Uinta Triangle | Episode 7

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: Cold – Uinta Triangle | Episode 7 ("Ruby")

Published: June 24, 2025 | Host: Dave Cawley

---

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode, titled “Ruby,” marks a pivotal chapter in the Uinta Triangle story, chronicling the aftermath of Eric Robinson’s disappearance and the events leading up to the discovery of his remains, five years later, in the rugged Uinta Mountains of Utah. The episode closely explores the emotional realities for Eric’s family, the legal entanglements of declaring him deceased, and, ultimately, the extraordinary, chance encounter that broke open years of uncertainty. Through a blend of narrative, personal reflection, and first-hand accounts, host Dave Cawley exposes both the heartbreak of not knowing and the bittersweet release that comes when a mystery is, at last, resolved—even if only partially.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Immediate Aftermath for Eric’s Family

• Returning Home to Grief: Marilyn (Eric’s wife) and Rachel (Eric’s stepdaughter) describe the exhaustion and surreal experience of returning to Australia after the unsuccessful search in Utah—attempting to shield Annabel, Rachel’s daughter, from sorrow during her birthday.
  • [01:12] Rachel Marsden: “We had a birthday party for 20 grade prep children that afternoon.”
• Avoidance and Grief: Marilyn detours to visit family before facing the empty home she shared with Eric, highlighting reluctance and the deep sense of loss.
  • [03:29] Marilyn Kohlstra: “Walking back into the house without Eric and knowing that he would never be here again, that was a challenge… it was the lack of the presence.”
• Coping Mechanisms: Marilyn explores Eric’s garden, seeking peace and presence among what he left behind.
  • [05:52] Marilyn Kohlstra: “I absorbed that tragedy. I allowed myself time to wallow in it.”

Legal and Financial Complications after Disappearance

• Power of Attorney & Will Issues: The complexities and delays in settling Eric’s estate—without a body or confirmation of death, legal proceedings are stalled and family tensions rise.
  • [13:15] Marilyn Kohlstra: “So after seven years, if there was no resolution outcome, then the will would be enacted…”
  • Glenn, Eric’s son, pressures Marilyn for access to funds, causing further emotional distress.
    • [13:37] Marilyn Kohlstra: “I was heartbroken and still being stoic… suppress your own needs and your own form of grief.”
• Choosing an Administrator & Closure Attempts: Ultimately, the court appoints a neutral administrator to handle Eric’s affairs, relieving Marilyn of some burden.
  • [15:38] Dave Cawley: “The court agreed. This lifted a major weight off Marilyn's shoulders.”

Attempts at Closure: Memorial and Memory

• Memorial Service: With no news forthcoming, Marilyn arranges a memorial six months later.
  • [17:07] Marilyn Kohlstra: “The longer it goes on… some memories dim, some practicalities change.”
  • The gathering is crowded, emotional, and marked by the need for communal expression of unfinished grief.
    • [19:33] Rachel Marsden: “It was a very long event because people were trying to find a way to close it… In the absence of the story… everyone wanted to express everything to make up for what was missing.”
• Artifacts and Reminders: Marilyn preserves reminders of their life, from photos of travel to planting succulents in Eric’s boots.
  • [23:40] Marilyn Kohlstra: “I know, I’ll just fill them up with soil and pot succulents, things that will grow readily.”

The Discovery: A Chance Encounter in the Mountains

• Kelvin Judd’s Story: The narrative shifts to the Judd family, experienced mountain travelers, culminating in Kelvin’s reflection on his own near-miss as a lost teen—a story that foreshadows their role in Eric’s case.
  • [31:22] Kelvin Judd: “The Uintas are a big part of my life. They're kind of a part of my identity…”
• 2016: Judd Family’s Expedition:
  • The Judds set out on a horse-packing trip to Allsop Lake, a remote and rarely trafficked area.
  • While side-hilling below a cliff, Kelvin’s father spots a red backpack.
    • [37:55] Kelvin Judd: “That looks like a backpack.”
  • Investigation reveals scattered gear, a hiking boot with bone, and shortly, identification: Eric Robinson’s Australian driving license.
  • [41:44] Kelvin Judd: “You kind of do a double take. You look up and you look down, you think, where did he come from? How did he get here?”
• Notification and Official Recovery:
  • The Judds notify nearby hikers with satellite messengers and local authorities retrieve Eric’s remains and belongings.
  • The fortuitous and astronomically unlikely circumstances of the discovery are a point of reflection.
    • [43:04] Kelvin Judd: “The odds were astronomical of that happening…”

The News Reaches Eric’s Friends and Family

• Julia Geisler’s Reaction: After years of remembrance and speculation, Julia is told by the sheriff:
  • [46:24] Marilyn Kohlstra (as Julia): “I picked up and I was just like, you found him, didn’t you?”
• Marilyn and Rachel Confront the News
  • Immediate disbelief and relief—echoing the unresolved questions of how and why.
    • [50:46] Rachel Marsden: “And mum, I can remember this very clearly, Mum ringing me early and saying they've found him. And I could not… it was disbelief and relief.”
• Dave Cawley’s Perspective: As a reporter, Cawley discusses his proximity to the places involved and his attempts to interpret Eric’s motivations.

The Unanswered Questions and Final Reflections

• Details from the Scene: Eric’s remains are partial. Some personal effects, like his left arm with his wedding ring and beloved watch, are never recovered.
• Medical Examiner’s Report: No definitive cause of death is determined—most likely a fall, but whether Eric died instantly or lingered is unknown.
  • [58:43] Dave Cawley: “…it remains unknown whether he may have suffered immediate lethal injury or may have survived an initially sublethal injury for hours or days or longer.”
• Family’s Processing of New Information: The discovery brings new versions of possible endings, but not the definitive closure hoped for.
  • [59:16] Marilyn Kohlstra: “If he had consciousness, he would have set off that beacon.”
• Lingering Mysteries: Even as some questions are answered, others—like why Eric left the Highline Trail—remain.
  • [60:16] Kelvin Judd: “Yeah, it's just really unfortunate that there was not a way that he made it out of there to tell his story.”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Re-Entering Home:
  • [03:29] Marilyn Kohlstra: “Walking back into the house without Eric and knowing that he would never be here again, that was a challenge. It was in my face.”
• On Grieving While Navigating Technicalities:
  • [13:37] Marilyn Kohlstra: “I was heartbroken and still being stoic, holding yourself together.”
• On Astronomical Odds of the Discovery:
  • [43:04] Kelvin Judd: “The odds were astronomical… if we had even chosen to go towards the pass a different day, we'd have probably taken a different route.”
• On the Search’s Missteps:
  • [49:35] Marilyn Kohlstra: “The search base was in Duchesne. Summit had sent a preliminary search… and so we weren't really looking in that location.”
• On Living with Unanswered Questions:
  • [52:51] Kelvin Judd: “He in fact tried to go down the Allsop Lake side of that ridge.”
  • [60:02] Kelvin Judd: “It kind of almost raised more questions than answers when you get searching about it because you think, okay, he's not where he's supposed to be.”
• On Bittersweet Resolution:
  • [56:18] Marilyn Kohlstra: “I can only just imagine that Eric thought, I can see that place. That's where I would like to, you know, camp for the night… just thinking how he would think.”

---

Timestamps of Key Segments

• [01:12–05:52] – Family’s homecoming and immediate struggle with grief
• [12:01–15:38] – Legal hurdles, Glenn’s pressure, power of attorney issues
• [17:07–20:09] – Decision to hold memorial and description of the event
• [24:42–31:22] – Kelvin Judd’s story: lost in the Uintas as a teen
• [34:09–43:47] – Judd family's 2016 discovery of Eric's remains and the investigation
• [46:24–51:13] – Notification of Eric’s friends and family, emotional aftermath
• [56:18–60:16] – Deep uncertainty about Eric’s final moments and the meaning of the discovery

---

Structure & Tone

The episode weaves together first-hand reflection, narrative detail, and investigative journalism in Cold’s signature empathetic and direct style. Family members’ voices add intimacy and vulnerability, while Dave Cawley’s calm narration maintains a sense of balance between technical explanation and human story.

---

Summary Takeaway

“Ruby” is a haunting meditation on ambiguous loss and the limits of closure. The Robinson family’s ordeal, prolonged by legal limbo and countless unknowns, is mitigated—but not ended—by the unexpected discovery of Eric’s remains. The episode delicately explores both the pain of prolonged ambiguity and the strange, sometimes anticlimactic reality of answers that, while welcome, can never restore what was lost. The story is as much about the resilience required to live with uncertainty as it is about the facts of one hiker’s fate.

---

For further details, refer to uintatriangle.com for maps, photos, and exclusive bonus content.

Transcript

[Dave Cawley]

Dave I'm Dave Cawley, host of the Cold Podcast. Uinta Triangle is a standalone story written and produced by the same team that makes cold. Now, if you're enjoying Uinta Triangle here in the Cold feed, do me a huge favor and follow Uinta Triangle on its own feed. Doing this is the best way to support the Kold team while we're working on season four. Thanks. Plan and dream of things far above your grasp. Reach after them in your imagination, even when reality is receding. You are made to rise and soar and come down to earth with a bump and rise and soar again. Alfred Wainwright, Pennine Way Companion. Marilyn Kohlstra and her daughter Rachel Marsden were exhausted. They had been away from home for 10 days, searching for Marilyn's missing husband, Eric Robinson. Rachel's husband Jeremy told me she arrived back in Australia on Saturday, August 20, 2011. That just happened to be their daughter Annabel's birthday. I think we even had people around and stuff.

[Rachel Marsden]

We had a birthday party for 20 grade prep children that afternoon.

[Dave Cawley]

Annabel was turning 6.

[Rachel Marsden]

Jeremy had made a birthday cake in the shape of a lolly shop and you know, friends had sort of bought food and brought it around. And so we still had this party and you know, it was, you know,

[Dave Cawley]

everyone knew what was going on, so you know it was there. You know, we talked about it, but not extensively. Rachel and Marilyn didn't want to sour Annabel's special day, so they bottled up their emotions and forced fake smiles. Marilyn gave her granddaughter a gift, a small trinket she had bought at an airport souvenir shop during the journey home. Then she excused herself, slipping away to go visit her son Jonathan. At Jonathan's house, she was able to speak a bit more freely about all that had happened.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

It was a very close family time because my family wrapped their arms around me.

[Dave Cawley]

These stops at the homes of her children were Marilyn's way of avoiding the last leg of the journey home, the drive to Heathmont, to the house she'd shared with Eric, a house that now sat empty. She didn't make it there until late in the afternoon, parking on the gravel driveway behind Eric's Land Rover. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of Eric's beloved banksias, remembering how proud he had been showing off the plant in an old home movie. This is Baxia borei, but it's commonly known as the koala Baxia, so the flower is soft and cuddly. Marilyn headed to the front door of the house, holding her breath as she opened it and stepped inside. Her eyes immediately fell on the dining

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

room table and Eric's cooking dinner for us all. Observe.

[Dave Cawley]

Dinner?

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Yeah, dinner.

[Dave Cawley]

She looked past it into the kitchen, where Eric had prepared so many of their meals. We are having scotch fillets, and we are having beans and carrots, Brussels sprouts.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Walking back into the house without Eric and knowing that he would never be here again, that was a challenge. It was in my face. It was the lack of the presence.

[Dave Cawley]

Her gaze then swept across the living room.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

There was nobody sitting in that space of his on the couch. It was. It was overwhelming that first day.

[Dave Cawley]

Memories flooded her mind of all the times she and Eric had spent together on that couch, watching movies or tv.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Saturday night, and we're at home because the World cup soccer is on. Uruguay have just scored a goal, so you can imagine it was Denmark. Oh, yeah. See, I'm really interested in soccer. But the noise was horrific.

[Dave Cawley]

In this moment, she wanted nothing more than to hear the horrific noise of Eric shouting at his favorite team one last time. The crashing crests of each wave of memory made Marilyn feel as if she were drowning. Gasping for air, she stepped back outside.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I remember going out to the garden and walking around and just looking at what he had created and what he had enjoyed and thinking, what do I need to do to, you know, what would he be doing?

[Dave Cawley]

Eric's garden, the place he had found refuge after his first wife died, appeared a bit unkempt. The native plants were growing untended. And we got the couriers flowering because it's wintertime.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

And there's a frog pond out the back, and there's a seat that he used to sit at, have his cup of tea.

[Dave Cawley]

Here's the pony.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

It's a place of peace. Peace and, you know, serenity.

[Dave Cawley]

The pond was the pride of Eric's landscaping, a place where brown tree frogs could sing their serenades. Marilyn sat on Eric's bench. She'd fought to maintain her composure through so many difficult days of the search. Now the stoic stopped struggling and allowed the emotion to envelop her.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I absorbed that tragedy. I allowed myself time to wallow in it. I allowed myself time to move through it.

[Dave Cawley]

As she sat there in the garden, her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen, blurried through tears, and saw the name of Eric's son, Glenn. He wanted to know how to get access to his dad's money. My name is Dave Cawley. You're listening to Uinta Triangle, an audio documentary from KSL Podcasts. This is episode seven. Ruby. Marilyn was scheduled to Travel to Guangzhou in China on a work assignment only a few weeks after returning from the search in Utah. But she cancelled.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I didn't have the heart or the inclination to travel.

[Dave Cawley]

Marilyn had always loved the excitement of visiting new places. Now the idea of traveling abroad without Eric evoked only loneliness.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

We were going to travel the world together. We were going to do a lot of things.

[Dave Cawley]

Eric was dead, and so was the future they were supposed to share.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I didn't go back to work straight away. I stayed at home. I had legal things to organise. You have to notify a few authorities. So I sort of went through that in motion.

[Dave Cawley]

That's a way of saying she did all this without pausing to process her feelings. Marilyn wrote a witness statement for the Duchenne county sheriff. The sheriff had also asked her to mail some of Eric's personal items.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Yes, he was covering all eventualities that, you know, maybe if Eric was found, that they could do DNA matching. So he requested something like a toothbrush, a comb, a shaver, you know, to be sent across. Dental records, which I gathered and sent them across.

[Dave Cawley]

Adjusting to her new life alone was hard. Family, friends and neighbors all tried to help.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

They were very respectful and kind, but always checking in and making sure that, you know, I was doing okay.

[Dave Cawley]

Marilyn guarded her emotions, putting up a brave front. But each evening, as she retired to an empty bed, despair overwhelmed her.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Night times are the lonely times.

[Dave Cawley]

Across town, Marilyn's daughter Rachel, also found herself floundering.

[Rachel Marsden]

You know, I came home and I was very upset and emotional for some time. Not all the time, but on and off. I was probably protective of the children.

[Dave Cawley]

She was at least able to talk through her feelings with her husband Jeremy. She told him about the physical challenges of the search.

[Rachel Marsden]

That bit was simpler in a way than what it is to then come home and have to live with a missing person.

[Dave Cawley]

Rachel's mind kept churning, coming up with theories to explain why no one could find Eric.

[Rachel Marsden]

So many possibilities, which we would play over our minds again and again and again. That did occupy us a lot.

[Dave Cawley]

For quite some time, this speculation sometimes veered off on strange tangents. Rachel wanted to believe Eric was alive, that he had gone off to start a new life in some foreign land.

[Rachel Marsden]

Maybe he fled and you would start to pull apart relationships and personalities and questioning. Would he really do that? Would he run away? And just the nagging of what happened, what happened, what happened, you know, easy in Mexico.

[Dave Cawley]

She knew that wasn't true. The uncertainty also nagged at Marilyn. She wondered what could have prevented Eric from finishing his Hike.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

You know, you go through different scenarios. It's light. What exactly happened? You know, I had him falling into a swollen river, drowning with his backpack on. That was one of my first thoughts.

[Dave Cawley]

This was also the leading theory at the Duchenne County Sheriff's Office. Deputies believed Eric probably slipped and fell while crossing Yellowstone Creek shortly after encountering the Boy Scout group. His body could have washed downstream, coming to rest somewhere along the watercourse in a narrow gorge where it couldn't be seen. It wasn't the only possibility, but the.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

The slipping on the rocks and falling was one of my suitable endings to, you know, misadventure.

[Dave Cawley]

Marilyn would have to settle for suitable,

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

because a missing person can be missing forever.

[Dave Cawley]

The last time Marilyn saw Eric was on the day he left Melbourne bound for the United States. They had chatted over tea in the airport departure terminal. Do you remember any details about that conversation?

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

It would have been, I've organised this. I've made sure that that's paid. I've talked with Glenn. I've made sure Glenn's fine up in Queensland, you know, and he's got his allowance.

[Dave Cawley]

Early in our story, I told you, Eric's first wife, Helen, died when their son glen was barely 12. Marilyn entered Eric's life four years later when Glenn was 16, but she and Glen never bonded. I reached out to Glenn to get his side before publishing, but my message went unanswered. After the first episode dropped, Glen emailed me to contest the accuracy of some of what I had reported. He said it wasn't true. Eric sent him away as a young man. He had left on his own and he said the struggles of his youth, which I only alluded to, were a private matter. It is accurate to say Eric and Glenn's relationship was a major reason why Eric and Marilyn waited so long to get married.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

We operated independently, I guess, for 11 years doing things, and that sort of continued once we got married too.

[Dave Cawley]

They agreed to manage their finances separately. Eric had his money, Marilyn had hers, but they split the house 50. 50.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

The arrangement we'd made when we got married was that the house would be maintained. Whoever should, you know, remain the last partner standing.

[Dave Cawley]

This arrangement is spelled out in Eric's last will and testament. Aside from Marilyn's share of the house, the will named Glen Eric's sole beneficiary, he entitled to the rest of his estate. The will named Marilyn and Eric's best friend, Russ Inkle, co executors. That meant any requests from Glenn to access the estate's assets had to go through them.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

So there were matters like that to be taken care of.

[Dave Cawley]

When Glen contacted Marilyn the day she returned from Utah, she told him he'd have to get by on his own for a little while. Problem was, there was no proof to Eric was dead. In the case of a disappearance with no body, the law said death couldn't be declared until seven years had passed.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

So after seven years, if there was no resolution outcome, then the will would be enacted and you could move forward.

[Dave Cawley]

Glenn didn't want to wait seven years. He pressed Marilyn in a series of increasingly hostile text messages and emails. They landed on her even as she was struggling to cope with Eric's loss.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I was heartbroken and still being stoic, you know, suppress your own needs and your own. Your own form of grief, you know, just holding yourself together.

[Dave Cawley]

One might assume Glen was grieving too. He had just lost his father, leaving him with no immediate family. Glenn was 33 years old and by his own statements to Russ and Marilyn as co executors, he was financially dependent on his dad. His bills were coming due and Eric wasn't there to pay them. Eric had left paperwork granting Marilyn, as well as her two oldest kids, power of attorney if he was ever incapacitated. This could be an avenue of helping Glenn. So Marilyn went to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, or vcat, and asked permission to exercise the power of attorney. But VCAT refused. The court said there was no evidence to prove Eric was incapacitated and it wouldn't reconsider that for at least three months. When Marilyn informed Glenn he'd have to wait, Glenn lashed out. He would absolutely hate you for this, Glen said in one text message. If he came back, he would divorce you. Eric's best friend, Russ, found Glenn's tone offensive. The things that he said about Marilyn were just absolutely disgusting. It's just terrible stuff and completely untrue. Marilyn returned to court in November, 90 agonizing days after the date of Eric's disappearance.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I had to go to the Victorian Civil Tribunal to enact the power of attorney.

[Dave Cawley]

She asked the court to appoint a neutral administrator to oversee Eric's affairs, managing

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

the allowance for his son, making sure that that was fair and equitable whilst not eating into the estate.

[Dave Cawley]

The court agreed. This lifted a major weight off Marilyn's shoulders. With that out of the way, she began adjusting to the new normal of life without Eric. She still felt his absence everywhere, like when she returned to work at Volkstone Primary School.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I recall driving in there for the first time, thinking Eric's missed Here, too, because the garden was in need of attention and the maintenance aspects hadn't been done. You know, the attention to the practical details had been let slide.

[Dave Cawley]

Seeing an untended bush or an overgrown lawn stung more than she'd anticipated because

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

he was very proud of that.

[Dave Cawley]

So she committed herself to ensuring Eric's gardens, both at home and at the school, would not be neglected again. Marilyn held off on arranging a memorial service for a while in the hopes of receiving some news from Utah. How often did Eric cross your mind?

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Daily, at least.

[Dave Cawley]

The months dragged on. Summer arrived in the Southern hemisphere, which meant the Uinta Mountains were buried under winter snow. Marilyn conceded no news was coming anytime soon. In January, she decided the time had come to hold a celebration of life for Eric.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Because I thought, you don't know how long this is going to take. The longer it goes on, you know. Some memories dim, some practicalities change.

[Dave Cawley]

For a venue, she chose a place out in the country called Gumgolie Farm.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Almost in the backyard, but not as close and proverbial backyard, yes, the proverbial backyard, yeah.

[Dave Cawley]

Eric's friends and family gathered there on January 22, 2012. Marilyn's son Marty acted as MC. As we celebrate Eric's life today, other family members who are overseas will be walking in the dales of England to

[Rachel Marsden]

pay tribute to Eric.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

And friends in Utah will gather together

[Dave Cawley]

to celebrate the life of their Aussie mate. This comes from a recording of the service. Rachel told me it was an uncomfortable gathering.

[Rachel Marsden]

That event was a hot summer's day here in this sort of small building that was too small for the number of people who came. So it was stiflingly crowded and uncomfortable.

[Dave Cawley]

Someone switched on a large fan early in the program. Marty started back into his speech, only to have the fan scatter his notes off the podium.

[Rachel Marsden]

As you all know, Eric,

[Dave Cawley]

this laughter broke the tension. From there on, everyone endured the heating goods spirit. One by one, they rose to share their memories.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

He loved to travel.

[Dave Cawley]

He would hike everywhere and send us

[Rachel Marsden]

back photos and updates and stories of his adventures.

[Dave Cawley]

And we could only dream of one day walking where he had walked. Everyone who spoke found some way of acknowledging the unusualness of Eric's absence. His aunt Janie, who had traveled all the way from England, quoted the British writer Alfred Wainwright saying, the fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent. The hills are eternal. But the hills are eternal, Rachel told me. Eric's best friend Russ spoke for a solid 20 minutes.

[Rachel Marsden]

It was a very long event because people were trying to find A way to close it, I think, for themselves and for each other. In the absence of the story, it's almost like everyone wants. Wanted to say and express everything to make up for what was missing. Yeah. People trying to speak to their experience and find a conclusion in the telling, I think. And there are lots of versions. And it was a long afternoon. Yeah.

[Dave Cawley]

The celebration of life was supposed to provide closure to Eric's loved ones, but it was insufficient. How could any of them move on while the question of where he was remained unanswered? When Eric's first wife died, he had emptied his house of anything that reminded him of her. Marilyn did the opposite. She surrounded herself with photos from all the trips she had taken with Eric. They had gone on their last vacation together just a few months before he left for Utah.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I'd always wanted to go to Vietnam. Eric was not keen. It was not on his list of places to go.

[Dave Cawley]

She'd convinced him, though. And they'd spent three weeks touring from Da Nang to the northern hill country. Marilyn snapped one of her favorite photos of Eric as they sat on the deck of a boat in Ha Long Bay. It was a candid shot with Eric peering into the distance, deep in thought. That photo and memory brought her comfort.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I'm very glad that I persuaded him that that was a good place to go.

[Dave Cawley]

If Marilyn ever hoped to overcome her anguish, she would have to find the courage to travel again.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I went on holidays with some of my children and their families did a little bit of travel that way.

[Dave Cawley]

It just wasn't the same, though. Airports and airplanes made her think of Eric, scenic landscapes made her think of Eric. So she mostly stayed home, nursing a wound that just wouldn't close. The end of summer in Australia meant the arrival of springtime in Utah. Midway through 2012, almost a year following the search, Marilyn found herself wondering whether melting snow in the Hyuintas might reveal any new evidence.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Every spring, I hoped that with the melt and the hikers going up there, perhaps something would happen. And that was sort of the same, you know, every July.

[Dave Cawley]

But nothing happened. Not that year or the next or the next. Marilyn filled her time working and tending to Eric's garden. She kept his banksias and grevilleas in bloom. She kept the water in the frog pond fresh. And while out shopping one day, she came across a perfect addition.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

In the garden, I found a space to put a stone statue of beautiful

[Dave Cawley]

Vietnamese woman, a memento to remind her of her final trip with Eric. Marilyn at last accepted she would never know what happened to Him. As the fifth anniversary of his disappearance approached, she decided it was time to put the tragedy fully behind her. She and a friend started discussing plans for an epic adventure. Marilyn wanted to go to Antarctica. In the midst of all this, perhaps while digging her long neglected travel gear out of the closet, she came across a pair of Eric's old hiking boots. They were ones he'd worn during some of their earliest trips together and long since replaced.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I looked at them one day and I thought, I know, I'll just fill them up with soil and pot succulents, things that will grow readily.

[Dave Cawley]

Stubby little stalks started rising out of the makeshift planters. New life born from Eric's old boots. It's a visual reminder. It honors what you know. Eric felt passionate about both the land and the walking through.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Right? Yeah. Yeah. The combination. Apropos, yes. Yeah.

[Dave Cawley]

Marilyn didn't realize another of Eric's boots, one of the boots he had worn on the Uinta Highline Trail, was about to surface and upend the uneasy peace she had spent five years fighting to establish. Kelvin Judd knows how quickly the forest can go from familiar to families frightening. It's a lesson he learned at 14

[Kelvin Judd]

years old that stayed with me. I need to know where I am and where I'm going to be.

[Dave Cawley]

At dark on a Friday afternoon In October of 2000, Kelvin joined his dad, Mark Judd, in pursuit of some elk in the far western foothills of the Uinta Mountains.

[Kelvin Judd]

It was a cold, clear afternoon and we would just have just had a couple hours to hunt. In those days, the way you hunted, I didn't even have a backpack, didn't have anything. I don't even remember if I had a bottle of water. I probably did. Maybe a granola bar. No walkie talkie, no cell phone. Got a coat on, got a gun and a knife, you know, what else do you need? As a 14 year old kid, the

[Dave Cawley]

Judd family lived in the nearby town of Colville. Kelvin often followed his dad on hunts in these hills across a patch of private property adjacent to the national forest.

[Kelvin Judd]

You know, since I was 7 or 8, we'd hike around and I was relatively familiar with the area, you know, knew where I was, knew which hill led back to the road. And on private land, you're not very far from a road. Hardly ever.

[Dave Cawley]

On this hunt, father and son planned to walk through an aspen grove parallel to an ATV track, working from the top of a hill down to where they'd left their pickup truck. The sun was low on the horizon by the time they reached the top of the hill. They expected to make it down before nightfall. Kelvin led out his boots, crunching on a thin layer of early season snow. At one point he noticed a set of hoof prints.

[Kelvin Judd]

I got on some elk tracks and thought, oh, these are headed the right direction. I'm going this direction. Anyway. I ended up following those tracks for quite a while, maybe over a mile. But they ended up veering quite a bit further north than where we had left the truck at the bottom.

[Dave Cawley]

Kelvin didn't realize his dad wasn't behind him anymore, not until the elk tracks faded out and he looked back to see nothing but the white and black trunks of the aspens, their skeletal limbs bare of leaves. The sky turned purple as the sun dropped below the horizon.

[Kelvin Judd]

The mind does some weird things. At that time, I was probably not more than a couple hundred yards from where I needed to be. Didn't panic, but got nervous and thought, am I going the right direction? And probably adjusted my angle slightly a few degrees. And then when that didn't look familiar, it kind of triggered. This is not good. It's dark now. I have nothing.

[Dave Cawley]

He had followed the tracks to a spot he didn't recognize. The air felt icy. Kelvin began to shiver. Back at the truck, Mark judge shouted himself hoarse, calling for his teenage son. Only the echo of his own voice came back. Mark pointed his rifle skyward and fired a signal shot. Kelvin heard it. He knew he needed to signal back by firing his own rifle, Marco Polo style. But he fumbled, loading his gun with trembling hands.

[Kelvin Judd]

It took me long enough before I could shoot back. He had gotten in the truck and headed for help.

[Dave Cawley]

Calvin was a boy Scout. He'd been trained to stay put and wait for rescue.

[Kelvin Judd]

I was cold, but I tucked my pants into my socks. I tried to make this little had this little indentation in the ground under a pine tree that was not too snowy. And I was tired of trying to find the balance between. I'd stand up and do some jumping jacks, try to keep the blood circulating and, you know, tuck my knees into my coat and just curl up in a ball. And I actually fell asleep for a couple hours. And I remember waking up to the sound of a helicopter.

[Dave Cawley]

A search and rescue team was scouring the area around the ATV track with the help of a helicopter. Kelvin could see the beam of its spotlight sweeping across the treetops, but it seemed hopelessly far away.

[Kelvin Judd]

I knew people were looking for me, but I also knew it was not going to come anywhere near me.

[Dave Cawley]

He started walking toward the helicopter, the full hunter's Moon had risen, providing enough illumination for Kelvin to find his way into a clearing where he again sat and waited.

[Kelvin Judd]

I think I went back to sleep or you know, some type of in and out of sleep or possibly some pre hypothermia. But the next thing I know is I remember waking up to the sound of a helicopter. Much closer.

[Dave Cawley]

Falling asleep while hypothermic is dangerous. It's possible to drift off and never wake up. The sound of this helicopter probably saved Kelvin's life. He felt very cold, so, so he stood and started moving to warm himself up in the helicopter. The pilot was trying to think like a lost teenager.

[Kelvin Judd]

Where's he gonna go? He's gonna go down to a road and then he's gonna follow it.

[Dave Cawley]

He watched a monitor showing the view from an infrared camera. He saw a black blob against a background of gray and white. The blob started jumping up and down.

[Kelvin Judd]

I got him. See you. I got him. Oh, good job, Rick.

[Dave Cawley]

You're a stud.

[Kelvin Judd]

I was out in that meadow doing some jumping jacks and once I knew they had seen me, they landed and it was a happy reunion that ended well.

[Dave Cawley]

The heat sensing camera was the hero. When the story of Kelvin's rescue made the news the next day, this technology

[Rachel Marsden]

did in just minutes what a 5 hour ground surface could not do.

[Dave Cawley]

Is he moving?

[Kelvin Judd]

Yep, affirmative. He's okay. Walking. Looks like there's no problem.

[Dave Cawley]

Kelvin made it home alive. But just a few years later, another boy, Garrett Bardsley, would vanish in the Uintas, never to be found. We've talked about Garrett's case before. It underscores just how close Kelvin came to losing his life on the mountain.

[Kelvin Judd]

Yeah, for several years after I would, I kind of dream about it.

[Dave Cawley]

But he didn't let the experience scare him away. Quite the opposite.

[Kelvin Judd]

The Uintas are a big part of my life. They're kind of a part of my identity. That's my place most of the time. Even now it's getting a lot busier. But you can get away from most people. And you know, I'm a little bit antisocial, introverted, so that's what I do.

[Dave Cawley]

Kelvin's desire to take the path Les traveled would eventually lead him to a shocking discovery. One that would change the lives of many people, including some he had never met. And I've shared this anecdote about Kelvin getting lost as a teenager to help you understand why he and his family were the perfect people for what comes next in our story. The Judd families long made a tradition of of horse packing in the Uinta mountains.

[Kelvin Judd]

Grew up on a farm, and so we always had to time a pack trip between crops of alfalfa just right.

[Dave Cawley]

In 2016, Kelvin's dad, Mark, decided to take the family to an obscure corner of the Hyuintas, a place called Allsop Lake. To get there, they first had to drag their horses trailer to the East Fork Bear river trailhead. There they unloaded the horses and fixed the saddles.

[Kelvin Judd]

I love watching my dad put the stuff together because he'll get the scale out and, you know, you just even out the weight. And the pack horse is exactly the same on one side as the other and you're sweaty and dirty before you even start, it feels like. And once you get on a horse and everything's good and the horse is getting get their first jitters out and you're just on the trail and it's almost like a hypnotic state.

[Dave Cawley]

They started up the trail on the afternoon of Wednesday, Aug. 17. The trail traveled across the burn scar of a wildfire, then entered heavy stands of timber. It wound between the slender trunks of lodgepole pines, passing the decaying ruins of century old lumberjack cabins, keeping near the cold, translucent waters of the Bear River.

[Kelvin Judd]

You think you're going to see the lake at any minute, but it takes a while to get there. And as you get to the head of that drainage, it gets closer and closer. It's just like, oh, it's beautiful.

[Dave Cawley]

Walls of rock closed in on both sides of the trail. They grew higher and came in tighter until at last, all of sorts, Allsop Lake came into view. Allsop sat in the center of a narrow cirque, surrounded on three sides by high peaks and ridges. It was shaped like a teardrop that sparkled in the sunlight. The Judd family set camp next to the lake. Kelvin kicked back and relaxed.

[Kelvin Judd]

That's the best part about it. There's not really a plan. You're there, you take a nap in a hammock. You, you fish.

[Dave Cawley]

Kelvin, his brother Kimball, and their dad Mark decided to go for a hike the next afternoon. They wanted to find a way to get to the top of a nearby ridge or saddle east of the lake. Think back to our metaphor of the Uinta crest as a spine. This ridge is one of the ribs that juts off of that spine. It divides Allsop Lake from Deadhorse Lake in the next drainage over. The Judds had been to the top of that ridge once before, years earlier, from the Dead Horse side.

[Kelvin Judd]

So yeah, that afternoon we decided, let's go see if we can make it back up through that pass. You know, my dad's in his 60s and he slowed down a little bit. He's still in better shape than a lot of people half his age. And he wanted to see if we could get back up there on that pass and look over into Dead Horse.

[Dave Cawley]

Getting to the top of the saddle from the Dead Horse side had been easy, but the Allsop side looked much trickier. From the lake, the ground rose steeply in terraces that were cut by an extinct glacier. Kelvin, his brother and dad started heading up through these terraces, aiming for a large talus slope about 600ft or 200 meters high. They figured they could probably scramble up that at to reach the top of the ridge. They soon heard the sound of distant voices far above. Looking up, they could see the tiny figures of several hikers crossing over the saddle from the opposite side. This was unexpected. Few people ever crossed this saddle. These distant hikers were coming down the talus slope, dislodging rocks that hurtled downhill. The Judds realized trying to go up that at the same time was not a good idea.

[Kelvin Judd]

So we decided not to go that way and we'll go this way.

[Dave Cawley]

The Judds veered south and we just

[Kelvin Judd]

angled up from camp and it's pretty steep even before you get to the tree line. But then as you get more above the tree line, there's a nice bench up there.

[Dave Cawley]

By bench, Kelvin means a flat shell shelf of ground, the highest of the glacier cut terraces, a mezzanine, just a

[Kelvin Judd]

few scattered jack pines and relatively easy walking.

[Dave Cawley]

The saddle towered above Kelvin on his left. Between him and the top stood two prominent stripes of vertical cliffs. He couldn't see a way to climb through them, but looking south toward the head wall of of the Uinta crest, he saw a gap in the cliffs. A chute or couloir, as a mountaineer might say. The Judd men left the bench and started working diagonally up through piles of shattered rock. In the runout below the cliffs, they angled for the bottom of the chute, doing what mountain hikers call side hilling. That's literally walking sidelong across a hill rather than straight up it.

[Kelvin Judd]

As we were angling up there, it's got to be four or five in the afternoon and I had my binoculars on me. My dad actually, oh, probably 100 yards below us there was a great big boulder, you know, and my dad said put. What is that? Look at that with your binoculars. There was something that was kind of a light red. It not bright red. Sun bleached Red, but it was not the red rock. You know, you could tell it was something different. And I looked at it. I said, that looks like a backpack,

[Dave Cawley]

a red backpack tucked up against a large boulder.

[Kelvin Judd]

I started looking around, you know, trying to place like, why would a backpack be there? You've got the. The bands of cliffs above you, you know, and impassable without equipment. And then we're on the scree slope that's still quite steep, but it's just all the broken up rock that has slid to a stop over the years. And then that big rock was kind of at the bottom of that scree where it gets a little more gradually flat.

[Dave Cawley]

Before the bench, it appeared the backpack had tumbled down from above.

[Kelvin Judd]

I would have thought that that backpack had rolled and stopped leaning against that big rock, like that's just where it ended up stopping.

[Dave Cawley]

The Judds decided to investigate. They started descending, loose rock shifting beneath their feet, and soon made another discovery. A water bottle with the bottom smashed out. There was more scattered around.

[Kelvin Judd]

We found some trekking poles and part of a tent and some articles of clothing. As I recall, it just none of it added up.

[Dave Cawley]

Maybe it fell out of an airplane. Kelvin thought, why else would it be here so far from any trail? The answer soon presented itself.

[Kelvin Judd]

My brother found a hiking boot. You can just see the bottom of it from where we were standing. You see the Vibram sole. And he picked up that hiking boot. And sticking out of the hiking boot was a tibia and a fibula broken off below the knee with a hiking sock half torn over it.

[Dave Cawley]

Human bones. The tibia and fibula are the bones of the lower leg. These were the remains of a person.

[Kelvin Judd]

And obviously it made a lot more sense why that stuff was there at that point. You know, that's not something that fell out of a plane or somebody just left.

[Dave Cawley]

The Judds saw only the one left boot. There was no sign of its pair, the right. They couldn't see any other bones, but they found the tattered remnants of a yellow rain jacket. Its fabric was sun faded. The seams were coming apart. Matted bits of hair were tangled in the zipper.

[Kelvin Judd]

We ended up kind of at that point thinking, well, are we supposed to touch anything? Like, shouldn't we just leave this stuff here?

[Dave Cawley]

Kelvin snapped a few photos with his phone and dropped a pin on his map. Then he went to the backpack.

[Kelvin Judd]

We tried to immediately put the pieces together of, who is this?

[Dave Cawley]

The Judds opened the red bag and pulled out a bear canister. They saw an Australian flag sticker on the Side of the clear plastic tub, Kelvin could see food sealed inside.

[Kelvin Judd]

And that was my first sleuthing. I thought, well, let's see what the expiration date is on this food. And there was a granola bar in there that expired in 2012.

[Dave Cawley]

That was four years earlier. The Judds dug deeper. They found a cell phone, a Garmin GPS unit, an emergency beacon, and a DSLR camera.

[Kelvin Judd]

And then on the, on the bottom of that backpack was a wallet, to our surprise, Australian driver's license with Eric Robinson's name on it.

[Dave Cawley]

Kelvin didn't recognize the name.

[Kelvin Judd]

For whatever reason, we didn't, we didn't put it together.

[Dave Cawley]

His experience being lost in the Uintas as a teenager had left Kelvin with a keen interest in missing hiker stories. But he had somehow missed hearing about Eric. Still, he recognized they had made a significant discovery.

[Kelvin Judd]

You kind of do a double take. You look up and you look down, you think, where did he come from? How did he get here? This is not where anyone would naturally end up. And then to have it kind of sink in, you know, someone lost their life here, someone's family. Never found this. And there had to have been a search.

[Dave Cawley]

Eric's remains were in the open, not hidden under trees. But you couldn't see them from Allsop Lake or even from the bench below the cliffs. The water bottle, the boot and all the rest blended in with the rocks. Only the backpack stood out.

[Kelvin Judd]

And to see that backpack, you had

[Dave Cawley]

to be above it, but not too far above. Kelvin knew from his past visit to the top of the saddle, from the dead horse side, that it wasn't possible to see down to the base of the cliffs where the backpack sat. From up top, you don't know what's

[Kelvin Judd]

below you when you're on that ridge, you don't know there's cliffs below you until you get around the brow of that and almost, you know, step off.

[Dave Cawley]

The only way for someone to catch a glass glimpse of the backpack would be to fly over in a helicopter or do exactly what the Judds did, side hilling below the base of those cliffs.

[Kelvin Judd]

The odds were astronomical of that happening. And it was so random because if we had even chosen to do go towards the pass a different day, we'd have probably taken a different route. It was surreal to just to feel that kind of irreverence of, wow, we touched this guy's stuff. You know, we know who he is now or who he was. And it was hard to describe, honestly, but it was definitely something we won't forget.

[Dave Cawley]

The Judds took the SD card out of Eric's camera. They gathered his cell phone and wallet and carried them back to their camp. They sat around the campfire that evening and told the rest of the family what they had found.

[Kelvin Judd]

We didn't have cell phone service or satellite phone or anything. And so we thought, well, what are we supposed to do? And I think I was planning to hike out that. So I thought, well, I'll go down and tell search and rescue, Sheriff's office someone when I get service.

[Dave Cawley]

Mark Judd woke early the next morning. He took his horses out to graze in a meadow near the lake, and he spotted the other party who had crossed over the saddle the prior afternoon. Mark walked over and introduced himself to a guy named Dan Ransom. Dan and his party were in the final days of an ambitious trek across the entire Uintah Range, most of it off trail. Mark told Dan about finding human remains in the rocks below the cliffs. Dan was carrying a Garmin Inreach, an emergency beacon that could also send and receive text messages by satellite. He sent a message to his brother asking him to call the authorities.

[Kelvin Judd]

Search and rescue brought a helicopter up and landed next to the lake, and they got out and took our name.

[Dave Cawley]

Kelvin told a deputy what they had found and agreed to accompany a small search and rescue team up to the spot in the rocks where he had discovered the boot and the backpack. When Kelvin came back down to camp a little while later, the rest of the family peppered him with questions.

[Kelvin Judd]

You know, kind of wanted to know if what did the sheriff's office find? Because we didn't find much left.

[Dave Cawley]

He didn't have much to tell them. The helicopter was still ferrying in additional searchers, and it'd be some time before anyone knew what else of Eric, if anything, they might find. Julia Geisler hadn't stopped wondering about her missing friend.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

It was definitely on our minds.

[Dave Cawley]

She and her partner Blake, had tried to preserve Eric's memory.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

We'd spent a lot of time in the Uintas and even to the point

[Rachel Marsden]

where Blake put up some climbing routes

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

called the Eric Robinson Memorial Wall, and, you know, named some of the climbs,

[Dave Cawley]

like the Red Rucksack and things like that. The question, what happened to Eric? Loomed over them for five years. That changed when her phone rang one Friday afternoon. The number was still in my phone.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

And so I saw, you know, Duchenne County Sheriff, and I picked up and I was just like, you found him, didn't you?

[Dave Cawley]

Yes. Dave Boren said he had been Duchenne's chief Deputy at the time of the search, in the five years since he'd won an election and become the sheriff. Julia asked Boren where Eric had been all this time. He told her near Allsop Lake. Julia had to get out a map.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I think when Blake found it, he was like, holy.

[Dave Cawley]

We were like, not very far from

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

that August 10th drop off in the helicopter.

[Dave Cawley]

August 10th, 2011, the day Blake pointed to Dead Horse Lake on a map and told the sheriff that's where he believed Eric probably ran into trouble. Allsop was just a couple of miles, miles from Deadhorse, as the crow flies. Yet no one had thought to look there. Julia peppered Boren with more questions. What happened to Eric? How did he die? Boren didn't have the answers. He said Allsop wasn't in Duchesne County. It was Summit County's territory. And there people were still on the mountain collecting Eric's remains. So why was he calling before getting all the information?

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Do you have. Marilyn's contact was basically what they wanted because they didn't have it.

[Dave Cawley]

Marilyn awoke to the sound of her phone ringing a few minutes later. Because of the time difference, it was already Saturday morning in Melbourne. Hello, Marilyn, a man said when she answered. This is Sheriff Dave Boren.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I just was stunned at that point, you know, in a sort of an overwhelming sense, one of relief that you would have some answers, but also in a state of shock because he said, be prepared. This is a backpack, but there's very few remains because this is five years on and five harsh winters, and it's in a place where there are wild animals. So there was very little of his physical remains, but his backpack was there intact, and the contents had weathered five winters.

[Dave Cawley]

Marilyn asked the same question as Julia. Where? Boren said Allsop Lake. She wanted to know why the searchers hadn't found Eric there. But back in 2011, he explained to

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

me that the backpack and remains were in Summit County. The search base was in Duchesne. Summit had sent a preliminary search.

[Dave Cawley]

On day one of the search, Summit county deputies checked the trailheads on their side of the range. As soon as they confirmed Eric wasn't at any of them, they withdrew from the search. The Uinta Crest, the backbone of the range, is the dividing line between Duchesne and Summit counties. Boren told Maryland Duchene lacked jurisdiction on

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

the Summit side, and so we weren't really looking in that location.

[Dave Cawley]

As I've said before, the Uintah Highline Trail runs almost entirely on the Duchesne side, but it does briefly enter Summit county, near Dead Horse Pass. Eric's remains were located off the trail almost directly west of Dead Horse Pass. But no one had thought to look there because no map showed a trail between Deadhorse and Allsop Lakes. There was no reason to assume Eric would have tried to cross the treacherous saddle between them. All it would have taken was one helicopter flying over that saddle to look. But that never happened. Marilyn hung up and sat in stunned silence. She was due at her daughter Rachel's house for a birthday party a bit later that morning.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

It was again on Annabel's birthday.

[Dave Cawley]

You know, that's like five years to the day since Marilyn and Rachel had arrived home from Utah.

[Rachel Marsden]

And mum, I can remember this very clearly, Mum ringing me early and saying they've found him. And I could not. I just, I had to sit down and I just could not just. It was disbelief and relief. Yeah, I think by then I'd sort of gotten familiar with this long term torture that is not knowing. Gotten used to it as best as we were going to.

[Dave Cawley]

Rachel shared the news with her husband Jeremy. None of us really expected that he probably would ever be found by then. Yeah, yeah, you know. Five years down the track. The discovery allowed Rachel to at last set aside irrational theories.

[Rachel Marsden]

It put to rest some of those dark fears, all those really odd hypotheses that, that you know, would niggle at you. And that was a relief to actually not have to think that maybe that was a possibility.

[Dave Cawley]

But it raised a whole new set of questions. Like how. How did Eric end up there? Ksl, the news station where I work, received an anonymous tip a few days later about, about the discovery of human remains in the Uinta Mountains. The tip caught my attention. I was aware of Eric Robinson's disappearance five years earlier, so I called the Summit County Sheriff's Office. Ron, so I have it on the record. Really quick spelling of your first last name and title for me please. Ron Bridge. R O N B R I D. Ron confirmed the story. A family had stumbled across Eric's remains near Allsop Lake. Summit county deputies believed Eric must have fallen to his death while trying to travel from Deadhorse Lake to Allsop Lake.

[Kelvin Judd]

If you know the area between those two lakes, there's a tall ridge.

[Dave Cawley]

Yep.

[Kelvin Judd]

And there are ways to get around

[Dave Cawley]

that ridge, but they are extremely rough. He did not attempt to go around the ridge.

[Kelvin Judd]

He in fact tried to go down the AUSA Lake side of that ridge.

[Dave Cawley]

I condensed this into a 30 second story and rushed to break it on the air. KSL News Radio's Dave Cawley joins me in studio. He's followed this case since the beginning. Tell me first of all, where Allsop Lake is. And I guess it was quite a ways from where he was last seen. Yeah, it's pretty good distance. You're talking about 15 miles as the crow flies. I had personally visited both Deadhorse and Allsop Lakes on separate hikes between the time Eric disappeared and when he was discovered. I had camped within shouting distance of his remains without ever knowing they were there. My own brother stood atop the saddle between the lakes the summer after Eric disappeared, not realizing Eric's remains were hidden from view below. Yeah. So what's the speculation on how he ended up there? The unspoken assumption seemed to be Eric had simply got himself lost. That didn't sit right with me. I knew not many people were familiar with both the Allsop and Dead Horse sides of that saddle. I was having visited both in person just a few years earlier. I knew that saddle wasn't a place a seasoned hiker like Eric would just accidentally end up. So what was Eric thinking when he left the trail? The person best able to understand his mindset was his wife. So I called her.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I was at work, and I remember this lovely accent on the phone asking to speak to me.

[Dave Cawley]

Rarely does anyone call an American accent lovely, but I'll take the compliment. This was my very first conversation with Marilyn. Marilyn, I am rolling on that recorder. As I told you, my first question would just be, how are you feeling about all this right now?

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Initially, shock.

[Dave Cawley]

We talked for about 20 minutes. I'm not going to play that whole tape because it covers stuff you already know. Eric's experience level, his detailed planning, the unlikely circumstances of his discovery. Marilyn praised the search and rescue parties as well as the Judd family.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I can only express my gratitude to them.

[Dave Cawley]

I sensed a note of calm or maybe detachment in Marilyn's tone. Her emotional guard was up. Understandable. I was just a voice on the phone, a person she had never met. But I wanted her to know that to me, Allsop was special. And as I was thinking about calling you, kind of wondering what I would say, it ran through my mind to tell you that that is one of the most beautiful places that I know of in my home state and really in the United States. And to me, it's made all the more special and maybe in a sense, a little bit sacred knowing that he was up there.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

I understand that, too. I have got the map, and I can see from that location just how. How pretty it must be. And I can only just imagine that Eric thought, I can see that place. That's where I would like to, you know, camp for the night. I'm, you know, just thinking how he would think.

[Dave Cawley]

I knew from personal experience, Eric crossing the saddle for fun just to camp by Allsop Lake didn't make sense. So when Marilyn said this, I realized she didn't know why Eric left the Highline Trail any better than I did. How then could I ever expect to answer that question? I told Marilyn I'd email her some photos I had taken at Allsop Lake, then said, goodbye, Marilyn. Thank you again. Have a good day.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Thank you very much.

[Kelvin Judd]

Bye bye.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

Bye bye.

[Dave Cawley]

I left that conversation, not thinking I'd ever have refused to speak with Marilyn again. The discovery of Eric's remains allowed Marilyn to return to vcat the court and execute his last will and testament. She arranged to have the balance of his pension paid out to his son Glenn. Then Marilyn and Glenn cut all contact. Official reports described Eric's remains as partial. That's a vague way of acknowledging his body had decomposed and his bones were scattered. The boot held the bones of his left foot and lower leg. Deputies also recovered part of Eric's right femur, bits of his right forearm, and bone chips a coroner described as probable cranial fragments. That was all. Eric's entire left arm was absent, along with his wedding ring and the stainless steel watch Marilyn had given to him on his 60th birthday. Those items were never found. Utah's chief medical examiner authored a report that said the bones showed no definitive evidence of lethal antemortem trauma. In other words, no indication how and Eric died. He listed Eric's manner of death as undetermined, but said the evidence suggested Eric fell while trying to climb down a cliff.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

So those were the explanations, you know, that I had to then process and rewrite my varied endings to what had happened.

[Dave Cawley]

The medical examiner wrote, it remains unknown whether he may have suffered immediate lethal injury or may have survived an initially sublethal injury for hours or days or longer. This suggestion Eric might have survived the initial fall devastated Marilyn. Scenes of him injured and alone, calling for help flashed through her mind. She told herself it couldn't be true.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

If he had consciousness, he would have set off that beacon.

[Dave Cawley]

A seed of doubt remained. Though Ruby had tumbled down the rocks, it might have carried the beacon beyond Eric's reach. The Summit County Sheriff's Office sent Marilyn pictures of the cliffs and the rock where Ruby came to rest.

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

You just look at it and you think, how on earth did he fall down that why didn't he see that that was coming?

[Dave Cawley]

Kelvin, the man who had found Ruby, wondered the same.

[Kelvin Judd]

Just went down all of those rabbit holes of what we can learn about this person.

[Dave Cawley]

Eric's recovery answered the question of where he had been for five years. But but that only complicated the mystery.

[Kelvin Judd]

It kind of almost raised more questions than answers when you get searching about it because you think, okay, he's not where he's supposed to be. If he was doing the Highline Trail,

[Dave Cawley]

Eric is the only one who could say why he left the trail.

[Kelvin Judd]

Yeah, it's just really unfortunate that there was not a way that he made it out of there to tell his story.

[Dave Cawley]

But Marilyn was about to receive a box in the mail. Its contents would allow her to see what Eric saw in his final hours. 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 [e-mail] that's uinta spelled uintatriangle.com find us on social media using 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 Smardin with a peek at the latest bonus what would you

[Marilyn Kohlstra]

do if you found bones in the backcountry? Dave wanted to get a better idea of what someone should do if they stumble into a situation like Calvin did when he found Eric's remains. In bonus episode seven, Utah's chief medical examiner and chief investigator reveal how they sift through the clues to determine a person's identity and the cause of death.

[Dave Cawley]

Uinta Triangle is researched and written by me, Dave Colley. I also did the field recording. Andrea Smarten is lead producer and sound designer with contributing producers Ben Kiebrick and Jenny Ament. Our main score and original music are by Alison Layton Brown. Additional voices in this episode from Aaron Flood. Uinta 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. Finally, from me to you. Please remember wherever your life's trail takes you. None of us ever truly walk alone.