September 12, 2024 at 7:45 a.m.
18 Hours Stranded in the Desert Canyon
By Jacob Johnson, submitted.
Disclaimer -- This will be lengthy. As crazy as it will sound it’s all very real, I lived it and did my best to document the passing hours while saving battery life.
--- J. Johnson
Last Saturday my good friend Sam Meek and I flew out to Las Vegas for a week-long vacation. We spent two nights in Vegas before heading to Arizona where we were backpacking and camping in Havasupai for four days. The Havasupai Indian Reservation is just outside of Grand Canyon National Park.
Tuesday around 4 a.m. we began our 10-mile hike from the hilltop to the campground. Everything went great and we enjoyed our time Tuesday and Wednesday.
Thursday morning around 8 a.m. we had finished breakfast and were hiking two miles to Beaver Falls. We got there sometime between 9:30 and 10 a.m. and had fun playing in the pools of water and taking pictures. Around 11 a.m. we could see the clouds looking grey and knew we needed to head back to the campground to shelter from the rain. By noon we had one more river crossing to get across (about 20 feet to the other side) and the water had started to pick up. The rain was getting heavy, and we decided to shelter under a small cliff/cave. It was about 15 feet wide and about five feet high. Just enough for us to sit underneath as it rained and stay dry.
Beaver Falls – Where Johnson and Meek were hiking from when the flood hit. August 2024.
Photo credit: Sam Meek, submitted.Less than an hour later - disaster. By 1 p.m. the river was gushing with muddy water. The rapids were very strong. We saw trees ripped off the shoreline, logs flowing downstream. We heard sides of the canyons falling in. A full-fledged flash flood was in effect.
At that time, we had hoped the water would recede after a while. And it did, maybe five to six inches (it had risen up the shore probably two to three feet and doubled to about 40 feet across).
At 4:30 p.m. it started raining again. The water raised back the few inches it had receded.
By 6 p.m. we began to feel more nervous. We had been there for six hours, we had no food, and about one liter of water each (both with a filter fortunately) and the waters didn’t seem to be slowing soon. Action mode really kicked in and I hiked as far as I could down the shoreline to see if there were any shorter crossings where we could link arms and make it across the river -- nothing. I had been doing the math game on my head for a while on distance across plus my speed vs water speed and the distance to the next drop off. Maybe it was my sheer will and determination, Sam would have kindly called it stupidity- but I swore I could make it… We could all make it.
So, we found a large stick, Sam took a step out and realized really quickly we couldn’t do it. I was stubborn, so I stepped around him, took a step -- sure enough it was too strong.
Soon after Sam used SOS on his phone to get ahold of 911 through satellite. Service was very poor, and our communication was spotty, but we gave our coordinates and a helicopter was dispatched. We were spotted around 6:45 p.m., the helicopter acknowledged us… however, it made multiple trips past us in the next hour (likely to get a couple hikers stranded farther down the river) but never came back to get us.
By 8:30 – 9 p.m. we knew we were gonna be there overnight. We laid down the cold hard ground. We had on swimming trunks, and t-shirts. We had two wet towels with us in a duffle bag. We tossed the towels over ourselves and shared the bag as a pillow. Around 11 p.m. it began to rain (a blessing in disguise) so we headed back to the little cave for cover. This proved to be much warmer and softer. We sat in there for five hours until it got light out.
View of flood waters from the cave. August 2024. |Photo credit: Sam Meek, submitted.
Around 4:30 a.m. Friday morning we stepped out of the canyon to begin looking for helicopters. Still nothing. By 6 a.m. we checked back on the river and decided it was finally slow enough to try crossing. The water was just above waste level but slow enough that we were able to cross. This concluded our 18-hour isolated stay in the wilderness.
Mud-saturated Mooney Falls after the flood, outskirts of Grand Canyon. August 2024. Photo credit: Sam Meek, submitted.
We finished the ¾-mile track back to the campsite to an eerie scene. Everyone was gone, everything had been washed away. We found our tent tangle in some trees a couple yards from our camping spot. My bag was washed away which had almost all of my things (most importantly my wallet and the keys to our rental car). One problem had been traded in for another.
By 7:30 a.m. we salvaged what we could and began hiking the two miles from the campground to the Supai village. This is where the Natives live and they were providing shelter and have some cell service. We got in around 9 a.m. Between 250 and 400-ish people were gathered and Sam and I were among the final 5-10 to finally make it in. We were told the canyon was compromised and every single person would have to be helicopter evacuated out.
Eight hours later and with much stressing over getting a tow truck, getting travel plans (with low battery levels) through hunger and tiredness we weaseled our way through the line (we were at the bottom of the list due to getting in late) and were flown out around 5:15 p.m. At the hilltop we waited another hour and a half for the tow truck. We finally left around 7 p.m. We got back to Vegas around 11:30 p.m., dropped the rental, got some fast food and checked into the hotel around 1 a.m. Sam and I were still hearing helicopters everywhere. Any fan, any motor we look around for a helicopter. That will fade, but I’m not joking.
That concluded what was the wildest 40-ish hours of our lives. We had about one hour of sleep, two biscuits and a couple crackers in the village, and hadn’t gotten a real shower in days. I felt most frustrated because of the financial losses between all my gear, having to get towed, cancel my flight and obviously my wallet.
However, we were very grateful. The native people said they had not seen flooding like this since the ‘90s. One person is still missing, others had to spend an extra night in the village…
We made it out safely. All said and done we even got all four days of our trip. A lot of praying was done Thursday night and God answered so many prayers. Sam and I prayed with a couple people in the village, one man who was further downstream than us said he hit his knees and prayed at one point because he thought for sure he was going to die. I’m also extremely grateful for all the support we received. From other hikers who offered food, the village natives who scrambled the helicopters, even Hertz rental who did a great job helping us through an insane situation.
A few songs I sang over and over and words I echoed in my thoughts during that time…
“What a Wonderful World” - this was random but it kept coming back lol.
“Lord I Need You”
“Waymaker, Miracle Worker, Promise Keeper”
