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Surviving a Grand Canyon rockslide
BELL FERRIS Special to the Daily Sun | Posted: Monday, March 29, 2010 5:05 am | (2) Comments
Dennis Foster looks out over Vishnu Canyon before starting the precarious descent. This was the last photograph taken with this camera before it was destroyed in the rockslide. (Photo by Bill Ferris) .
..I don't know how many times I tumbled or how far I fell down that rock-choked ravine.
What I do recall is hearing the grinding sound of a boulder breaking loose above me. I turned to look back upslope and saw Dennis Foster, my hiking partner, fall forward. Then I saw it, a half-ton limestone monster rumbling toward me.
The projectile descended with authority but seemed destined to pass safely to my left. But a last-second bounce redirected the stone missile. Pivoting to my right avoided a direct hit, but the boulder clipped my backpack. Spun back to my left, I immediately flew down the rock-strewn slope, out of control.
All sense of my location in time and space vanished. Only a few memories -- snippets, really -- remain of what happened next. After the second bounce, I recall thinking I might be slowing.
I was wrong. A blow to my left temple. Glasses flying off. Another tumble. Was it five or six times I flipped?
Finally, I slid to a stop lying on my stomach in the rocks. Thank God it was over.
"Dennis, are you all right?" I yelled.
Looking at my right hand, I could move my fingers, but the middle two were stiff and sore. My arms, legs, head, neck and back all seemed to move freely.
Then the pain arrived. The ache in my right knee and throbbing above the left eye were strongest. And there was blood. I must be cut above that eye.
My backpack must have provided some protection during the violent tumble. Its aluminum frame had been snapped. Something had shorn the lens off my Nikon camera. Was that a collision with a rock or my thick skull?
"I can't believe I'm alive," I muttered, words that were spoken only for me.
HUNKERED DOWN FOR THE NIGHT
Dusk was falling over the Grand Canyon as Dennis and I discussed our next moves. We needed a place to lick our wounds and assess the situation. Even without my glasses, I could see what appeared to be space enough for both of us amidst some boulders. We made our way in that direction.
I was in shock, perhaps even slightly concussed. It seemed to take forever to make a decision or take any kind of action. The challenge was to stay focused on one task at a time.
First things first: check my injuries.
Retrieving the mirror from my kit, I found the cut above my left eye. It was in the eyebrow, not too deep and the bleeding seemed to have stopped. A Band-Aid from my first aid kit covered that wound. My left arm hosted an assortment of scrapes and bruises. A 4-inch square piece of gauze and tape bandaged the worst of it. The middle two fingers on my right hand were swollen and stiff, but did not appear to be broken or dislocated.
It was the right knee that worried me most. A sharp pain accompanied any motion and the leg wouldn't bear much weight. Unless this improved, I wouldn't be able to get far, not in this backcountry area.
While I was tending to my injuries, Dennis created enough space between the boulders for our sleeping bags. He laid out our tent footprints. Then, we inflated and set in place sleeping bag mattresses. Finally, the bags were spread across the mattresses. Dennis helped me into my bag before getting into his. I ate a sandwich and took two 500 mg tablets of acetaminophen chased with Gatorade.
This was how Sunday, March 14, 2010, ended for me in Grand Canyon.
A WEEK UNTIL MISSED
A chill night breeze filled our ravine making sleep difficult. I used the constellations to track the passage of time that night. Leo the lion dominated the sky when cold first interrupted my doze. A few hours later, Arcturus had replaced Leo. Brilliant red Antares in Scorpius anchored the eastern sky upon my next awakening, which came a few hours before sunrise.
Monday morning, Dennis and I weighed our options. The rock slide happened on the third day of a nine-day hike. We had reservations for Bright Angel Campground on Friday, so that would be the earliest anybody would note us as overdue. But hikers get behind schedule all the time in the Grand Canyon. Missing a night at Bright Angel would not raise an alarm.
Saturday night would be the earliest our wives would note us as overdue. If one or both of them contacted the rangers at the Backcountry Information Center on Sunday, that would trigger search and rescue teams into action. But Sunday seemed forever in the future and we couldn't stay huddled in this ravine all week. While we had plenty of food, we did not have nearly enough water, the key to survival in Grand Canyon.
STRIKING OUT FOR VISHNU
So, we made the decision to try for Vishnu. We were descending into Vishnu Canyon the day before when catastrophe struck. There should be water there; we'd seen it before the rockslide.
Before heading out, Dennis miraculously found my glasses in the rocks above our shelter. (Finally, a bit of good luck.) Slowly, carefully we made our way south across several ravines until reaching a slope that appeared to go all the way to the bed of a minor drainage that emptied into the main channel of Vishnu.
Dennis had injured his left knee in the slide. With both of us limited in mobility, it took nearly three hours to negotiate a route across Muav ledges and down rocky slopes into the drainage.
Upon our arrival, we were greeted with another bit of good luck. The most beautiful little creek you ever saw was flowing through this drainage. We had found an essentially limitless supply of water.
Finding water meant two things: We could survive the week that might pass until search parties started looking for us; and, most important, I would see my wife and son, again.
I was going to survive this. I broke down and started crying on the spot.
SURVIVE WE DID
And survive we did. Dennis' knee had recovered enough by Tuesday morning that he decided to hike back to Phantom Ranch to report the rockslide and show rangers where I could be found. My injured knee was still too balky for serious backcountry hiking, so I stayed put at the creek.
Over the next few days, I worked on a series of small projects -- putting up my tent, laying out a space blanket as a reflector to signal passing air traffic and building a lean-to for shade near my camp. Those kept me occupied and helped elevate my morale. Each task accomplished took me another step closer to being home.
Rescue did come. Just after lunch on Thursday, March 18, I was sitting in the shade of a tree when I heard the distinctive whomp-whomp of helicopter rotor blades. Putting down my pen and log book, I stood for what would happen next. A National Park Service helicopter rose above the horizon, circled overhead a few times, then disappeared over a ridge to land.
For the second time that week, I wept. And again they were tears of joy. This ordeal had come to an end.
Amazingly, Dennis had managed to walk from Vishnu Canyon to Phantom Ranch -- a distance of about 22 miles -- in just over two days. It must have been hard hiking with a full backpack and only one good leg. Somehow, he mustered the strength and determination to meet this challenge and, in so doing, ensured a happy ending for this tale of survival in Grand Canyon.
Survival gear
The following items were critical to a successful outcome on this hike and should be considered standard gear for any backcountry hike in Grand Canyon:
1. First Aid Kit
2. Map
3. Compass
4. Capacity for a minimum 8 liters of water
5. Space Blanket
6. Rope
7. Knife
8. Tent or other shelter from weather
9. Flashlight
10. Sunscreen
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