The Canyon is Hot
I often wonder how people get caught up in a Canyon tragedy when their optimism for a great hike turns to concern, terror and maybe death. I’ve just come back from a hike into the Kanab Creek wilderness area — an area of beauty and wonder of water and dust. And I came back scared and happy to be alive.
I knew it would be hot. It’s July, but it has been colder than usual and there is a lot more water than usual. There is plenty of water in the drainages that lead into Kanab creek and in the creek itself. The plan was simple. Go down the Ranger’s trail, which is a pretty gentle trail, manage the little difficult spot were you hang onto the side of a cliff, then straight onto Kanab creek and down to the many wonders of creeks and hollows and water slides.
And it started off well, too. I got out early enough starting my hike at 4 p.m. a day early and to getting all the way to Lower Jumpup where I camped near water. Perhaps I should have been suspicious to sleep comfortably all night without a sleeping bag or even long underwear and never having to urinate, but I was oblivious to all the signs of problems.
The next day I started early and had no problem hiking down the hanging ledges along the steep cliffs surrounding the Lower Jumpup waterfall. I did drop my backpack and spill some water, but I had no problem getting more. Lower Jumpup was full of water to within 5 feet of its confluence with Sowats Canyon. I was a little surprised by how hard it was to hike down to the confluence with Sowats. I’m thinking that the heavy rains brought more boulders and made deeper cuts into the beds of the creeks leading to Kanab. This made the hike down the drainages slower. But I was full of wonder of the Canyon and the water. Mountain Sheep Spring was three times as wide as usual and the water flowed down Jumpup passed the confluence of Jumpup with Kwagant.
I was still chirping along as I hiked into the dry narrows of Jumpup. Again, the drainage was very rocky and full of boulders and deep ruts where the spring waters had carved their initials into the drainage. About an hour and a half into the narrows, I came upon the cleft that normally has a small pool of water – it was a very large pool. I passed it by happily. Is this what people marching to disaster do? Do they pass by somewhat disgusting water with nary a thought of needing it?
By a little before 11 a.m., I was getting sore and tired. I was getting hungry and my power bar did not appeal to me. But I told myself, no matter if I got to the Kanab confluence or not, I would eat at 11. Then just minutes before 11, I turned the corner and there it was – the confluence. I often call it Wall Street because Jumpup intersects Kanab creek at a right angle. The cliffs tower above the confluence like high rise buildings in some kind of metropolis where the light never penetrates to the street.
I sat in the shade and ate my tuna lunch with crackers. It was very hot and I had a hard time choking down the tuna. I guess it was at this time that I began to worry. I know that you have to eat and that I was hungry, but I was forcing myself to put this food into my body, forcing myself to eat and drink. And I was still thirsty. At noon, I got up to go and I was slammed by the force of the heat at the confluence. I knew that I couldn’t walk in this heat, it was too overwhelming. Then I looked at my water – just over 2 quarts – and my directions and I began to wonder whether I would get to water before I ran out.
It was then that I began to shake uncontrollably. My heart started to pound and I felt weak. What would happen if I ran out of water? I started to walk down the creek bed. It was full of boulders, not smooth. But then, there were very few smooth spots all the way down to this spot. I walked to a shady spot down the creek and sat down shivering and shaking at the same time. I was torn between wanting to keep walking and filled with dread to keep walking. I sat until I ran out of shade and then walked back to the confluence.
There was still shade in a corner of Wall Street and I plastered myself to the wall until almost 3 p.m., taking small sips of water. Then I made up my mind to return to the nice camp space I’ve been in before at the confluence of Jumpup and Sowats. It took 4.5 hours. I was hurting from the weight on my back. I was hungry, but could not eat. I was thirsty, but never satisfied even as I drank as much as I could take. About 6:30 p.m. I arrived at the first large pool of water near Jumpup and Kwagant. I decided to eat dinner and cooked up a double portion because my plan was to leave before my time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t eat it all. And yet I was hungry. I know this as a bad sign. You have to eat and drink to survive the heat. I ate as much as I could and then walked the last 30 minutes to my campsite. I set up just as the sun set and it got dark. Again I had no trouble sleeping without long underwear and I didn’t have to urinate.
In the early morning, I had a decision to make. It was incredibly hot in the Canyon and I had a long distance to go before I got to my car. This worried me. How hot would it get as I hiked? I was already dehydrated and I had not been eating enough for a long hike out. I decided to spend one more day in the drainage, trying to recover. But I didn’t just want to sit around all day. I decided that I could hike a little over an hour and check out the Obstacle Pool that George Steck mentions in his loop hike through Indian Hollow. I did that and found that while there was water there for the first time, two years ago the area was completely dry, it was still very low and allowed anyone to get to the workaround for the big chockstone that blocks Indian Hollow at this point.
It was a fun hike and I really enjoyed it. But even coming back to camp early in the morning, I was hot, unbearably hot. I lay down in the first pool by Kwagant and got wet. When I got back to camp it was in complete sun. I knew that if I were going to hike out the next day, I would need to be higher up the Sowats drainage. Mountain Sheep Spring pours out of the rock only 30 minutes up and it is just 30 minutes from the trail out to the Esplanade. I packed up and moved my camp to the cool overhang spot near Mountain Sheep. Even doing so cost me effort. It was so hot that it took longer to get up and I had to stop and get wet several times.
After setting up my camp, I sat and drank as much water as I could. I ate a powerbar and at noon I ate the rest of my dinner from the night before. It was the most amazing thing to be near water, to drink as much water as I could stand to put into my body, to sit in pools of cool water all day and yet to know that I was not whole. I was still dehydrated. I still could hardly eat any food. I began to wonder how difficult it would be to leave the next morning.
About 6:30 p.m. when the sun had gone completely from Sowats drainage, I decided to hike up to where the trail leaves the drainage. I wanted to make sure that I could find it, so that I wouldn’t waste any time getting out in the morning. I thought that if I knew exactly were the trail came out of the drainage, I could leave in the dark. How could I go wrong? I was just hiking up a dainage and there was no false trails that I could take. I found the cairns easily and just before the trail left the drainage there were two large rocks. Piece of cake.
I went back, ate as much food as I could and slept all night. Again not needing any extra clothing or having any desire to urinate. I got up at 3:15 a.m. and was out of camp by 4, walking in the dark for about 30 minutes. I began to worry because I hadn’t seen the cairns and wondered if I had missed them. Finally, I said, “Let’s give it five more minutes.†Within 5 minutes, I arrived at the trail markers. I was so happy I sat down and just shock with the joy of making it to my trail.
But I knew I couldn’t stop, I had to keep walking as fast as I could because the sun was an unrelenting traveler across the sky. I got up and started to walk. I’m just not as fast as others. I just can’t carry as heavy a load. I had to rest several times on the hike out of the drainage. I couldn’t even do the entire hour across the esplanade without resting. But finally I came to the Ranger Trail junction. What joy I had to see that this drainage was also still in shade. Again, I walked as fast as I could drinking as much water as my body would take. As soon as I felt hungry, I sat down on the trail and ate another breakfast. I knew that I needed to keep my body in fuel if I was not to get hyponutremic. I stayed in shade until almost 8 a.m. and about 2 miles from my car. The heat slammed into me even that early and even that far up to the rim.
At 9 a.m., I came to the barbed wire fence. When I came down three days earlier, I timed it as only 30 minutes from the rim. I sat down and cried; I was so happy to be that close. I knew then that I would make it. Marker Marshall was right when she said that, “There is always a time when you can turn around and go back. But you usually feel good at that point. When you chose to go beyond then, is when people get in trouble.†I had almost gone beyond that time. I didn’t really feel good anymore. But I knew where there was water. I knew enough to get more water from the skuzzy pool when I walked by it on my way back from Wall Street. I knew enough to take the extra time to get better and to leave from the closest place to my destination at the earliest time with the most water I could carry.
In just 15 minutes more, I was at Upper Jumpup and the cold water trough. I get thoroughly wet again for the most difficult part of the climb, the hike up through the Coconino switchbacks. I’ve never been happier to see the trailhead as I was that day. Today it is overcast and threatening, but I am glad to be out. I would not be any happier if I were to die because I was flushed down to the Colorado River in a flash flood that if I died from the heat in Kanab drainage.
The day I arrived back to the North Rim was the day that a 27 year old man in perfect health died on the Bright Angel trail from heat. He was doing a rim to rim hike. The rangers at the bottom told him to stop there or at least wait until late afternoon or evening to do his hike. He chose to continue on in the noon heat and died. Some times the most important lesson you can learn is to walk away from a goal, to realize when it is best to take another path, to try again when the conditions are better for you to realize that goal. But to recognize that point is sometimes very difficult because you feel that the goal is so close, you feel so good, but if you sit back and think about your situation, you sometimes find that the seeds of destruction are there. Take the time to listen to your body, to listen to your instincts about an action, to head what others tell you. Don’t go blindly forward just because you really want to reach that goal or just because you really think that your plan is the right plan. Take the time to listen and learn from yourself and from others.