or directly from the Uinta Triangle website.
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