A New York father and daughter whose bodies were discovered on a mountain in Maine this week planned the hike while he was on a business trip.
Tim Keiderling, 58, of Ulster Park, was discovered dead Tuesday on Mount Katahdin’s Tablelands.
His 28-year-old daughter, Esther Keiderling, was found dead about 1,000 feet away on Wednesday afternoon, between two trails off the Tablelands, according to Baxter State Park.
Tim was a father of six and grandfather of two. Tim’s brother, Joe Keiderling, said he and Esther were very close.
Both worked for Rifton Equipment, a medical supply company based in New York.
“Tim was utterly unique,” Joe Keiderling said in a statement released Thursday. “Many young men and women remember him as an elementary school teacher who could hold them spellbound with wildly imaginative stories and escapades in the woods and fields of the Hudson Valley he called home.”
Tim spent his free time tending and growing fruit, such as strawberries and blueberries, and he was a beekeeper. His faith was important to him, his brother stated.
Tim was a member of the Bruderhof Communities, a Christian community that shares all of its possessions, including money, according to its website.
“At church gatherings, Tim was a regular contributor, not only as a lay pastor but as a gifted storyteller, bringing life and vitality to familiar Bible stories and making them relevant to the issues of the day,” Joe told me. “At home, he was the consummate host and loved nothing more than lively conversation and a great laugh.”
Esther was quiet, but “deeply sensitive,” Joe observed.
“She loved reading and writing, with a particular fondness for the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay,” according to her uncle.
She maintained a WordPress blog and wrote posts on Substack. She wrote on Substack on Saturday that she and her father were in Maine for a sales trip and planned to go hiking, according to WMTW-TV in Portland, Maine.
She said she was “a little nervous” about the hike because of everything she had read about the Abol Trail, according to the news outlet.
Joe Keiderling confirmed to NBC News that the pair had traveled to Maine for therapist training on adaptive equipment for children with disabilities. He explained that they decided to take a weekend vacation and “climb a mountain that had always attracted them.”
According to the park, the pair went missing on Sunday after leaving Abol Campground to hike to the summit. The park’s website lists the trail’s difficulty as very strenuous. The trail becomes fully exposed after 2½ miles, and water is limited after the first mile.
Authorities launched a massive search Monday after their car was discovered parked in a day-use lot. A park official said Thursday that the medical examiner’s office will investigate how they died.
There is no evidence of criminal activity, according to the official, and investigators are attempting to determine why the bodies were discovered separately.
