Hiker and mountaineer Art Lang felt an urgency to assist in the search for missing Australian trekker Eric Robinson.
“I said to myself, ‘I need to rest up, but I’m going to go back in,’” Art said.
It was Friday, August 12, 2011. Art and a friend were just completing a week-long hike from Leidy Peak to the Mirror Lake Highway on the Uinta Highline Trail. They’d departed a day before solo hiker Eric Robinson was supposed to reach the same end point.
A few days into their hike, Art and his friend encountered a hiker near Anderson Pass who was handing out missing persons fliers.
“We saw, talked to a person that talked about Eric,” Art said.
The person Art spoke to could only have been Jonathan McAuley, an avid hiker whom Eric Robinson had befriended on the John Muir Trail five years earlier. Official reports from the search noted Jonathan hiked from Henrys Fork to the Highline Trail in Painter Basin, looking for Eric, on Tuesday, August 9, 2011. That’s the same date Art Lang passed through Painter Basin westbound on the Highline Trail.
“My interest was piqued,” Art said. “I thought, ‘Wow, if we’re walking the same thing, I guess we’re going to be looking for [Eric] the next four or five, six days.”
Danger at Dead Horse Pass
Art did not see any sign of Eric over the course of that week, as he and his friend continued westbound on the trail. They did encounter roughly 2,000 sheep in the vicinity of Lambert Meadow, along with a few men who were tending the flock.
“The gentlemen that we encountered were Chilean of Peruvian shepherds that had been recruited to be there and they spoke not a speck of English,” Art said.
A day later, Art and his friend met a large group from Indiana on the trail, as they headed toward Red Knob Pass.
“[The Indiana hikers] were discouraging people from going over Dead Horse Pass,” an official report said. “They were telling people to take an alternate route and going over Cleveland Pass through the Granddaddy Basin area back to the High Line [sic] Trail.”
In this same vicinity, Art and his friend also ran into another of Eric Robinson’s friends, Julia Geisler, in the upper reaches of the Lake Fork drainage. The Duchesne County Sheriff’s Office had flown Julia and her partner, Blake Summers, into the wilderness by helicopter on Wednesday, August 10.
Julia and Blake were headed for Dead Horse Pass themselves, on an assumption the steep, north-facing slope of the pass might’ve been too frightening of an obstacle for Eric to cross.
“Dead Horse Pass is the most difficult pass on the entire crossing,” Art said. “It is steep and it’s snowbound for almost the entire year. And the trail, when it’s visible, is not in great condition. It does switchbacks up the side of the talus slope, but then it crosses a steep, high-angle slope above a bunch of cliffs.”
Navigation crux
Art and his hiking companion managed to cross a partially snowbound Dead Horse Pass on Thursday, August 11, 2011. They completed their hike the following day. As soon as he arrived home, Art called the Duchesne County Sheriff’s Office to report his experience.
In an official report, Chief Deputy Dave Boren wrote Art said “the trail was in poor shape and not well marked in some of the areas.” Art specifically said the trail between Porcupine and Red Knob Passes had been badly damaged by domestic sheep.
“[Art] said from Rocky Sea Pass to the Mirror Lake Trailhead, the trail was in good shape and a lot of people were navigating it and knew that Robinson was missing and were watching for him,” Boren wrote. “In Art’s opinion that is one place he wouldn’t worry about searching.”
About an hour and a half following Art’s call to the sheriff’s office, a pair of Boy Scout leaders reported having encountered Eric Robinson five miles off the Uinta Highline Trail, on August 2, 2011. The scout leaders said Eric had recognized he was off-route and requested assistance finding his way back to the trail.
Art believed Eric might’ve become lost while trying to navigate the section of the trail along Oweep Creek, at the head of the Lake Fork drainage, where he’d observed significant trail damage from the sheep herd. He believed it was the “navigation crux” of the Highline.
“The upper Oweep, close to that navigation crux, was missing a trail because it was just hundreds of sheep trails going every which way, and every blade of grass was down to the nubbins or gone,” Art said.
While resting up for two days over the weekend, Art learned volunteer searchers were planning to gather at first light on Monday, August 15, at Moon Lake on the south flank of the Uinta Mountains. He decided he would join them.
Art Lang joins the search for Eric Robinson
Art reloaded his backpack with food and supplies to last a few days and drove to Moon Lake early that morning.
“I showed up to the deputy on duty who was managing the whole thing and I said to him, ‘Hey, my name is Art Lang. I just traveled the whole Highline. In fact, I know the Uintas very well. Can I help you with the search?’ And he saw my backpack on and he goes, ‘Yes, you really can,’” Art said.
They looked over a map of the High Uintas Wilderness together and Art pointed out his so-called “navigation crux.”
“We went over that in detail and he started sending the helicopter crew up there,” Art said. “Then at the end of that I said, ‘But I’m here to actually go search, so I want you to fly me up into this navigation crux and I’m going to go looking for this guy.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘I can’t let you do that.’ And I said, ‘You can’t let me do it? That’s really the wrong way to put it.’”
Art explained he had vast experience hiking in the Uinta Mountains and navigating the nooks of the range. He said he intended to go search, and would walk the 15 one-way miles from Moon Lake to the Highline Trail if necessary.
“I had to talk them in to letting me go, and I did that by telling them, ‘Hey, I got my full pack here. I just crossed the whole thing. I’m rested up. I’m going in with four days of food. And if you won’t airlift me, it’s going to take me a day-and-a-half to get up there and a day-and-a-half to get out and I’ll have one day to search. But if you fly me in, I’ll spend the next four days searching for you. And this guy deserves that kind of respect,’” Art said. “The sheriff’s deputy took pause and he said, ‘Let me talk to some people.’ And he got on the radio and called the actual sheriff, and the sheriff said, ‘Let him go in.’”
Art was in the hunt. Question was, would he be able to find Eric before time ran out?