Father and daughter found dead on Maine hike were long drawn to mountain, family says

A New York father and daughter whose bodies were found on a mountain in Maine earlier this week had planned the hike while on a work trip.

Tim Keiderling, 58, of Ulster Park, was found dead Tuesday in the Tablelands area on Mount Katahdin. The body of his 28-year-old daughter, Esther Keiderling, was discovered Wednesday afternoon about 1,000 feet away, between two trails off the Tablelands, Baxter State Park said.

Tim was a father of six and a grandfather of two. He and Esther were very close, Tim’s brother, Joe Keiderling, said.

They both worked for Rifton Equipment, a New York-based medical supply company.

“Tim was utterly unique,” the brother said in a statement 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.”

In his free time, Tim enjoyed tending and growing fruit, such as strawberries and blueberries, and was a beekeeper. His faith was important to him, his brother said.

Tim was a member of the Bruderhof Communities, a Christian community in which people share all their possessions, including money, its website states.

“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 said. “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 said.

“She loved reading and writing, with a particular fondness for the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay,” her uncle said.

She kept a WordPress blog and wrote posts on the platform Substack. On Saturday, she wrote a post on Substack that she and her father were in Maine for a sales trip and had planned a hike, WMTW reported. She said she was “a little nervous” about the hike because of everything she had read about the Abol Trail, according to the news station.

Joe Keiderling confirmed to NBC News that the pair had traveled to Maine for work for trainings for therapists on adaptive equipment for kids with disabilities. He said they decided to take a weekend vacation and “climb a mountain that had always attracted them.”

The park said the pair went missing Sunday after they left Abol Campground to hike the summit. The trail’s difficulty is listed as very strenuous on the park’s website. Water is limited after the first mile, and the trail is fully exposed after two and a half miles, it says.

Authorities launched an extensive search Monday after their vehicle was found parked in a day-use lot. A park official said Thursday that the medical examiner’s office will determine how the pair died.

There is no evidence of criminal activity, the official said, and investigators are trying to determine why the bodies were found apart.