Death in Zion National Park

by Randi Minetor

  The park’s website notes that the Narrows closes when the flow rate is over 150 cubic feet per second (CFS), as well as during spring snowmelt. Swollen with meltwater from a particularly heavy winter snowfall in 2010, the Virgin River was closed to hikers when Scaffidi and Chidester began their trip—and rafting, should anyone have approached rangers with the idea, would have been strictly prohibited.

  How fast and powerful is 250 CFS? The answer depends on the waterway itself. Imagine that a cubic foot of water is a box one foot high, one foot wide, and one foot deep, filled with water. Now, choose a spot anywhere on the river, and consider that a fixed point. The number “per second” is a measurement of the number of boxes that move past this fixed point in any given second. So at 250 CFS, 250 of these water-filled boxes move past your selected point in the time it takes to say “One Mississippi.” This may be a calm flow in a mile-wide, open river, but in a tight space like the Narrows, where much of the canyon is only twenty to thirty feet wide, that’s a lot of boxes of water rushing past a fixed point every second. To maintain that speed, the water must rise within the canyon walls and push through harder and faster than it would at, say, 10 CFS. For two young men riding a makeshift raft on this rushing river through a slim canyon with many twists and turns, 250 CFS would be a deadly speed.

  At Zion Adventure Company in Springdale—one of the area’s top outfitters and training companies for activities in the Narrows—a sign on the wall provides weather conditions updated daily by staff members. The bottom of the sign includes a “Virgin River Hiking Safety Continuum” chart that clearly indicates the relative danger the river poses at various measures of CFS. At 250 CFS the river is rated as “Very Difficult” for wading—that is, traveling upriver on foot. At 300 CFS the river becomes “Near Impossible” for foot travel. What would the rate be like in the downstream direction?

  There is no way to know whether the two adventurers were aware of the dangerous conditions they would encounter, or if they skipped the permitting step because they knew their plan would not receive park approval. Given the risky nature of their intentions, however, it’s entirely possible that they had no idea at all.

  On Sunday, April 25, when Scaffidi and Chidester did not get in touch with their families to let them know they were safe, a family member contacted the park. The park launched a ground search and used a helicopter to try to locate the men, spending Sunday working their way up the Narrows from the Riverside Walk and down it from the top of the North Fork of the Virgin River.

  The first body came to light on Monday morning, April 26, at about 9:00 a.m., near the Gateway to the Zion Narrows. Later that day, at 1:40 p.m., searchers found the body of a second man in the river, more than two miles downstream from the Narrows, near the park shuttle stop at Big Bend. Analysis by the Washington County medical examiner confirmed that these two young men were Scaffidi and Chidester. What exactly killed them—drowning, hypothermia, or a violent encounter with debris in the water—was not determined.

  Searchers found no evidence that the men had succeeded in constructing a raft. Without some kind of floating craft, “they would have had to swim much of the Narrows in deep water that is around 40 degrees,” Terry told the AP.

  Reading the Warning Signs

  When two men from Southern California began their hike up the Narrows on Saturday, September 27, 2014, at about 8:00 a.m., the river was flowing at 46 CFS at the Riverside Walk, and rangers had not yet hung signs warning of the potential for flash floods that day.

  There were flash flood warnings already in effect, however, for the area surrounding the canyon. Beginning Friday evening, September 26, a storm dropped more than two inches of rain on much of Utah, breaking the day’s rainfall records from the Salt Lake City airport all the way to Kodachrome Basin State Park. Roads within Zion National Park flooded with rainwater at various times over the weekend as long, pelting deluges fell and the river crested its banks.

  As rain began to fall around 9:30 a.m., the two watched the weather and soon decided to turn back. They were just a quarter-mile from the paved walkway at 10:00 a.m. when floodwaters came barreling down the canyon corridor.

  Scrambling for high ground, the two men found perches that kept them out of the water, but they were about two hundred feet apart on opposite sides of the canyon—and the roar of the rushing river made it impossible for them to communicate. They watched and waited for nearly six hours as the water pounded past them at a peak rate of 4,020 CFS, one hundred times harder than when they began their hike a few hours before.

  By late afternoon, however, when the river had slowed only to about 1,000 CFS, one of the hikers (whose name was not released) concluded that he needed to move or risk death by hypothermia from sitting still in the chilly canyon. He leapt into the water around 4:00 p.m. and managed to swim out to safety, and he reached a ranger station by 6:30 p.m. to report that his friend, thirty-four-year-old Douglas Yoshi Vo, remained in the Narrows on high ground. He told them that Vo was not injured or in distress, but that he was stranded where he was.

  Vo was no stranger to the challenges and unpredictability of the outdoors. His friends called him a Wilderness Explorer (in the spirit of the Disney movie Up), one who planned annual camping trips for family and friends. “He thrived on the opportunity to bring his close friends and family, not to his house in Westminster, but to his home in the tents, under the stars,” says a tribute to him at YouCaring.com. “How can your sense of adventure not flourish when you have a real-life Wilderness Explorer as your campground leader?”

  So Vo’s hiking companion felt certain that his friend, who was not injured when last he saw him, would be safe for the short time it would take to bring a rescue party to his location. When the search team arrived at the Riverside Walk, however, they knew immediately that they could not attempt to retrieve Vo until the river’s still-extreme pace slowed considerably.

  “Rangers arrived at the Narrows, but the river was still flowing at approximately 1,000–1,500 CFS which is too high for them to safely enter the river from downstream,” said a news release from the park the following day.

  Based on Vo’s friend’s description of his location, they believed that the remaining hiker was in a relatively safe location, and they planned to hike into the canyon early Sunday morning to be sure he made it to safety.

  In the early morning, however, when the other hiker returned to find him, Vo was not in the place his friend had described.

  “The rescue effort then turned into a search,” the news release noted. Rangers located Vo’s body on the riverbank near the Riverside Walk at about 2:00 p.m., roughly a quarter-mile from his last position in the canyon.

  “We don’t know if he tried to swim as well or if he fell in,” said David Eaker, National Park Service spokesperson, to the Associated Press.

  Whether Vo fell asleep on his perch and tumbled into the river or attempted an escape and was overcome by the powerful floodwaters, the Narrows turned out to be the last wilderness he would see in his lifetime.

  Chapter 2

  Rising Waters: Incidents in Other Canyons

  What if you had to choose between saving your best friend’s life and making sure that five children in your care made it out of the wilderness to safety?

  This unimaginable decision was forced upon Mark Brewer, the only adult to survive high waters in Kolob Creek on July 15, 1993. Three adults and five teenage boys began the trek through the canyon at the Lava Point trailhead on July 14, with an adventurous four-day plan to follow Kolob Creek into the Zion Narrows. All of the hikers were members of the Riviera Ward in Salt Lake City, one of the seven wards in the Granite Park Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The five boys belonged to a chapter of the Explorer Scouts.

  Were it not for Brewer’s clarity of decision-making the following day, it was quite possible that none of them would have come out alive.

&nb
sp; A narrow canyon sliced through crimson rock by Kolob Creek over thousands of years, the area known as Kolob Technical Canyons cuts through Zion National Park’s northwestern unit and extends northeast of the park into the Deep Creek Wilderness Study Area, a property under the jurisdiction of the US Bureau of Land Management. It’s a far less traveled section of the Utah canyon lands than the busy Zion Canyon, making it an area that most visitors miss—even though tourists who don’t care for the crowded shuttles in the southern unit can drive Kolob’s five-mile scenic road in their own vehicles. It’s no less spectacular than Zion’s more popular southern unit, with box canyons that rise two thousand feet from the desert floor and glow with the same vermillion and burnt orange tones that make southern Utah so popular with visitors and residents alike.

  An information center stands near the entrance to the park’s Kolob unit, but beyond it visitors discover a pure, untrammeled wilderness devoid of tourist services. Here the desert remains still except for the distant dashing of waterfalls tumbling over Navajo sandstone ledges. Most hikes in this part of the park lead through natural arches, along the edge of massive formations of crimson rock, interrupted by the shimmer of La Verkin Creek or the press of a startling number of trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. While hiking here can be a rugged experience, the vast majority who walk the twenty miles of trails find Kolob to be a wild, secluded, and peaceful place to wander.

  “What is Kolob like?” writes canyoneering expert Tom Jones on his website, CanyoneeringUSA.com.

  After a brief walk through the woods, the canyoneer rappels into a pocket garden. A hundred feet further on, the canyon starts a drop of 700 feet through numerous pools. A total of 12 rappels are made, many into crystal clear, deep green pools followed by short swims and climb-outs to the next anchor. The canyon is incised deeply, with delightful grottos and wonderful light reflecting off the walls. From the bottom of the technical section, the canyoneer can make the long hike out to the Narrows and the Temple of Sinawava, or can ascend the steep and strenuous MIA Trail.

  So when Brewer, a thirty-five-year-old advertising executive, and his group—friends Kim Ellis (thirty-seven) and Dave Fleischer (twenty-eight), and five teens named Shane Ellis, Chris Stevens, Rich Larson, Mike Perkins, and Josh Nay—started their second day of hiking with the first ten rappels down about a thousand feet of cliffs, they expected some rugged rappelling and a tranquil creek walk at the bottom of a silent canyon. They had obtained the necessary permit from Zion National Park rangers for their expedition, and among their provisions were inner tubes they would use to float the last miles through the Narrows to the Temple of Sinawava. Fleischer had hiked this canyon twice before, so he had full confidence in what to expect. The three leaders had even taken the boys camping and canyoneering several times so they would have the basic skills they needed before attempting this adventure.

  Within minutes, however, the nature of the creek changed dramatically. “As the canyon narrowed, Kolob Creek turned into a raging torrent with waters shooting 5 to 8 feet off of waterfalls,” the Deseret News recounted on July 22. Despite the hot July weather, the water pounding through the canyon remained icy cold, making it an even greater threat to the eight hikers.

  “They had expected some water in the creek canyon; had expected that hiking the streambed would require continued rappelling down a series of waterfalls and past plunge pools,” said a report in High Country News. “But the water was too fast and too deep.”

  All three men recognized the danger signs and began to work to provide safe passage for the younger hikers. “I asked Dave if this was what he remembered,” said Brewer in an Outside magazine story. “He said it wasn’t. He said it was ludicrous for us to be in there at all.”

  To this day, those with canyoneering experience in Kolob Canyon wonder why the party did not turn back at this point.

  Fleischer remembered some dry ground ahead, but to reach it, they would have to rappel past four waterfalls—and as soon as they began the attempt to pass the first one, they knew the conditions were even more hazardous than they had supposed. They had to get the boys past a churning whirlpool that swirled at the bottom of the first waterfall.

  Fleischer rappelled into the pool to tie ropes for the others to slide over, but “hung on the rope, he had little freedom of movement,” the High Country News reported. “The boys began yelling that they could see that his backpack strap had slipped around his neck, choking him.”

  “When Fleischer became entangled in his ropes, Ellis jumped in to assist him,” the Deseret News said. “The impact of Ellis hitting the water pushed Fleischer out of the whirlpool to safety. But Ellis was now trapped in the whirlpool.”

  Brewer leapt into the whirlpool to help his friend to safety. “He wasn’t in the water more than two minutes,” Brewer told the Deseret News of Ellis. “But when we got him out, his eyes were dilated and he wasn’t breathing.”

  The two men pulled Ellis from the water, brought him to a logjam, and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), working for half an hour to keep him alive. As they worked they realized that Ellis had suffered a blow to the head in his brief time in the raging waters. He lost his life without regaining consciousness.

  Fourteen-year-old Shane Ellis, Kim’s son, was one of the five boys in the hiking party. With the urgency of their situation now paramount in their minds, Fleischer and Brewer allowed Shane to spend a few minutes with his father before organizing the boys for their next move. They knew the hiking trip was over, but with the force of the rising waters growing stronger, getting the boys back to dry ground had become much more difficult than they had ever planned.

  “We were totally committed to not going further, but we had to get to dry ground,” said Brewer.

  Fleischer knew this part of the canyon well, so he told Brewer and the boys of an alcove ahead where they would be out of the path of the rushing creek. They could wait there, he believed, until they were past the time on Sunday when their families expected them back. He and Brewer secured Ellis’s body against a log and guided the now stunned and frightened boys down two more waterfalls. “When they reached the fourth falls, they had been in the water two hours and had made only 50 yards of progress downstream,” the High Country News said. “They had lost all but two of their backpacks and much of the rope.”

  The way forward down the fourth waterfall required a fifteen-foot drop and a maneuver around the edge of swirling water in the plunge pool below. Fleischer tied a rope to his backpack and tossed it into the water to judge the strength and direction of the current, and he and Brewer watched as it circled the pool in a constant motion. Then the current grabbed the backpack, and while the rope remained securely fastened to it, they could not pull it out.

  Fleischer and Brewer quickly made a plan. Fleischer would jump into the water, retrieve the backpack—which contained most of the food they had brought with them—swim to the side of the pool, and use the backpack as a safety anchor for the rope. Brewer and the boys would then slide down the rope, above the water and out of the current.

  At first the plan worked. Fleischer found his way to the backpack, grabbed it, and swam to the side of the pool. As he rested there for a moment, however, his arm slipped and the backpack started to float back into the whirlpool. Fleischer acted on instinct and reached out to grab the pack, and the current sucked him down.

  “His strength sapped, Fleischer was himself soon spinning endlessly in the pool,” the Desert News reported. Brewer watched in horror for his best friend to emerge from the frigid waters, but he never surfaced.

  If he jumped into the pool to save his friend, he might also die or become incapacitated—leaving five boys who needed his leadership to come through this ordeal alive. If he stayed on land, Dave Fleischer would die.

  In an unimaginable dilemma, Brewer chose to protect and guide the five boys.

  “It was very, very difficult,” he told the Deseret
News. “He was such a good friend of mine. But I just knew these boys wouldn’t make it without one of us.”

  Fleischer perished in the whirlpool a few seconds later.

  Shattered by watching the deaths of two of their three leaders, the boys suffered from the shock of what they had seen and the terror of staying where they were. They could not turn back and climb the waterfalls. They could not move forward because of the many obstacles the floodwaters had created. Brewer felt no less shocked and horrified, but he knew the boys had no one to turn to now but him. He found his resolve and began to talk.

  “I talked to them about being rescued and how we wouldn’t be considered lost until Sunday morning,” he said. “I laid out the anatomy of a rescue and how it takes time to get organized.” This was Thursday; Brewer knew they would be stranded for three long days, and possibly for longer. “My worst fear was that someone else wouldn’t make it. I made a pact that everyone else would.”

  It seemed that everything that made the canyon so appealing to explore now worked against the hiking party as they hunkered down to wait. Their location received barely an hour of direct sunlight each day, and the stone walls and near-freezing water temperature kept the depths of the gorge at a chilly fortyish degrees. Although the boys were all in wet suits, they began to suffer from painful injuries from wearing the suits nonstop for days on end. When night fell—and it came early, with total darkness by 7:30 p.m.—sleep became an elusive blessing. “It was no Motel 6,” Brewer told the paper. “We slept in a line of five with those on the ends leaning inward. We had one mummy (sleeping) bag that we pulled over our heads and shoulders. And we laid one boy across our laps.”