Hyde Family Travels Album
Into The Maze, Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Into The Maze, Canyonlands, National Park, Utah, 1968. A. C. Ecker is leading the horses down the trail into the Maze Wilderness, while the rest of the party, including "Ham" and "Dilly" Hamilton, Art Ecker and Philip, Ardis and David Hyde wait on the Canyon Rim. A. C. and Art Ecker led many horse pack trips into the Maze and other Southeastern Utah wilderness in the Canyonlands and Arches National Park region. The Eckers also led the Hyde family on numerous wilderness trips in the desert Southwest. Their headquarters for years was Robber's Roost, which had been one of the original hideouts on the Outlaw Trail in the late 1800’s. Located between the Green River, Colorado River and the Dirty Devil River, Robber's Roost provided many hideouts for bandits because the landscape is criss-crossed with sheer-walled canyons, hidden draws, boulder fields and dead-end box canyons. Robber’s Roost was a stronghold of Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch, a rough crew of bank robbers, train stickup men, and horse and cattle rustlers. When Robert Redford played the Sundance Kid in the film, “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid,” he wrote a book called “The Outlaw Trail” about his experiences on a real life horseback ride of the trail. Robert Redford became friends with the Eckers, especially A. C. Ecker, who appeared on the cover of the November 1976 National Geographic in association with an article that Redford wrote for the magazine about the wild West and the role of the Canyon Country in it. The Hydes had a remote connection to Robert Redford through their mutual friend A. C. Ecker. The Hydes have also for many years been members of the Natural Resource Defense Council, of which Robert Redford is a spokesman. Philip and Ardis Hyde were never much impressed by celebrity alone, but for many years they respected the actor turned environmentalist. They had an opportunity to meet Redford at the dedication of Mt. Ansel Adams in Yosemite in 1985.
