PASS LAKE, High Uintas — "If you saw it, it's a no-brainer," Chris Ivie said.
Ivie was talking about the distance between the small lake where Garrett Bardsley and his father, Kevin, were fishing and the campsite where the Bardsleys pitched tents with friends last Thursday. From the lake to the camp, it's about 200 yards, said Ivie, a family friend.
With the distance so short and some familiarity with the lake-to-camp trail, no parent would have worried about Garrett making it back to camp on his own to retrieve a pair of dry shoes, Ivie said. Kevin Bardsley even watched his son make a good portion of the trek.
"Kevin saw Garrett miss the trail and told him to go back. (Garrett) turned and went back in the right direction," said Ivie, who was at the campsite cooking breakfast for the group at the time. "It's unexplainable."
The time lapse between the last time Kevin Bardsley saw his 12-year-old son and when Kevin himself returned to camp was also short, Ivie said Tuesday.
"About 15 minutes," Ivie said. "I think (Garrett) just wasn't on the exact trail and got turned around. Kevin didn't do anything wrong."
Search and rescue efforts for the Utah County boy have been ongoing since about 2 p.m. Friday, about six hours after Garrett disappeared.
Tuesday, the search was officially being called a "recovery" effort as opposed to a search and rescue, Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds said, indicating authorities presume Garrett is dead.
Five adult men and about 17 youths ages 12 to 17 were on the Bardsleys' trip, which Ivie described as more of a church outing than a Scout trip. The group arrived Thursday and set up camp near three small lakes on a high plateau just south of Cuberant Lake. The area had been scouted prior to the trip and selected in part because of its easily identifiable natural features.
"It's all boxed in and not easy to get lost. We talked about that," Ivie said. "We have not given up hope. It's officially gone from a rescue to a recovery, but the family and the volunteers do have hope."
Ivie and about 100 others — some Bardsley family members, some friends, some neighbors and fellow church members — continue to conduct searches of the area. They have a small city of campers and plastic tarps set up about 200 yards from the Summit County Sheriff's Office command post on the banks of Pass Lake.
Tuesday's fifth day of the search turned up nothing for search teams — both those working directly with the sheriff's office and those connected directly to the Bardsleys.
Sheriff's office teams narrowed their focus to a concentrated area of cliffs south of the ponds and the campsite, Edmunds said. An area not quite two miles wide was divided into eight narrow sections and then searched by teams of up to 10. Most of the 75 searchers involved Tuesday were professional search and rescue workers or law enforcement, including the FBI SWAT team.
"We're being very meticulous about that area," Edmunds said. "We're now having to go rock by rock, boulder by boulder, tree by tree searching every nook and cranny."
Bardsley's family told police that about six months ago, the boy took a wilderness survival class, learning that if lost, the best thing to do is to build some sort of shelter and hunker down, Edmunds said.
"Mom told us that (Garrett) really took hold of that idea that when the weather comes in, seek shelter," he said.
Search teams have turned up numerous clothing items and photographed dozens of footprints, none of which has been identified as belonging to Garrett, Edmunds said.
The search effort will continue at similar staff levels through the week, but will then likely be scaled back to a "continuous limited search," Edmunds said.
"This search could last a long time, but it's important to note that we are not going to stop searching," Edmunds said. "We are never going to stop searching for Garrett until we find his remains. We owe that to the family."
E-mail: jdobner@desnews.com