Ranger Confidential

by Andrea Lankford

  It was another “tough moment.” At EMT school they taught him not to lie to patients or their loved ones. So Chris said, “We’re doing everything we can to help them.” Technically it was the truth.

  That was January 4, 1995. Eleven days later, on January 15, a kitchen worker at the Bright Angel Hotel ended an argument with another kitchen worker by stabbing him in the torso multiple times. Then on February 4, rangers saved the life of a local resident after he had been beaten severely by a man with a baseball bat—but not without good cause. Allegedly the beaten man had sexually assaulted the mother of the bat-swinging vigilante. Nine days later, on February 13, the plane crashed.

  * * *

  Chris drove the Suburban as close as he could to the crash site before getting bogged down in the snow. Then Chris and another ranger trudged in on foot. A quarter of a mile from the car, Chris scolded himself for not leaving behind his flat hat. The brim of the Smokey Bear was as wide as some cocktail tables. The hat was not a practical thing to wear when bushwhacking through tree branches. Following the directions radioed to him from a helicopter pilot hovering over the crash site, Chris climbed a knoll. When he reached the top and saw what was on the other side, he felt a horrible sinking sensation.

  The charred and twisted metal below him had once been an airplane. Now the only thing recognizable was the tail. The plane must have burst into flames upon impact, and from the looks of the wreckage, there was no chance of finding any survivors. Chris walked around the scene to survey the situation. Scorched plane parts were scattered everywhere. Smoke hovered above the ground. The air carried the disturbingly sweet odor of smoldering human flesh mixed with the acrid smell of jet fuel. In the cockpit area, a body was still on fire. To put out the flames, Chris and a firefighter scooped up handfuls of snow and dumped them on the burning corpse. An arm hung out the cockpit window. Somehow, the arm had escaped the extreme heat of a jet fuel fire and remained unburned. A male hand with a shirt cuff. This had to be the pilot. Or what was left of the pilot. One hand. Chris stared at it. The image of the unburned hand of the airplane pilot was stamped into the ranger’s memory. A happy family vacation to the Grand Canyon and this is what it had come to. What a waste.

  A buzzing of voices erupted from the forest near what had been the tail of the aircraft. Other rescuers at the scene had found something. Then Chris heard two words that changed everything. Two words that brought on the kind of adrenaline rush this ranger lived for.

  “They’re alive!”

  Looking at what was left of the airplane, he couldn’t believe two people had managed to crawl out of the wreckage. It was a miracle. The energy at the crash site shifted. Now there was something the rescuers could do. Chris ran over to where his colleagues were kneeling down several yards from the tail.

  Two teenage girls looked at the rescuers with dull eyes. They were conscious and bizarrely calm. Neither asked about the condition of the other passengers. Chiang-Ju had a crushed pelvis and was bleeding internally into her body cavity. The condition of her twelve-year-old sister, Hsiao-Hui, was worse. On top of broken bones, Hsiao-Hui had severe burns over 85 percent of her body. At this point, however, Hsiao-Hui did not show any signs of being in extreme pain. Third-degree burns often destroy the nerve endings in the skin and can cause deadly complications. A patient with severe burns over 85 percent of her body surface is in major trouble. The prognosis for Hsiao-Hui’s survival was bleak. Chris and the other rescuers at the crash site worked fast and hard to get the sisters stabilized and loaded onto a rescue helicopter.

  In Phoenix, teams of specialized nurses, doctors, and surgeons worked hard to save the two girls. According to a 2001 Maricopa Medical Center press release, doctors at the Arizona Burn Center kept Hsiao-Hui in a medically induced coma for six weeks and sedated her for six weeks more.

  The day she woke up, the doctors and nurses removed Hsiao-Hui’s dressings. The twelve-year-old surveyed the extent of her wounds for the first time since the accident. The realization of what had happened must have come to her by then. With the exception of her mother and sister, everyone in her immediate family was dead. Burn wounds covered 85 percent of her body. A twelve-year-old girl would feel at least a flicker of concern for the future appearance of her growing body. However, when Hsiao-Hui saw her wounds, a doctor noted, “She did not cry, or moan, or look even the least bit despondent.” What Hsiao-Hui did was look up at her caretakers and smile.

  Later Hsiao-Hui said, “I knew I had to get through it. I knew if I did, I’d get better.” She wanted to live and was willing to fight the physical and emotional battles awaiting her. She was a twelve-year-old girl with the will of a warrior. Six years after the crash, Hsiao-Hui returned to the burn center in Phoenix to volunteer five hours a day, five days a week, to help treat and counsel burn patients “and let them know there is life after a burn.” In the fall she enrolled in the biochemistry program at the University of Arizona.

  * * *

  On the night of the crash, Chris didn’t know that a brighter future lay ahead for the sisters. He came home after work and tossed his Smokey Bear on the kitchen table. He peeled off his heavy gun belt and carried it down the narrow hall toward his bedroom. He dropped the belt’s burdens onto his bed and sat down to contemplate the cheap paneling in his cheap trailer.

  Over a year ago, a proactive supervisor had discovered a loophole and hired Chris on as a permanent full-time ranger. Chris now qualified for retirement and health insurance benefits, but his parents “didn’t jump for joy” at the news. Their son had an exceptional artistic talent, a college education, and a master’s degree in Urban Affairs and Planning—and he lived in a trailer he had purchased for $2,000.

  Chris’s trailer sat on a concrete pad for which the NPS withheld two hundred bucks rent out of his paycheck each month. The trailer was a dump, and the floor was crooked. Miraculously, this had not discouraged his girlfriend, the blond, from moving in with him. For a while they were happy living together in that piece-of-shit trailer. When Chris began waking up in the middle of the night—sweating profusely, screaming incoherently, and grasping at his sheets—neither of them took it seriously. Perhaps, they joked, Chris was having nightmares because his trailer sat on top of an ancient Anasazi burial ground.

  17

  A COLD WET ONE

  It was midnight and ranger Mary Litell Hinson was having a nightmare. Deep within the heart of the Grand Canyon, she was alone inside the ranger station at Phantom Ranch. The nearest backup ranger was five trail miles away. Something horrible was outside. It moaned like a ghoul and banged on the walls of the ranger station. Now it was knocking on the ranger station door. “Come out. Come out,” the dreadful thing wailed. “Someone is going to die.”

  Mary woke up. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real! She was alone inside the ranger station. There was a bogeyman banging on the wall outside her bedroom window. And he was moving, beating his fists on the sides of the building—bam, bam, bam—all the way around to the front. Mary ran to the front door and looked out the window. Thank God. It wasn’t the bogeyman: It was an emotionally disturbed person (EDP). Mary decided it was safe to let the EDP inside the ranger station but questioned her judgment as soon as he entered the door.

  The EDP was so tall he ducked when he walked through the doorway. His eyes were bloodshot. His chest heaved. His arms flailed. He was speaking gibberish. “You have to come with me,” the EDP said as he grabbed Mary by the arm and pulled her outside. Mary pushed the crazy man’s grip off her arm and ordered him to step back. It took a minute or more before the ranger saw the man’s behavior for what it actually was.

  “Take a deep breath and calm down,” Mary said, “or I’m not going to be able to help you.”

  “Oh, ranger, please help,” the panicked man cried. “A kid has fallen off a cliff.”

  “Is he alive?” Mary asked.

&nbs
p; “He was when I left him.”

  * * *

  Six months earlier I had offered Mary her first permanent full-time-with-benefits ranger job. In November 1995 she left her husband, Scott Hinson, behind in Hawaii to work for me, a supervisor of ranger operations in the Grand Canyon’s Corridor District. My district encompassed more than forty miles of the most heavily used trails in the park. The Cross-canyon Corridor linked, by footpath, the South Rim, the Colorado River, Phantom Ranch, and the North Rim. In addition to the trails, the district had three backcountry campgrounds and three ranger stations. Along the Bright Angel Trail, almost five miles below the South Rim, was Indian Garden. At the bottom of the canyon and one mile north of the Colorado River was Phantom Ranch. For hikers undertaking the fourteen-mile North Kaibab Trail, there was Cottonwood Camp, at the halfway point between Phantom Ranch and the North Rim.

  During the 1990s Grand Canyon park rangers responded to approximately three hundred rescue missions each year. More than two hundred of these incidents occurred in the Corridor District. From a search and rescue perspective, the Grand Canyon is perhaps the busiest backcountry area in the nation, if not the world. The day Mary started working for me, I had been the district ranger less than six months. I held my own, but my staff knew an entire library more than I did about the Grand Canyon. For the most part, I left it to them to train my new employee.

  Pat Suddath was one of the rangers who trained Mary. The youngest permanent full-time ranger in the Corridor, Suddath was bright, interesting, and funny. He was also whiney, cynical, and sarcastic. Suddath reminded Mary of the cartoon character Bart Simpson; in the heat of an argument, a blond cowlick rose from his forehead like an exclamation point. During Mary’s orientation at the Phantom Ranch Ranger Station, Suddath engaged the new employee in numerous debates over a variety of controversies, like should you stretch before or after you hike? Are coffee beans best stored in a cool dark place or in the freezer? Which of the canyon’s geologic layers was the prettiest, the Tapeats sandstone or the Redwall? Which Colorado microbrew was best, Singletrack Copper or Fat Tire Amber? Who should make the initial heroic blitz to a technical river rescue while the other hauled down all the gear, the rock climber (Mary) or the medic (Suddath)? And most important, which park is the busiest in the service, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon?

  No matter how cleverly Mary formed her opening statement, Suddath always took the opposing side. So when he said, “The Grand Canyon chews up park rangers and spits them out,” Mary wasn’t giving him the satisfaction. As far as she was concerned, Yosemite was the biggest, baddest park in North America.

  Seemingly unimpressed with Mary’s exploits at Yosemite, Suddath briefed the newbie about all the Grand Canyon backcountry rangers who had been trapped underwater by rocks, swept away in flash floods, hit by lightning, knocked unconscious by rock falls, dehydrated to the point of requiring fluids to be administered intravenously, stung by scorpions, impaled by cacti, and head-butted off the trail by bighorn rams. Then he proceeded to tell her about rangers who had fractured their feet, legs, ribs, arms, and skulls.

  Although she’d never admit it to Suddath, Mary found this all to be a bit much. She began to wonder if she had the right stuff to be a Grand Canyon backcountry ranger. Could she start a fire without matches? Could she carve fish hooks out of willow branches? If pinned by a boulder below the surge of a flash flood, could she saw off her own leg with a pocketknife? If she ran out of water, would she have to drink her own urine?

  Mary doubted her relative abilities even more when she met Bryan Wisher, the ranger in charge of Indian Garden. Tall and tanned, Bryan’s legs were so long and so muscular it wouldn’t have been a huge shock to see him step over a Honda. And his backpack was ridiculous; you could haul a small microwave, four dictionaries, and two watermelons in it. As they hiked, Wisher called out the scientific names of plants. He identified birds on the wing. He discussed the human body’s complex reactions to a variety of electrolyte imbalances. He contemplated the underlying assumptions of the Big Bang Theory, quoted Buddhist scriptures, and predicted the weather.

  Bryan Wisher was also the most humble and compassionate ranger Mary had ever met. When they stopped for lunch, Mary gnawed on her cardboard-textured sports bar while Bryan reached into his colossal pack and pulled out an object wrapped in aluminum foil. Always the gentleman, Wisher offered the item inside the foil to his partner. Right then, Mary capitulated. Any attempt to compete with ranger Bryan Wisher would be futile. The guy had hiked in eight pounds of smoked salmon. For a snack!

  It was a good thing too. She needed the protein. Rangers on the North Rim had found an abandoned car parked in the North Kaibab trailhead parking lot. The car belonged to a young man who had been reported missing. Mary struggled to keep up with Bryan’s pace as they searched for the lost hiker. They traversed under cliffs where the man might have fallen. They crawled beneath rocks his body might be under. They hiked back and forth, up and down, and all around. Two days of this and Mary’s feet were raw hamburgers. Her legs were soggy noodles. Her lungs were two pieces of burnt toast. But when Bryan asked, “How’s it going?” she said, “Terrific!” So Bryan hiked farther and faster. By the time the incident commander called off the search, the Indian Garden ranger had pushed Mary to hike a hundred brutal miles within four days.

  After weeks of searching they had found nothing. From experience, we knew the odds were slim that the hiker was alive. I obtained a heart-wrenching acceptance from the young man’s father and the incident commander called off the search effort. Six months later, two maintenance workers set out to inspect the pipeline transporting water from Roaring Springs up to the North Rim. While scrambling along the pipe, they found the desiccated remains of a body below a four-hundred-foot cliff. The body was identified as the young man Mary and Bryan had been searching for in November.

  Some concluded that the man was a jumper. I didn’t subscribe to this theory. I had searched the man’s car and gotten to know his father. I believed the young hiker smoked a joint while enjoying the canyon view and then, in a drug-impaired state, had accidently wandered off the trail and over the edge. The foundation for my hypothesis was the marijuana found in the dead man’s backpack. The intoxicating substance was the fatal flaw our death investigations always labored to find. In part such evidence served to protect the NPS from any claims of negligence. But, most important, fatal flaws implied that backcountry fatalities were the result of foolhardy or arrogant behavior and allowed room for a comforting delusion. As long as we were smart and careful, it would never happen to one of us.

  * * *

  The NPS provided a home for Mary on the South Rim—a compact trailer she shared with a female roommate. The trailer had mint-green aluminum siding, tiny windows, and a boxy shape. Park staff called it “the Green Dumpster,” and Mary relinquished a portion of each paycheck back to the NPS for the privilege of living in it. Fortunately, like all rangers assigned to the Corridor District, Mary spent very little time in the Green Dumpster. Nine days out of every two-week pay period, she lived and worked at the backcountry ranger stations.

  All the Corridor ranger stations were lovely compared to the Green Dumpster, but Mary preferred Indian Garden. For one, “the Garden” had a stunning view up Bright Angel Canyon. At the time, it also had the nicest kitchen, and Bryan Wisher tastefully furnished the living quarters. When working there, Mary felt as though she’d died and gone to ranger heaven. On slow days she could lie in a hammock on the porch and sip ice tea while watching the sunset glow off Zoroaster Temple.

  One perfect Indian Garden afternoon, after the sun dropped behind the Redwall, Mary peeled off her uniform and shimmied into a sports bra and shorts. She hiked a mile and a half from the ranger station to the base of Plateau Point. For Mary, free soloing (climbing without the safety of a rope and a belay partner to catch her fall) a four-hundred-foot route was a relaxing activity. The desert air warme
d her skin as she climbed. Forty feet from the bottom, she threw a hand up to a flat ledge above her head—a gorgeous hold. She threw up her other hand and, like a chin-up, used the muscles in her arms and back to haul her body weight up the rock. When her face reached her hands she saw something on the ledge in front of her. Mary froze. She was nose to nose with a rattlesnake.

  The snake’s dusty pink scales told Mary it was the species Crotalus oreganus abyssus, (western rattlesnake of the abyss), but the rangers called them “Grand Canyon pinks.” The Grand Canyon pink rattled its annoyance at the rock climber trespassing upon its ledge. Very, very slowly Mary lowered her body back down to her last position on the rock.

  * * *

  Sometimes the boss made Mary pull a tour at the other ranger stations. This was the case during the early hours of April 13, 1996—the first night of her first tour working alone at Phantom Ranch.

  Mary told the park dispatcher a child had fallen off the Clear Creek Trail, and within minutes Bryan Wisher was out the door of the Indian Garden Ranger Station. The accident site was seven miles from Indian Garden and two miles from Phantom Ranch. Mary grabbed a rope and blitzed up the trail while volunteer Sjors Hortsman stayed behind long enough to enlist a team of concession employees and NPS trail crew workers to follow him to the site.

  When Mary reached the scene, a group of backpackers directed the ranger to the edge of a seventy-five-foot cliff. The backpackers said the boy had inadvertently stepped off the cliff when he got up to urinate during the night. Mary leaned over the edge and scanned the rocks below until the beam of her headlamp lit up the boy. What she saw made her feel sick. It appeared that after hitting bottom, the boy had lived long enough to crawl fifty yards to an emergency blanket someone had thrown down to him. Now the boy wasn’t moving or responding to his name. He wore nothing but underwear and the foil blanket. For Mary, seeing this thirteen-year-old boy curled up into a fetal position on the rocks was the “ultimate bummer.”