Life and death in the Grand Canyon
Posted on June 9th, 2008 – 8:17 AMBy Chris Welsch
Three years ago, I wrote a story about backpacking into the Grand Canyon. I had only seen it before from the edge, where it can only be conceived as an abstraction; the scale of it renders accurate perception of space and distance impossible. The first Spaniard to look at it in the 15oos estimated the Colorado River was about 6 feet wide. In the course of reporting the story, I got on the mailing list for park press releases, and now every week or two, I get an informational report on some aspect of the goings-on there. Many of them report on people who have met an accident or an untimely end, either through falling or heat exhaustion.  The Grand Canyon is an arid desert, but it’s also an alpine precipice. Going into the Canyon is like climbing a mountain in reverse. Going down is easy. Getting back up is not. As a result more than 250 people have to be rescued from the canyon each year, and most of them are foolhardy men in their 20s who thought they could make it to the bottom and back up in a day. When I was there, hiking out of the Bright Angel Trail on a blazing August day, I encountered two Irish tourists about a mile into a hike down. The man was wearing a Speed-o and flip flops and was carrying a 20 ounce bottle of Diet Coke. His similarly pasty white girlfriend was in a bikini and Tevas. I don’t know how they fared, but we can deduce that they were severely sunburned at a minimum.A few weeks ago, I followed the tale of Alan Humphrey and Iris Faraklas, who set off on a backpacking trip May 17, but didn’t turn up when the trip was supposed to end on the 23rd.  These were experienced back-country travelers, and yet it appeared certain they’d either fallen, gotten lost and starved or met some other unkind end.  For five days, park rescue teams combed the park hoping to find them still alive. Finally, on the 28th, they were found. They’d overshot their exit trail and headed up the wrong side canyon. Instead of panicking, they found a water source and stayed put, meting out one day’s worth of food over the course of five. Here’s a more fleshed out version of the story. Reading these stories is always a reminder to me that there’s often a woeful disconnect between people’s idea of wilderness and what wilderness is. (I’m not pointing fingers at Faraklas and Humphrey; they KNEW what they were doing and still got caught on the wrong side of nature’s harsher side). I also get that feeling when I read about people gored by bison in Yellowstone or lost without a jacket in the Alaskan bush. Just because it looks like a post card doesn’t mean it is one.  Â
2 Responses to "Life and death in the Grand Canyon"
I had a bad Grand Canyon Experience five years ago.
My wife was working on her Masters in Geology at NAU, with a project studying the springs on the North Rim of the Canyon. She made a trek down and back every month for a year and a half. I agreed to go with her on her penultimate hike to help haul her gear, and for the experience. We went down in the evening, with the last hour of the trek being after dark. We had headlamps, so it wasn’t too tough, but we did go faster than we would have otherwise. I drank what I thought was plenty of water on the way (perhaps 3 liters), and was fine when we got to our destination.
The next morning, I woke up rather thirsty, so I had some more water, and then we went off to do some sampling. On the way, I started to feel quite crappy. I paused at one point, and threw up all of the water I had consumed before we headed out. I collapsed, overheating and dehydrated. I likely would have died within an hour or two, but fortunately the operate of the pumphouse came upon us, and helped me back to the pumphouse, where I was able to get into air conditioning and drink more water. He put us up in his house at the bottom of the canyon, so I was able to take an entire day to recover before I had to hike out.
Needless to say, I was much more cautious on the way out, and took my sweet time. I had a near death experience despite being cautious, or at least thinking I was being cautious. The moral of the story is, however much water you think you need, drink twice as much. However much time you think you need to do your hike, allow twice as much. You don’t have to be a hero - just making it in and back out is impressive enough.
Went down the Bright Angel for 2 hours.
Going up took 45 minutes. (!) Trail packed with hikers. No exhausting, life threatening experience, just contra intuitive, as we stopped to look at things going down. So just do what you can, a short trip will not threaten your life.
Kerri Westenberg has globe-trotted for National Geographic and other magazines. Now she zips around the region, on the lookout for travel news you can use.
Elizabeth Larsen lived in Salzburg, Austria, and has traveled throughout Europe and the Americas. She can say "diaper," "bottle" and "crib" in four languages.
Troy Melhus has heli-skied on glaciers, dived alongside Monk seals and raced for 24 hours on a mountain bike. All this, and he rarely spends more than $500 on a trip.
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