CUBERANT LAKES, High Uintas — Searchers returned to the mountains this week to look for some sign of 12-year-old Garrett Bardsley.
Horses, mules, hikers, divers and a helicopter have been involved so far.
And as of Thursday night, nothing had been found to let searchers know what happened to the Elk Ridge boy after he disappeared Aug. 20, 2004, during a camp-out.
Among those helping Thursday was Eraldo Soares, father of slain Salt Lake resident Lori Hacking.
The 74-year-old says he's no hiker, but he wanted to show support for the Bardsley family, so he hiked three miles to the Cuberant Lake base camp to help clean the campsite.
"I want to meet Garrett's parents," he said. "I want them to know I'm having the same feelings they're having."
He said he hopes his being there can move others to join the search. "The worst part," Soares said, "is to know that you haven't found your child."
Not finding Garrett — the youngest child of Kevin and Heidi Bardsley — is something the Bardsleys and their friends are bracing for. Their collaborative effort with the Summit County Sheriff's Office may bring as many as 3,000 people to the mountains through Saturday, and it is probably the last such effort.
Thursday, about 300 participated in the search, said Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds. He expects the numbers to pick up today and Saturday.
But what volunteers and professionals may be searching for are miniscule things — teeth, bone fragments, pieces of cloth. The environment can drastically alter a human body after nearly a year in the wilderness. Pictures of the clothing Garrett was wearing when he disappeared are available at www.findgarrett.org.
Searchers arriving at various base camps were shown a video produced by the sheriff's office about what clues to look for during a wilderness recovery operation.
At the Cuberant Lake base camp, the video, shown on a generator-powered laptop computer three miles from the nearest road, explained that weather, predators, insects and autolysis — the body's natural ability to break down — can reduce a body to fragments.
"The likelihood that we're looking for a body intact is very, very slim," Summit County Sheriff's Capt. Alan Siddoway said on the video.
Three groups organized by Calvin Blohm, one of the managers at the Cuberant Lake camp, were each assigned a search grid 500 meters by 500 meters.
Searchers space themselves about three to five meters apart and walk forward 500 meters, looking carefully in front and behind. "It's over difficult terrain, but it's slow and methodical," Blohm said.
Any evidence is to be logged with a GPS coordinate, bagged and labeled. That way, the search can expand from that point.
Depending on how many searchers there are per group and how tightly they stand, each grid takes about four passes to complete, but because they go slowly and carefully, it can take hours before searchers return to camp.
And if it rains, like it did Thursday at 5 p.m., the searchers don rain gear and keep going.
Among the searchers were Dave and Leslee Henson. They chose Thursday, Leslee's 50th birthday, to search for Garrett. It would have been a good birthday present if they could have found the boy, she said.
The lake where Garrett Bardsley was last seen has no name. It belongs to a group of six lakes, of which Cuberant is the largest. He had been fishing the morning of Aug. 20 when he got his shoes wet in a stream that feeds the crystal-clear lake.
His father, who was fishing nearby, told Garrett to go change his shoes and socks, which were at camp in a meadow about 120 paces away from the stream.
About 30 minutes later, the search for Garrett began.
It has been previously reported that the camping trip was a Boy Scout activity. But Gary Hansen, the young men's leader of the Salem 8th Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said he wanted the boys to have a camp-out in which they didn't have to worry about merit badges and advancement requirements.
Hansen is spending this week as a kind of roving logistics man, helping each base camp get needed supplies. He and Kevin Bardsley have been friends for years, beginning when both families lived in northern California.
It's frustrating that nothing was found Thursday, Sheriff Edmunds said. Volunteer and professional searches done last year were combined into one map, he said, and only a few likely areas remain.
E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com