Family hikes 37 miles to escape the Beulah Fire in Summit County

SALT LAKE CITY — A family hiking and fishing in the backcountry last week was forced to flee a fire on foot. They hiked 37 miles round trip to get to safety.

The Beulah Fire is growing in the High Uintas; crews say it's now a category 4 fire with 2,310 acres burned in the wilderness near Bear Lake.

The Weavers had planned a camping trip at a backcountry lake, with three days of leisurely hiking and fishing, but they woke up on their first morning to a massive plume and rescue helicopters. The group of five was at Dead Horse Lake and was able to get texts through a satellite connection and communicate with fire crews.

Ana Weaver said, "We were in touch with fire crews, told them where we were camping, and they told us to leave ASAP. 'It's closer than 4 miles to them.' So we packed up our camp in, like 10 minutes."

"It just got more and more urgent and definitely scary," said Caleb Cantwell, a nursing student at Utah State University.

The group could see helicopters responding to the fire, but decided that while it was still safe to do so, they would try to hike out instead of calling for help.

Nate Weaver, Ana Weaver's dad, led the group as the only one with backcountry hiking experience. "The kids were pretty worried about the situation, but I'm not a huge fan of consuming emergency resources if they're not absolutely necessary."

"We had a compass, and then we met some people that had a map," Ana Weaver said. "We found the closest trailhead possible, which ended up being like 37 miles plus, round trip for us."

They had access to satellite messaging through a recent iPhone update. Ana Weaver explained, "We would text my mom through the satellite connect and be like, where are we? Which direction should we go? And she would tell us, like north, south, east, west, and we would walk for another hour, send our location, do the whole thing again."

The Weavers say their experience is a perfect example of why you always need a plan B in the backcountry.

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