The Rest of the Story

One of my favorite places is the Grand Canyon.  Over the past 30 years, I've been there a few times and have spent 28 nights below the rim and 7 nights camping on the rim.  I was recently reading a book about a more morbid side of the Canyon written by Michael P. Ghiglieri & Thomas M. Myers.  The title - Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon.  I know, it might seem weird to read about the falls, flash floods, drownings, hypothermia, heat stroke, heart attacks, aircraft mishaps, murders and suicides.  However, Chapter 6:  Lightning Never Strikes Twice: Freak Errors and Accidents, was especially interesting.  I was enjoying the chapter when I read the following passage beginning with the last paragraph of page 284.

"Consider March 25, 1991.  It had snowed hard during the night.  Then it snowed even more during the day.  The wind howled, creating big drifts on the Bright Angel Trail.  To cap it all off, fog set in, swirling with the wind-driven snow.  Helicopter flights became unsafe.  But for mule packer Stanley Sloan, these demons of winter were unavoidable.  "Since I had to get supplies down to the inner canyon people, such as the rangers, trail crew workers and maintenance, I couldn't let the snow stop me."

"Sloan prepared his mules with good winter shoes to prevent their sliding on the trail.  Ominously, however, the trail itself had become not only hard to walk on, but hard even to see.

"Sloan headed down the Bright Angel Trail.  But he stopped after a few minutes to radio Dispatch to inform them of his intent and of the conditions on the trail. Sloan explains what happened from here:

"What came next happened so fast that it was impossible to correct the chain of events.  My #1 lead mule must have stumbled in a snowdrift.  Next thing I knew we were being pulled toward the side of the trail.  I guess the snow gave away and I felt the mule string falling.  I bailed off the mule to save myself.  I had a long lead rope to my first mule that went under my right leg to the saddle horn.  After I bailed off, the rope came undone from the saddle horn.  And Susan, my mule didn't fall.

"By the time I got back on my feet and on the trail everything had already happened.  All the mules were in a pile in a small wash below the trail.  They had fallen 200 feet down the canyon.

"Sloan ran down the trail to find four of his mules amazingly alive, but all of them, having been tethered together and yanked off, were in bad shape.  One of them Gail, had a ten-inch laceration in her shoulder and was "in shock from the fall."  Amazingly she-and she alone-survived, being well doctored by farrier Dan Cook."

Do you know where you were on March 25, 1991?  I remember clearly where I was!

My oldest daughter (just days shy of 9 years old), my 12 year old twin sons, my father and I had decided to go camping over spring break.  Our campsite was at 7000 feet and March weather at 7000 feet is frequently unpredictable.  So we were prepared for rain, snow or sunshine.  On our first day, the weather was excellent and we were able to see a few sites and set up a camp in a secluded area about half mile off of the main road.

Our plans for the second day included a day hike.  It had snowed a lot during the night and my van had over 20 inches of snow on it.  The snow was deep enough that I was a bit worried that we might not make it from our campsite to the main road so that we could drive to the trailhead. I was also concerned about weather and trail conditions and if I had properly prepared my kids for a hike in adverse weather conditions.  Slick mountain trails, snow, wind, and fog aren't necessarily the best conditions to hike in.  But I had been on the selected trail several times, always in winter conditions. I decided to shorten the hike, but still give the kids and my dad a winter-like hiking experience.

After getting to the trail head and getting our winter gear on, we started on the trail.  Our destination - a rest shelter 1.5 miles away.  We made it to the shelter and climbed inside to get out of the cold and snow.  Some would say it was a lugubrious day, the visibility was limited, but at times it lifted and we were treated to a marvelous view.  It was quiet and we had the entire trail to ourselves.  We hadn't seen as soul since leaving the trail head. 

The storm persisted and finally we decided to head back to the van.  The boys quickly put on their day packs and headed out of the shelter.  My daughter and father were a wee bit slower and so I waited for them as I watched my boys go around the first bend in the trail.  The three of us hit the trail within seconds after the boys disappeared.  As we got to the same bend where I had just seen my boys disappear, we heard an awful, gut wrenching sound.  I couldn't figure out what it was, but I knew it was close, it came from just around the bend.  My boys were the only ones that I knew for certain were just ahead of us on the trail.  Did something happen to them?

I started jogging along the trail.  Was it my boys?  Did one or both of them get injured in some way?

As I finished rounding the bend, there in front of me were four pack mules.  One was just starting to stand up and the other three were also alive, but down for the count.  The boys were nowhere in sight.  I looked down below the mules to see if by chance the boys had been pushed off the trail into the wash.  No boys.  I then looked up the slope and could see where the mules had slide and tumbled down the steep incline. My boys were just a minute or two ahead of me as we hiked along the trail and this accident ocurred between us.

It was March 25, 1991, my family and I were hiking the Bright Angel Trail.  Contrary to the narrative given in the book, the mules didn't stop in a pile in a small wash below the trail, they landed right on the trail between the boys and I while we were at most 2 minutes apart. 

As Paul Harvey would say:  "Now you know the rest of the story."

Afterward:  Shortly after we came to the mules (I don't remember if it was seconds or minutes), two men came running down the trail.  One was a National Park Ranger and the other was probably Mr. Sloan.  I don't remember which arrived first.  I asked if they had passed my boys hiking up the trail and neither of them could remember passing anyone.  I moved my daughter and father back down the trail around the bend and waited while they put three of the four mules down.  We then were able to pass between the bodies of the mules and continue our hike up to the trail head.

As soon as we got to the trailhead, we went into the Bright Angel Lodge and there were the boys.  They had been there for quite some time and were wondering what was taking us so long.  They didn't hear or see the mules but reported that they saw two men hurrying down the trail.

I'm extremely grateful that this incident in chapter 6: "Freak Errors and Accidents" was not associated with any human fatalities.  A few seconds either way, and the ending might have been tremendously different.