Well, I definitely have a story to report. Got a helicopter ride for the first time ever. Also, first time I’ve been a member of a rescue-d party rather than the rescue-ing party. Pretty good story, actually.
Short version
We went canyoneering, Emma broke her foot, we effected a high-angle pseudo-self rescue to escape the slot, we were all extracted by helicopter. I’m writing this three months after the incident, and it turned out that she had multiple broken bones and sprains, but required no surgery and is almost back to full functionality.
Long version…
We went to Utah again, for canyoneering again, looking for cold water and technical descent challenges in deep dark potholes in the middle of nowhere again. Found it, again. This time though we had one of those stochastic, dumb luck accidents.
From the beginning though. Adults-only trip (I know this is a family blog, but this entry does not involve intrepid kids). The crew involved in this rescue story includes Emma, Michael, Frank, Thaddeus, and myself. Emma and Michael had been on the canyoneering trip the previous year.
I drove up solo-mio to muley pt, our standard first-night crash spot for Utah trips. This time it was a caravan with Michael, Emma, Frank in another vehicle. After a stop at a pretty decent pizza place in Farmington, we took our standard last-gas stop in Mexican Hat and arrived at Muley Pt in the dark for a sweet layover sleep.
Next day we pit-stopped the ranger station en route to the Black Hole. Descended Black Hole in good form, no notable difficulties. Good time was had by all. New wetsuits fit, ample canyoneering capabilities, technical experience… all established and verified.
Onward, to meet up with an old best friend, Thaddeus. Old, as in I’ve known him forever, and well neither of us is young anymore either. Flawless coordination was achieved through the miracles of modern technology. I made a map using Caltopo, complete with the crappy 4wd road that Thaddeus would need to drive for 45 minutes with his rented vehicle special, sent him the map link, and… nothing. Nothing else is required these days. It’s so easy to meet up in the middle of nowhere these days, it breaks my heart. Twenty-five years ago I was on a three-month roadtrip, alone by myself somewhere in Nevada, and I used an honest-to-god payphone to call Thaddeus to set up a meet-up at the Belagio in Vegas, at 8 PM, two-weeks hence… and that was the last communication and only thing necessary for us to both be at the right spot on the right night at the right time. Staveley, Thaddeus and I, meeting up in front of the Bellagio, 1999, dirtbagging around the west, sans cell phones. Back in the day.
I’ve only seen Thaddeus a few times since we graduated college, as we’ve always lived far from each other. Somehow our friendship always picks right back up. Goes to show that friendship “current-sy” is relative. Maybe not relative. Maybe a matter of faith. Maybe a matter of mutual participation. We could get into the philosophy of how old friendships can easily surpass new friendships and how the ability to make strong friendships decreases with time (is it a continuous exponentially declining function? or else a function riddled with step discontinuities associated with key life transitions?). Or we could get on with story.
So we met Thaddeus out in the middle of nowhere by excellent mutual prearranged plan. And then we decided: “let’s not do any of the canyons that we had planned to, for which we had downloaded all necessary beta.”
The canyons we had planned on sounded too long for the late wakeup we had mutually settled on. None of us wanted to get up at 6 AM to do a 6-8 hour canyon so that we still had many hours of daylight left for our first social night.
So we chose to do a “4-6 hour” canyon. All of these things are rough guidelines of course… (adequate foreshadowing? I’m working on it.)
Euphrates was our chosen canyon. A 4BIII I believe they call it. ‘4’ for the hardest technical moves required; ‘B’ for the amount of cold wetness to endure; ‘III’ for the overall duration and level of epic commitment.
Everything about it (up to a certain point) was totally wonderful and beautiful. Great weather, great crew of people. Everybody was solidly competent.
The canyon had some invigorating challenges. There was a pretty deep keeper to surpass, maybe 10′ vertical wall to escape, and the bottom was a mud pit out of the movies. Not a dry, non-slippery place to stand. I was covered in mud. To the point that I worried what would happen if I needed to itch my eye—everything I touched just got more muddy, and it doesn’t wipe off on a wetsuit. Dark and chilly and epic mud-wrestling kind of mud. They threw the potshot overhead, for me to use as an exit, but it pulled on me (twice). Finally I just prevailed on them to stop fucking around and throw my pack (break that gopro inside, I dare you!). That did it, though I had to use my tibloc ascenders on the rope to get out rather than being able to hand-over-hand it because everything was so slippery at that point I could have bottled it and sold it as some form of special… lube.
I didn’t want all four other members of our party to have to go through the same tribulations I had to, down in the dark slippery hole, so we rigged a tyrolean. For anchors it was my body weight on one side, and Thaddeus waist-deep in cold water on a pothole on the other side, just stretching the rope tight between us as counterweights. After we sent Frank, Michael, and Emma across, Thaddeus used the rope to escape his own pothole (that one was tricky too–needed a boost to get out of it), then used some honking big loops as a rope ladder to get out of the keeper.
After that we were riding high—sweet canyon! I dropped down a down climb into waist-deep water, Frank followed me down, and that’s when Emma started screaming.
Michael yelled to me that she was hurt, pretty serious tone in his voice for sure. She was about 100 ft back up the canyon, not too far but Frank had to boost me back up from the pool up that little down climb. Made my way back to Emma in about two minutes. She was in the bottom of a ~5 ft diameter pothole, all uneven and filled with babyheads (boulders the size of…). She had been stemming up above the pothole, maybe only 6-8 ft above the bottom, and a foot slipped and she went down in and the way she landed was… not good, evidently! Busted foot, for sure. Not sure the exact nature of the bust, but that didn’t really matter. No bones sticking out of the skin, no external bleeding… but there was definitely no possibility that she was walking out on it.
Needless to say, we could get her out of there. It was one of those times when the only acceptable response is to demonstrate unquestionable confidence. First order of business: wrap Emma’s ankle as best as possible for support; second, use inreach satellite coms to get a helicopter with hoist/haul capability; third, move Emma to a spot in the canyon where a helicopter with a hoist, or dangling a line, would be able to access us.
It was shady and chilly, to establish the context. October in the Utah desert can be balmy warm, even hot, during the day. But where we were, well out of the sun, wet from swimming in potholes, not so much. It was getting down in the low 40’s for us at night. It was only ~2:30 PM, but the sun had already set for us down in the canyon. Let’s say it was low 60’s air temp, and the water? Cold. I’m not good with water temperatures. I think three of us were in our wetsuits. Not Frank though. Frank went a different way—when we got to the first unavoidable water, he wanted to keep his clothes dry… so he took off his pants. He spent the entirety of the rescue in his boxer shorts. No lie. Shivering sometimes, for sure, but making do with the boxer shorts. I think he put some pants on before he got in the helicopter, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
I tried for some bedside manner down in that cold dark little rocky pothole with Emma, wanted to make sure she realized it wasn’t that big of a deal for us to handle, we were going to get her out of there and she was going to be fine. I’m a field coordinator for New Mexico SAR so I have a fair bit of experience with managing this sort of thing, and I’ve had my fair share of personal epics and adventures through the years. I think my confidence and being relaxed about the whole thing was working out ok. But at one point I asked her if she had ever broken a bone before (my brain was trying to establish a baseline for the pain and level-of-injury that we were dealing with) but when she said “no” I responded with a hearty “well, there’s a first for everything!” In retrospect that wasn’t my top moment, not exactly reassuring.
I wrapped her ankle with the standard bit of stuff I carry. It was a reasonable wrap, considering how light we pack for these slot canyons. Used up my roll of medpore tape. Better than nothing, not as good as a big fat supportive ankle wrap. I give it a B-.
The others helped/carried Emma through the next 100 ft of shallow potholes, while I went back down that little down climb into the water. Frank and I caught her at the bottom of the down climb and carried her across the super slippery waist-deep water to the next rap (not good to get wet and cold when you can’t move around anymore to warm up). I think we almost dunked her in the water a few times, it really was that slippery, but we made it. The next rap was anchored with a sandtrap. This means that everybody except the last person is anchored off of a body laying down in the sand, and then the last person raps off a folded-over tarp square of sand. It was maybe a 25 ft rap.
Frank rapped off Thaddeus and went down to see if he could find a clear spot of sky for inReach satellite access. Thaddeus went down next, maybe off me? Michael helped Emma over to the edge while I lowered her into the arms of Thaddeus and Frank (it was another waist-deep pool of damn cold water). They carried her across, Michael rapped off me and I rapped off the ‘trap.
Then we were money, because we had a ~60′ ft wide bit of canyon, about 300′ long, with 60′ walls on one side and ~75′ walls on the other side, above which was steeply sloped sandstone slab for another couple hundred feet. Which gave us a good enough view of the sky for the inReach to talk to its satellites. Barely. And which was wide enough for a helicopter haul, if their line was long enough. I think 250 ft probably would have worked. Maybe. 400 ft or more, definitely. I think the hoists are usually ~ 250 ft max (because they have to fit cable on the reel), but the short-hauls can be upwards of 600 ft (because they land, hang a rope off the bottom, then fly with the dangling rope).
“We’ll see,” I thought. Let’s hope there’s a helicopter available that can haul, because there was no way they were landing in our teeny little grotto. Sure, it was wide compared to 0-ft-wide (like the bottom of the previous stretch of canyon had been). But it was still way too deep and narrow for a helo to land.
Perhaps now is the moment to mention that the canyon was inescapable in the area where we were. That’s the general state of things in a slot canyon. After that first rap, when you pull your rope, you’re committed. The only way out at that point is down and out: down past the last rap, then hiking around and back up slabs via a non-technical hard-to-find uphill scrambling slog. Short of a helicopter or some rescue crew dropping a long rope from up on the rim, or drilling holes and sinking bolts to aid-climb straight up a sheer slab, there’s no escape possible until you pass through out, down, through the bottom.
So Frank and I both had inReaches, both fired them up. The satellite coms were intermittent—went 5-15 minute periods without anything sent/received at a stretch—but a damn sight better than nothing at all. I swear, in 2010 the satellite coverage with my old Spot device would not have supported the rescue we pulled off that day.
The others scouted the next part of the canyon. At the end of our little stretch of slightly-wider canyon, there was another ~60 ft sandtrap-anchored rap, into a dry keeper pothole with a ~8 ft high vertical wall to ascend on the far side of the pothole, topped by a ~4 ft wide horizontal flat open ledge before the final 160 ft rap to exit the canyon. Those final obstacles were no joke, definitely interesting, challenging, and normally just exciting good fun. In the state I was in, I had no doubt that we could get Emma through those if we needed to (not easily granted), but afterwards, what then? We would still have ~2k vertical to ascend back to the vehicles, over steep slabby scrambling terrain, with a bum foot? Doable without extra assistance, yes…but it would have taken a good 8-12 hours of step-by-step hopping/carrying/sling shenanigans no doubt. This was obviously the job for a helicopter.
I got texting, first trying to mobilize Peter (area commander for SAR back in Los Alamos) as a middleman to deal with a helo callout. I tried that first because it’s nice to have a middleman back in good com range that can act as your little mini incident dispatch—who would accept my statement that we needed a helicopter with hoist or haul capability in as few typed characters as possible, and just get on it. I know from experience as incident commander for NM SAR that one should not be overeager to request a helicopter just because someone asks for it… so I get it. Dispatches have to do due diligence and sort out the actual response required, and can’t take the subject’s word for it. But in this case I knew we needed a helicopter and specifically, one that could hoist or haul, because there was no way a helicopter crew was going to reach our location on foot, and there was no way to escape the canyon (yeah, turned out I was wrong about that…you’ll see).
But Peter was out managing a local Los Alamos SAR incident of his own in the jemez, so I went ahead and pressed that SOS button on the inReach. I’ll tell you though, I stared at it for a little bit, thinking to myself, “am I really doing this?” I carry the inReach for such an emergency, but as an Incident Commander of SAR I’ve only been on the receiving end of those SOS calls for the past few years, not the source.
Although the satellite service wasn’t great, it was functional. I received a text from Garmin to confirm the emergency (“yes, it’s for real real”), then they passed me to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and after a brief confirmation to them, they passed me to Garfield County dispatch. I was as clear as I could be with Garfield County that we were going to be needing a hoist or lift-capable helicopter. They told me a helicopter was warming up and we should expect it in 45 mins—that was impressive response time, and it ended up being even shorter than that.
The helicopter showed up in ~30 mins from when Garfield called them. As soon as I saw it I knew it didn’t have a hoist or lift-capability. It looked just like our local Classic Air medical helicopter back in Los Alamos! Funny, that. It was Classic Air, but based out of Page, AZ rather than New Mexico. They did a few circles, locating us and looking at possible LZs, and while they did that I turned away and started thinking about what we would do after they left, while we were either waiting for the haul-capable helo, or maybe we could move here through the whole canyon to where there might be an LZ at the bottom?
The helo landed eventually, maybe 0.25 mi. away up out of sight past the rim. Some time passed, as they sought a route down into the canyon to our location (wasn’t going to happen). Eventually we shouted to them and two of the three crew came to the canyon rim above us so we could have a conversation. We told them there was no way for them to get to us, and no way for us to escape out to them (on our own…that will become relevant), and they said we would probably have to wait for a helicopter with hoist/haul capability, and that it probably wouldn’t be until the following morning. All of which I think was just a collective talking-through of the inevitable conclusions, stating it plainly so we all could mentally prepare ourselves for the tasks of the coming night.
Then someone (Frank I think) came trotting back from 200 ft down the canyon around the bend (out of sight/hearing from the two helo crew) to say that the pilot had scrambled down the slab that was over the final rap, and made it to only ~25 ft above our spot in the canyon. There was no safe way down in, or way to self-escape ourselves, but someone suggested the possibility—maybe we could pass the helicopter pilot a rope? Maybe we could take off one of our harnesses, tie the rope to it, throw it up to the pilot, then he could walk far up the slab to a secure spot (bit of depression or a big rock to get behind) to act as a body-weight anchor for one of us to escape the canyon. Bit of a crazy plan.
So I returned to the two helo crew with whom we had the original conversation, to tell them that their helicopter pilot had scrambled most of the way down a sketchy slab, and we had a crazy plan to tie a rope to him and pull ourselves out of the canyon. They shared a priceless look with each other, containing more than a bit of skepticism, and the canyon amplified one of them speaking low under their voice to the other “I don’t know if we can accept that sort of liability.” Yeah, I saw that coming. At which point I launched in to my “you can trust me” lines that I had been preparing in my head, which went along the lines of “I do SAR in NM, I understand if you aren’t comfortable with it that’s fine we can wait all night no problem, but maybe just go take a look, speak with your pilot, and see what you think?”
So we all gathered on the slab, I spoke with the medic (Holly I believe?) because she was the only one with climbing experience, and I had to explain how in canyoneering—unlike climbing—tying a rope to a person and using them as an anchor was totally normal, not at all crazy for us, and all the pilot had to do (he was the heaviest) was find a reasonable ledge or rock to sit behind, and we would take it all from there. And remarkably they agreed. First the pilot moved the helicopter to the closest LZ he could find. Then the pilot came down as close as possible to us, which was diagonally out over top of the next drop-off in the canyon. I confess this was the part of the entire rescue that gave me the biggest anxiety—watching a stranger walking down a steep slab towards the drop-off unroped. He was totally fine where he was, but it was hard for me to trust that he was fine, not knowing him and not being on the slab next to him myself to be able to judge the angle. Then we threw the pilot the harness, with the rope already tied to it. Holly helped him put on the harness and they disappeared up the slab out of sight to find a spot. The spot they found was about 200 ft up, with the rope running diagonally out over the last drop-off—but it wasn’t too traversy. So I ascended the rope with the tiblocs, and got out of the canyon. At that point I knew we were home free (I knew we could get the rest done). Huge feeling of relief.
The helicopter crew took a break and some beautiful photos of their helicopter perched on a tiny outcropping with Lake Powell in the distance as the sun set. I found a spot directly above the crew to body-weight anchor Frank and Michael up. Michael did a body-weight anchor, and I set up a simple 2:1 haul system (I carry a pulley with me for emergencies). Frank and I both got our weight on the other end of the haul using my tiblocs and hauled Emma up while Thaddeus got her started up the slab. We took it slow, she used hands and elbows and knees to work her way up. At one point we realized that the huge rock Michael was pushing on with his feet for an anchor was rocking a bit, so we paused and added one of the helo crew members to the body-weight anchor, off to the side a bit. Before we added to the anchor, that first bit of hauling was probably the biggest potential for disaster of the whole thing. In retrospect, that was a mistake on my part. The anchor was not as bombproof as it could have been, and I should have recognized it and remedied it before we started using it—especially since we had the means to do so. Obviously hauling puts more force on an anchor than typical usage, e.g. rappelling or climbing. It was easily remedied with the addition of another anchor member, but we only did it after starting the haul. Despite that error on my part, nothing failed and we hauled Emma out easily without issue.
They put Emma in the helo with Michael and flew them to the rim of the canyon just a minute away to where our cars were. Then they wanted to know if the remaining three of us (Thaddeus, Frank, and me) also wanted a ride. At that point, Thaddeus was still in the bottom of the canyon, Frank and I were out of it. But to be clear, “out of the canyon” did not mean that we were on a flat spot with an easy straight walk back to camp. We were still maybe 1000 vertical ft below camp across many miles of unknown steep slickrock domes and slabs, in the full dark. It was quite likely impassable from our location back to the rim. It’s not often easy finding the route out of these canyons, even after you’ve completed the technical portion and popped out the bottom. You really want to stick to the established exit route that has been figured out by others, in order to avoid additional unplanned adventuring. The return exit route from the bottom of our canyon was on the opposite side of the canyon from where Frank and I were. So our choice was between rapping back down into the canyon to Thaddeus to finish the next rap, navigate the last keeper onto the ledge and do the last 160 ft last rap (which would have been off some sort of suspended sandtrap or else an improvised deadman in the sand at the bottom of the keeper)… or to accept the offer for the helo ride. We elected to take the helo ride.
We belayed Thaddeus while he climbed out of the canyon and they shuttled us to the rim in two more rounds. When the pilot came back from dropping off Emma and Michael, the pilot took three tries to find the flat spot on the rock that was barely wide enough for the skids. It was some impressive piloting, in the dark, with a slabby canyon wall about 50 ft behind the helo.
Michael, Frank and Emma took off to make the long drive to Moab, leaving Thaddeus and I to do a quick dinner before bed back at a camp.
So, what did we learn?
- Shout out to the Classic Air helicopter crew. They were professional, flexible, skilled, capable, and friendly. It was a joy working with them. They are the reason the rescue succeeded, because of the willingness to participate in a rescue that was wildly abnormal for them. At no point were they in danger (beyond the usual danger of flying a helicopter, that is), but it required flexible thinking and willingness to analyze the unconventional situation on the spot. Also, they were willing to trust us (I was hanging off the body-weight of the pilot-anchor as I ascended, remember). That is incredibly special. They were flying in to rescue us, remember! Often the subjects of a rescue are not the most competent—hence the need for a rescue—but when the reason for the rescue is a dumb-luck broken foot there’s room for the rescuers to entertain the possibility that the subjects might not be total idiots. But then to trust them to the point of participating in a high-angle rescue? As a body-weight anchor? That’s exceptional.
- The crew I was with were solid. I trusted everyone I was with, and everyone did what was needed to be done when it needed to be done. After the initial shock, Emma recovered well and did a great job of staying mentally in the game and functional despite the pain. Thaddeus said that seeing her crawl up the slab on her knee was very inspiring. It was the smooth, seamless group cooperation that got it all done. It was a bonding experience for us all. Before the rescue, I believed that an emergency—were it to occur—would be well handled with our group. Afterwards, I no longer had to simply believe. One never wishes for accidents to happen; nevertheless let’s extract the positive aspects where possible.
- Carry an inReach, have it properly paired to your phone (carry your phone). Test it with a text message the night before. Pay for the Garmin rescue insurance—if you use the Garmin SOS and end up with a helicopter ride, you’re covered.
- The pulley and two tiblocs that have been dead weight for the past ten years were worth carrying all that time. I have since purchased an upgraded version of each: the microtraxion as a better pulley, and the new tibloc (tibloc was a xmas gift–thanks mom). My old tibloc was an earlier, inferior version. Also, no need for a second tibloc with the microtraxion. Also I added a better ankle wrap product than medpore tape.
- Carry a modicum of rescue gear and practice using it. I haven’t practiced for a long time, but fortunately I went through a phase where we spent a lot of time testing systems (there are some particularly memorable sessions with Jonny off our front steps on a San Francisco city street) and it has stayed with me well enough. Well worth the effort for a refresher though.
- Euphrates is an awesome canyon. It was more technically challenging than I anticipated from the description, which was a wonderful surprise. Most canyons seem a bit over-hyped, this one was under-.
- Accidents happen. No one was to blame for this rescue. We were all prepared, capable, and experienced. It was just bad luck; it could have happened to any of us, through no fault of our own.
Emma is almost fully recovered now, and the group has already talked about rough dates to return next season for a rematch. We never actually finished the canyon, so clearly we’ll be going back.
