![]() The final victim, Steve Arthur’s wife, Linda, had traveled the farthest: five miles downstream, through the Clear Creek drainage into Pine Creek Canyon. As the creekbed returned to its normal dry state, more victims turned up in the area and beyond, and by Thursday evening the bodies of all seven of the lost canyoneers would be found: the other Californians were Don Teichner, the group’s leader, a 55-year-old who was semiretired from managing his family’s garment-dyeing facility in Los Angeles 59-year-old Muku Reynolds, a special-education aide from Chino 53-year-old Robin Brum, a hair-stylist from Camarillo Mark Mac-Kenzie, 56, a system operator for Burbank Water and Power and Gary Favela-the man Anderson and the Piacitellis discovered-a 51-year-old sales rep from Rancho Cucamonga. But there were no signs to that effect, and Anderson says he was issued a permit for his group at the visitor center’s backcountry desk just after noon.Įarlier that day, in fact, rangers on a hasty search below Keyhole had found another body-that of Steve Arthur, 58, a traffic supervisor with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department-roughly a mile downstream in Clear Creek. ![]() The canyon was supposed to be closed today. The Park Service had received a report that a group of seven canyoneers, members of Southern California’s Valencia Hiking Crew, had been in Keyhole the previous afternoon when the storm hit and hadn’t returned to their cars. Southern Utah was at the tail end of what had turned out to be an erratic monsoon season, and a powerful thunderstorm had swept through the park the previous day, dropping over half an inch of rain in under an hour. Zion's rangers already knew there was trouble. “I yelled back up at my friends, ‘There’s a body down here!’ ” Rescuers pull a body from Pine Creek after the flash floods. “It was obvious that he was dead,” says Anderson. Checking for life, he flipped the body over and saw a middle-aged male whose skin was cold and white. Anderson grabbed it, only to find that it was attached to a person floating in the murky water. The rope descended 30 feet, terminating in a mess in the muddy pool. “Then I said, ‘I’m going to run down and see what’s going on.’ ” “We probably sat there for ten or fifteen minutes,” says Anderson. ![]() ![]() “When we saw the leg sticking out,” says India, “we didn’t know what it was and joked about it.” Peering over the edge, they could make out something submerged in the small pool below. The trio waited, but the rope never moved. Keyhole drains a very small area, only a couple of square miles, and can be completed quickly if there’s trouble. Anderson chose Keyhole rather than one of Zion’s longer canyons because the day’s forecast called for more weather. The waterway at the bottom, a tributary of Clear Creek, was trickling from the previous day’s rain. Five minutes off the park’s Zion–Mount Carmel Highway, the slot canyon is only 1,200 feet long and requires just three 30-foot rappels and a bit of scrambling and swimming through the cold pools that collect year-round beneath its smooth, narrow walls. Zion National Park, with its towering Navajo-sandstone walls and plunging network of gorges carved by the Virgin River, is the American ground zero for the sport, and Keyhole is considered an ideal introduction. The Piacitellis didn’t have any canyoneering experience, which is generally fine on this route. The couple had gotten married two days earlier, overlooking the Grand Canyon’s Horseshoe Bend, and they decided to honeymoon their way home through Utah’s national parks. It was about three on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 15, and Anderson, a 25-year-old off-duty canyoneering guide with nearby Zion Ponderosa Ranch Resort, was leading two friends, India and Jay Piacitelli, ages 20 and 26, respectively, on an outing. At first, Kaden Anderson thought it meant that there was a group ahead of his party, but when he called down no one answered. The ghost rope snaked over the lip of Keyhole Canyon’s third and final rappel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |