Cause of death revealed for father who took daughter on bucket list hike up Maine's highest mountain
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A father's cause of death has been revealed weeks after he and his daughter died while hiking up Maine's highest mountain.
Esther, 28, and Tim Keiderling, 58, of Ulster Park, New York, were found dead on Mount Katahdin earlier this month.
A medical examiner revealed Tim died from hypothermia on Thursday, News Center Maine reported.
Authorities previously determined Esther died from blunt force trauma, as her body was found beneath a snowy boulder.
They believe she slipped off a trail and slid down the icy mountain terrain - crashing into the boulders below.
The father-daughter duo embarked on the strenuous journey early on June 1.
For the experienced hikers, trekking up the 5,269-foot mountain was a 'bucket list' item - although Esther eerily revealed on her Substack she was 'a little nervous' about the trek.
'If you don't see me back on Substack notes again, that's where I am,' she wrote, referring to the famously difficult Abol Trail.
They were last seen on the mountain's Hunt Trail at around 10:15am that day, according to park Baxter State Park officials.
After not hearing from Esther and Tim by the following evening, their family grew worried for their safety.
Authorities officially declared them missing on June 3, swiftly searching for the pair using helicopters, ground searchers and K9 teams.
They made the horrific discovery of Tim's corpse the day they launched the search, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife.
Esther's body was found the next day, about 1,000 feet from her father's near the summit.
Hikers who saw them before their disappearance noted there were extremely harsh weather conditions.
The mountain's peak was being hit with 40-mile-per-hour winds, rain, sleet and snow in frigid temperatures.
'They were doing a day hike, a bucket list thing, to climb this amazing mountain,' Tim's brother-in-law Heinrich Arnold wrote on Facebook.
'Both wonderful people, full of life, full of joy.'
After Tim's body was found, his brother Joe Keiderling told WMTV: 'No one has had a brother like mine.
'Tim lived exuberantly. He loved life, loved people, loved God. He was a storyteller like no one I've known with a rich sense of humor.'
In their joint obituary published in the Daily Freeman, Esther was described as 'a sensitive, deeply-thinking woman who loved reading and writing, with a particular interest in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay.'
Tim was said to have an especially close bond with Esther, as she was his oldest child.
'What drew both him and Esther to high places was always the view – the broad expanse of God’s handiwork, laid out below them,' the obituary reads.
Both Tim and Esther were members of the Bruderhof faith, a Christian community for people living in rural areas.
In a statement after their passing, their employer Rifton Equipment said they were 'deeply saddened' by their sudden deaths on the mountain.
