“Preliminary investigation reveals that Welton was climbing a rope using mechanical ascenders,” the morning report said. “It appears that a short fall occurred, causing the ascenders to sever the rope.”
A National Park Service news release provided additional information: “It appears the ascenders may not have been fully engaged, resulting in a 20-foot fall along the rope. When the ascenders did fully engage, the shock severed the rope.”
As his friends looked on helplessly from other points on the wall, Welton fell three hundred feet to his death.
Two other climbers ascending a different route nearby managed to flag down one of the park buses and report the accident. When the eleven-member search and rescue team arrived, however, the mission quickly became one of recovery of Welton’s body and investigation of the incident. The team worked through the night to determine what had made a known climbing expert—one who also worked as a mountain first responder—die in a precipitous drop off the rock face.
A member of the investigation team posted a lengthy description of what happened on the climbing site SuperTopo, including this fairly straightforward summation that will make sense to people with climbing experience: “James somehow malfunctioned the attachment of his jumars to the taught haul line, but after he had released his daisy chains from the anchor. He began sliding down the haul line until one of his jumars finally engaged some 30 feet later or so. There was a sheath piling found on the scene, so we know he broke the sheath first, initiated a sheath fall, and finally the core broke after the sheath fall ended and shock-loaded the system. He and the bags fell 300 feet to the base.”
The Dangers of Inexperience
Hiking the Subway, also known as the Left Fork of North Creek, requires more than a little skill in route finding, crossing and recrossing the creek, finding a way around or over large boulders, and—depending on which route you take—swimming across deep pools of water just barely above the freezing point. “Visitors are encouraged to do the trip with an experienced hiker of The Subway, or obtain a detailed route description,” the park’s website tells us. Whether hikers choose to start at the Left Fork trailhead on Kolob Terrace Road and work their way up the canyon, or start at the top at the Wildcat Canyon trailhead and follow the complex route down, the Subway provides a nine-plus-mile daylong adventure for the most intrepid canyoneers—and a potential disaster for those who have little idea what lies ahead.
That being said, this hike has become so popular that the park limits the number of hikers to eighty per day, distributing permits by lottery before opening reservations for whatever scant spaces remain. Visitors who brave this route discover a world of knife-slice slot canyons, tunnels, twists, deep blue pools, and polished rock formations that make the struggle to see them seem that much more worth doing.
The words strenuous and beginner canyoneering are both used by Utah hiking websites to describe this route, seemingly contradictory terms that make it difficult to know what to expect. The top-down route involves several short rappels, roughly fifteen feet each, some of which lead down waterfalls—but with the hardware already in place along the route, these may make people new to canyoneering feel more confident about their skills than may be wise. This is the frame of mind that led Yoshio Hosobuchi, a seventy-four-year-old neurosurgeon from Novato, California, and his sixty-one-year-old wife, Dresden, into the Subway to check off one more great adventure from his bucket list.
Challenge did not scare this couple. For one, Hosobuchi had performed uncounted numbers of complex brain surgeries in the course of his career, and there are pages of tributes to him from grateful patients in the annals of the Internet. The Hosobuchis had hiked Mount Kilimanjaro the previous year, and they took an introductory course in canyoneering when they arrived in Springdale and followed it with a hike in Keyhole Canyon, a route that involved three rappels to get into the slender slot canyon, earlier in the week. They had never been in the Subway, however, and were eager to see the natural formations secreted inside.
They began their hike in the canyon on the morning of September 18, 2012, and about midway into the canyon, they reached the top of a waterfall. Hosobuchi spotted an anchor in the falls and one on the opposite side, so rather than cross the creek to use the one farther off, he decided to rappel from the anchor in the water.
No sooner did he begin his descent than something went wrong. “His rappelling device jammed, possibly because of a knot,” the Salt Lake Tribune reported three days later. His foot caught in the rope, and “he wound up upside down, his hands about five feet above the ground.”
Other reports, including one in the Great Falls Tribune, suggest that the man chose this vertical descent over the gentler rock slab, leaving him “unable to use his feet to maintain traction with the rock.”
Hosobuchi could not pull himself upright, nor could he reach his foot to free it. His wife had already climbed down to the base of the falls without rappelling. She did her best to reach the jammed device or to free his foot, but she did not succeed. “They were the last ones in the canyon, having been passed by several groups throughout the day,” the Salt Lake Tribune said. The time was about 5:30 p.m.
There was only one thing left for her to do: Hike out of the canyon and try to get help. She left her husband dangling in the waterfall and headed down toward the far end of the route.
Here, however, is where the Hosobuchis may have grossly overestimated their own skills. With nothing more than an introductory class in wayfinding and no real-world experience, Dresden could not find her way out. “The partner was caught by darkness and was unfamiliar with the exit route, and could not make it out of the canyon,” said Aly Baltrus, park spokesperson, to Salt Lake Tribune reporters Bob Mims and Michael McFall.
She made her way back to her husband and stayed with him until daylight, sitting essentially alone in the pitch-dark night.
Meanwhile, a canyoneer from one of the groups that had passed the Hosobuchis called park dispatch at about 9:00 p.m. He said that based on the pace at which the couple was moving when he saw them, they would not make it out of the canyon that night and would be forced to stay overnight. Rangers planned to leave on a search mission early the following morning to see what had happened to the older couple. They “ran into Hosobuchi’s wife on the trail about 11:45 a.m. as she was hiking out,” the Tribune reported.
An hour later, they found Hosobuchi himself, still hanging by one foot in the cold rushing water. He had passed away during the night.
The Associated Press interviewed hiking guide Mike Banach, who had a working familiarity with the Subway through his own experience. He explained that “hanging in a harness for too long, especially upside-down, can cut off a climber’s blood circulation.”
“The Subway is deceiving,” park superintendent Jock Whitworth said in a park news release issued later that day. “It is a very popular trail, but very difficult . . . Unfortunately, its location inside the wilderness also means that rescues are not always possible or timely enough. Sound decision making and problem solving are critical.”
The search and recovery team had to wait another full day for a helicopter to remove Hosobuchi’s body from the Subway. When a more thorough examination was possible, authorities determined that when the rope jammed in the belay device, Hosobuchi “used a knife to cut his waist belt in an effort to free himself,” the Deseret News reported. “However, the harness slipped down his legs and became entangled with his right foot as he tumbled over head-first inside the waterfall. Hosobuchi appeared to be pinned by the force of the rushing water.”
Baltrus offered a cautionary word to others who may consider taking on the Subway as their first major canyoneering outing. “Our message is you can learn the basics of canyoneering, but what happens when something goes wrong is hard to teach quickly,” she said.
The Pace Quickens
Since 2011 Zion has seen increases in the numbe
r of annual visitors who have discovered this magnificent park—from 2,847,403 visitors in 2011 to 4,317,028 in 2016. Perhaps this is the reason that the number of climbing, canyoneering, and (briefly) BASE jumping accidents in the park has increased as well. (More on BASE jumping later in this chapter.)
Just five weeks after Yoshio Hosobuchi’s tragic accident, climber Lyle David Hurd III, age forty-nine, and three companions took on the Northeast Buttress route below Angels Landing, a first for Hurd—although he had climbed a number of other big walls in Zion and was considered an experienced and skilled climber. Traveling two by two with Hurd and his partner following the other pair, Hurd “was leading the fifth pitch when he fell over 40 feet onto a ledge, pulling his top piece of protection out,” the park’s news release informed readers. His climbing partner, Mark Engibous, saw him fall and immediately called 911; he was an intensive care unit nurse and started first aid, talking with Hurd—who was awake and alert at that point—as the other pair of climbers set up a top rope for the rescue team and waited for it to arrive. Three hours passed until the local team reached them, but despite the care Engibous gave him, Hurd could not hold out that long without more extensive medical assistance. The search and rescue team worked through the night to bring Hurd’s body out of the park.
On September 5, 2013, forty-seven-year-old Cheri Haas and three friends set out on the approach path to the Subway for a challenging all-day hike. Haas was in the lead on the trail when she missed a hard right turn and continued straight and off the trail. Her boyfriend and two friends saw her vanish as she fell over a cliff.
While the friends ran for help, Haas’s boyfriend rappelled down the cliff to find her. He discovered that she had not survived the hundred-foot fall—and also that it would be very difficult to bring her out of this part of the canyon. So rugged and forbidding was the terrain here that the park’s search and rescue team contacted Grand Canyon National Park for a helicopter and crew. The job of recovering her body continued well into the next day.
Just three days before, visitor Clark Profitt had slipped over a cliff edge in Behunin Canyon and survived, most likely because he was wearing a helmet. The park’s superintendent commented on both in a bulletin published by the St. George News. “In both instances, we strongly suspect that these events were caused by getting too close to the edge of a cliff,” superintendent Jock Whitworth said. “Loose sand on slickrock may have been the cause of the falls. Given the topography of Zion National Park, these accidents could have occurred anywhere, even popular trails in the main canyon, including Angels Landing and Observation Point. All of us need to maintain situational awareness and be extremely careful anytime we are near an edge.”
A year later, on October 19, 2014, forty-seven-year-old Christopher Spencer of San Jose, California, and a climbing partner were on an approach pitch on the Iron Messiah route—described by the park as “a technical 5.10 climb in Zion Canyon”—when Spencer fell backward. Had he been roped in, he may have been able to break his fall, or he may have pulled his partner with him on his eighty-foot tumble down the steep slope. Spencer struck a series of ledges on his way down, and the park’s news release made specific reference to the fact that he was not wearing a helmet.
Rangers were dispatched at about 11:00 a.m. and reached Spencer in less than an hour along with a Lifeflight medical crew. The emergency medical technicians stabilized Spencer and kept him alive during the three-hour evacuation, but once he arrived at Dixie Regional Medical Center, he succumbed to his massive injuries.
In 2015 Zion saw a 34 percent increase in the number of emergency medical services (EMS) calls and a 56 percent increase in the number of searches and rescues required over the previous year. By July 6 the park had had 175 EMS calls and 57 search and rescue calls, often responding to more than one call per day. Between July 5 and 12, the park responded to 16 EMS calls. The volume of calls in the summer of 2015 gives testimony to the skills of these rescuers: Only one of these emergencies resulted in a loss of life.
On July 12, 2015, canyoneer Bryan Artmann, a twenty-four-year-old man from Henderson, Nevada, was on his first journey through Heaps Canyon, one of the most challenging canyons in the park, involving three thousand feet of descent. He had just completed a climb at about 7:00 p.m. and paused on top of a mesa to have a look around when something—only he could know what—went wrong in the course of a split second. He took an unroped, hundred-foot fall down the side of the mesa.
One of the men with him later posted to a discussion board that the accident occurred in “the ‘keyhole’ area after the iron room.” Only those who have traversed the canyon will understand this, but I am including it for your reference.
Artmann’s three companions had no choice but to descend down the mesa to reach him, and while one of them remained with him, the other two traversed the rest of the canyon at top speed to get help—a process that took until 11:30 p.m.
Once again, the Zion search and rescue team called in a helicopter from Grand Canyon to help make the recovery. Hoping that the mission would be a rescue instead of a recovery, two Zion team members were short-hauled into Heaps Canyon above the victim—that is, they were suspended below the helicopter for the fastest possible deployment—and rappelled down to reach him. They learned quickly that Artmann had passed away during the night. It took a total of sixteen search and rescue crewmembers to reach Artmann and remove his body from the canyon.
Three months of additional EMS calls and rescues continued through the summer and early fall. On October 2, 2015, Zion Dispatch alerted rangers that a satellite emergency notification device (SEND) had been activated in the vicinity of the technical canyoneering route in Imlay Canyon. Whoever had turned the device on proceeded to turn it on and off over the next several hours, reactivating it repeatedly in an effort to get the attention of rescue personnel.
Classic Helicopter, a local service, did an aerial search over the canyon to attempt to locate the group, and a ranger proceeded to the canyon’s exit route area to attempt to gather information. At 2:15 p.m. two canyoneers reached the Grotto and reported that they had been with the party that set off the SEND. They had begun that morning to traverse Not Imlay Canyon, a side canyon of Imlay Canyon that had grown in popularity over the last several years. Not Imlay offered a shorter, drier route compared to Imlay Canyon, with a similar level of technical difficulty.
“Their group of four planned to rappel this canyon, when the first person on rappel fell and was not responsive to shouts from the canyon rim,” a blog on the Zion National Park website noted. “A SEND device was activated immediately while two of the group members hiked out to the Grotto to report the incident. The third group member remained on scene with the SEND device.”
Taking the helicopter to the canyon, rangers rappelled to the fallen individual, reaching him at 7:20 p.m. They discovered that he was Christian Louis Johnson, known locally as Louis—a fifty-year-old St. George resident who regularly explored Zion with his husband, Everett Boutillet. The rangers confirmed that Johnson had not survived the two-hundred-foot fall.
What had gone wrong for this skilled group? Something basic: Their rope was too short. Columnist Dallas Hyland of the St. George Independent had an extensive conversation with Boutillet about the incident, and shared this description with his readers:
Everett says the rope did not reach the first landing due to a recent change in the location of the second rappel station they were not aware of. Louis did not look in time to realize he was in trouble and by the time he knew, he was only able to shout up that the end of the rope was eight feet from the landing. He presumably had no choice but to try to land on his feet in a treacherous place as the rappel was multi-pitched. This means he would ideally have tied in to the second anchor before coming off the first rope but was unable to. The party could not see Louis but heard him come off the rope and land, and they believe he rolled off the second rappel unroped.
Boutillet added, “The sounds suggest this and will never leave my mind.”
The tragedy of Johnson’s death serves as a reminder to even the most experienced canyoneers and climbers that anyone—from a beginner on his or her first climb to an expert who routinely leads others—can make a miscalculation that can result in disaster. Johnson and Boutillet had “descended more than 100 canyons 200 times in five states,” as Boutillet told the media on the day of the accident. “Zion was our favorite park. Our favorite place to be. Our first canyon was the ‘Subway’ and we were instantly addicted. Louis and I understood the risks, but the joy that it brought outweighed them.”
Experience Is No Guarantee
The story in Rock and Ice magazine begins by calling Eric Michael Klimt “an accomplished climber and teacher.” Klimt had enough confidence in his own abilities and in his familiarity with the route to take on Zion’s Moonlight Buttress alone on March 9, 2016. He was planning on “rope-soloing the upper pitches by rappelling in from the top,” his family told journalist Hayden Carpenter.
What exactly went wrong is still a matter of discussion on climbing websites, but at about 12:30 p.m., another group of climbers at the bottom of the route watched in horror as Klimt hurtled into the canyon in free fall. Park rangers recovered his body 1,200 feet below the summit. “He was found wearing an intact harness with a GriGri [assisted braking belay device] attached to his belay loop with a carabiner,” Carpenter wrote. The GriGri, manufactured by Petzl, assists in braking under a shock load—if the climber suddenly drops a few feet, for example, it can stop him or her in the midst of a rapid descent. “The rest of his gear was still at the top of the climb.”
Writers Chris Van Leuven and Corey Buhay could provide little additional insight in their article for the Alpinist as to what had made this thirty-six-year-old veteran climber and teacher suddenly topple from a rock face he knew well. “For the past several years, Klimt, originally from Baltimore, Maryland, had been practicing the free moves on Moonlight Buttress,” they wrote, noting that this was one of the park’s most popular big wall climbs. Klimt’s two decades of experience extended to climbs in Yosemite National Park, Red Rock Canyon National Recreation Area, Joshua Tree National Park, and North Conway, New Hampshire. “On the morning of March 9 he rappelled on a single line onto the route’s top pitches to work on free moves and gear placements. Sometime later something went wrong.”
Death in Zion National Park Page 10