One Year on the Road

Thirsty elk.

We arrived at the Trailer Village RV Park (the only RV park within the national park) at around 2:00 yesterday, and Anita and Hilary were there, holding our spot for us. We had barely set up when three young Roosevelt elk sauntered through our site, and the youngest slurped from a puddle of water we’d created with a water tank overflow.

After a quick lunch with Hilary and Anita, we all drove to the South Rim trail by the Visitor’s Center for our first breath-taking view. Conversation paused as we approached the rim and that expansive, richly hued depth filled our entire view. The hugeness of it is so magnificent. The colors so startling. We’d seen the Grand Canyon once before, but we were no less awed the second time.

A safe canyon pose.

There were several others mingling at that viewpoint, and we all watched as a family from North Africa took turns climbing over the waist-high barrier fence to pose with their flag in various exultant poses near the edge. Then the whole family crossed over, gripping a toddler who was crying and twisting in terror, while one took shot after shot and the rest of the family laughed and cajoled the little girl.

Our group stared in disbelief. Just one stumble… “250 people fall each year,” a woman next to us said. “And have to be rescued.” The woman was in her 40s, long-dark hair, dead-pan expression. “In fact, someone just fell over there not 10 minutes ago.” She pointed maybe a quarter of a mile up the path, where we could see a group of people standing.

“What? You saw this? Just now?” Why weren’t people reacting more, if this were true?

“I saw the rocks tumbling, heard the noise.” She seemed nonplussed. She perched on a stone, watching, but unemotional.

A less safe pose.

Kate was with me, listening, looking, and our first impulse was to walk toward the incident. Part ghoulish curiosity, part instinct to help, but Anita and Hilary, not part of this conversation, had moved in the other direction, west toward Mather Point. When we caught up with them and told them, we all stood in stunned silence.

If it had just been Kate and me, we might have rushed to the scene. We would have been sucked into the whole horrible drama, talking with witnesses, trying to be helpful but more likely getting in the way, staying there until rescue crews put up yellow tape and moved us to the other side. We might have peered down at a mangled distant body and studied it for any signs of life.

Cliff yoga.

But we didn’t. We took Hilary and Anita’s more sensible lead and went in the other direction. Whatever was happening, it was not our tragedy to step into.

What surprises and confounds me is how we were able to carry on and put it out of our minds. We walked another mile or so west, taking in views from all the lookouts, snapping photos, watching other crazy people dare each other into life-threatening cliff poses. When we heard the myriad of sirens come near, we registered the sound as confirmation of a needed rescue, but even the helicopter swooping near didn’t smash through the shell of denial we seemed to have lowered over ourselves.

When we returned to the Visitor Center and saw a huge convoy of emergency vehicles with lights flashing, we walked up to the police tape on the trail to see what was going on. Standing just inside the tape were an older man and young man, and Kate recognized the older one as the man who had run past us at a sprint when we’d first arrived. The ranger guarding the tape confirmed that there had been a fall. Others around said it was fatal, that they were trying to figure out the best way to retrieve the body.

Girl chat with a view.

That is when it hit us. All this time, I’d been blithely ignoring the fact that someone close by had lost their life, that some family’s glorious adventure had turned into their worst nightmare. I remembered Kitty Genovese, the woman who was murdered in NYC in broad daylight while dozens watched and no one so much as called the police, and I thought, is that us? Were we the unbelievably callous witnesses who turned their backs? But that’s different. There’s nothing we could have done to stop this tragedy. We would have just been onlookers, absorbing visions and emotions and scenarios that would haunt us even more than the imagined ones have.

And haunted we were. Kate and I had a hard time sleeping, unable to stop wondering who this person was, how it happened. The next morning, we went back to the trail. Police tape was still up, but the posted ranger said they’d been able to get to the body and remove it that morning by lowering two rescuers down to the spot by helicopter. It was a young man, 29, who was there with his brothers and sister. It was an accident, but he didn’t say more about it. They would be opening the path again after they had retrieved the man’s backpack. So the older man we’d seen was likely a witness, the younger one a brother.

Woman takes a selfie in spot where man died.

When I asked how often this happens, the ranger said, “It’s averaging about one a month now, although we had a suicide two weeks ago.” I asked if there are ever survivors, people that fall just to a ledge. He shook his head firmly. “That would be one very lucky survivor.”

In the afternoon, Kate and I biked the greenway path to the Pipe Creek vista. On the way back, we went on the newly opened section of the rim trail. It was easy to figure out where the young man had fallen. There’s a ledge that juts out into the canyon, and that’s where I’d seen the rescue workers standing the day before. It’s obviously a favorite dare-devil perch, and in fact when I first saw it, there was a young woman standing at the end of it, holding her ipad above her and looking up for a selfie. In the time it took us to pass it, we saw several others do the same. There’s no fencing on this part of the trail. I don’t know that any of them knew what had happened less than 24 hours before. The only sign was a shirt on a ledge far below.

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