Photos record day that turned deadly in Uintas

The photographs are water-stained. Some have horizontal lines running through them. But Summit County investigators say the story they tell of a day hike that turned deadly is remarkable.

The pictures document a trip a Florida woman and her daughter took into the High Uintas in September 2003. While there, they encountered a fierce storm, got lost and died of exposure.

It took nine months for searchers to find the bodies of Carole Wetherton, 58, of Panacea, Fla., and her daughter, Kimberly Beverly, 39, of Tucker, Ga. A camera was among the belongings found with the bodies near the Crystal Lake trailhead.

Summit County Sheriff's Capt. Alan Siddoway said a roll of film inside the camera was developed at a special lab in Montana.

Many of the pictures are of scenery the mother and daughter saw during their hike. They also took pictures of each other. One of the earlier pictures on the roll shows a fuzzy image of a smiling Kim Beverly wearing a cap and sweatshirt.

Jim Wetherton, Carole's husband and Kim's stepfather, told KSL Newsradio about that tragic day and what he saw in the pictures.

"They had maps and were prepared in that respect. I think there's a number of things in the area that they didn't know about that they probably were not prepared for," he said. "They had started out on a well-marked trail. They were somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 feet elevation, looking — actually the picture shows, behind them that they weren't paying that much attention to the weather."

A later photo, shows Carole Wetherton sitting at the shore of a lake in a T-shirt. Later she's on a rocky ridge looking to the horizon, gray clouds still high in the sky. "Folks that are familiar with the weather patterns in the High Uintas could explain to me what exactly was going on with the weather," Jim Wetherton said, adding that he was told if locals had seen that weather developing, they would've "run for home."

Four photos later in the sequence, an image shows hazy fog topping the trees and heavy rain hitting a lake's surface. Investigators say the temperature dropped dramatically as the day progressed, as did the cloud cover. "As the pictures progress, you start to see the weather changing. You start to see some urgency on the faces of the individuals," said Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds.

The second-to-last photo shows a still-smiling Carole Wetherton. But now her thin jacket is on, the hood pulled over her head. Siddoway, a trained forensics investigator, saw more. "Posturing and body language. You see there that the (picture) by the side of the lake it's more relaxed, and then the last one there with the coat, you know, she's fairly rigid."