Recent tragic event at Zion got me thinking

Wait for a better report. News media often gets things confused with first reports. For all we know his wife had a heart attack and not a problem with cold.

If the temps are cold enough to kill me on a day hike (dry or wet), I ALWAYS carry a waterproof UL poncho tarp and a fleece UL sleeping bag, at the very least. Those two things can be enough to live through a cold night, and the fleece Colman cheapo sleeping bag has tremendous stretch and room to pack it full of forest debris for lots of added warmth. Combo can handle snow and rain. Then on top of that, I have heavy duty Esbit tablets (Expedition brand) with a lighter in waterproof case to start a fire even in rain.

Never had to use the fleece sleeping bag yet for myself, but did come in handy one day when an old lady got hit by an insecurity truck so huge, the diver didn’t even see her walking there. Used it to keep her warm while giving first aid on cold day.

Here is the NPS news release.

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/news/zion-national-park-rescues-one-person-and-responds-to-one-fatality-in-the-narrows.htm

Do we know if this was intended to be a day hike or an overnight? I am assuming a day hike, because I can’t imagine 19 degrees would have been life threatening for backpackers. Of course, the information seems incomplete at this point, as noted above.

A few thoughts:

1.  The woman who died was in her early thirties.  A heart attack is very unlikely, and her husband was also suffering from severe hypothermia.

2. The Narrows trail requires you to hike for a few miles IN THE WATER of the Virgin River.  If you want to get hypothermia, I can’t think of many ways that are better than hiking in near freezing water for miles.  The water can range from knee deep to up to your neck or higher.

3. Unless you are doing this part-way as a 17 mile dayhike, the Narrows Trail is an overnight.  And if they hiked all day in near freezing temperatures, miles of it in near freezing water, it’s pretty easy to see how they might never have managed to warm up again–especially since building a fire down in that canyon might well be hard to do.

To me, this is not a question of them not having the right gear, so much as it is a question of them making a fatal mistake to try this hike under these conditions.  Locals recommend using a drysuit for the whole hike in winter…we don’t know if they did this, but even so, it can be freezing.

We’ve been in the Narrows twice.  Once when conditions were perfect and there were literally hundreds of people in the river—not our cup of tea.  The other time the Park Service had closed the Narrows because the river was running way too high.

I can’t imagine that I would ever want to hike though cold water in temperatures near freezing. To me, this sounds like an unfortunate and poor decision. I think sometimes people become enamored with doing spectacular hikes and wanting to get those selfies to send, to the point of being blinded to the realities of actual conditions.

The NPS report said they had a permit for the top down hike which is often done as an overnight “backpack.”  We don’t have all the details and don’t know whether they rented dry suits or not.

I have been on the Riverside Walk in late November do to dawn photography.. Even when you are out of the water, it can be way below freezing in the morning hours.

It’s called The Narrows because you are hiking in the bottom of a canyon “with walls a thousand feet tall and the river sometimes just twenty to thirty feet wide” according to NPS.

In that setting, a PLB or inReach could have serious problems getting a good GPS position, and sending an SOS signal out to a satellite. Carrying one is not a “get out of jail free” card under any conditions.

As others pointed out, you must be well prepared to safely backpack this trip in late November. You’ll want much more than traditional “three-season” backpacking gear, and you need some added skills and experience. NPS has plenty of safety advice.

As a long-time whitewater raft guide, wetsuits and dry suits don’t solve all cold-and-wet problems by themselves. And I’ve seen them fail to keep the occupant warm many times, especially for people without experience.

Sad outcome. Hope we get more details, to prevent future tragedies.

— Rex

Rex:

Good point about the beacon not being a get out of jail free card.  Especially in the Narrows.

That hike is not a gimme this time of year. I have an enormous amount of experience with winter hiking and canyoneering and have done this hike several times in the winter (not a fan of crowds!). 50% of the time, it’s been quite an epic adventure. Cold temps, cold water – this combo can be really surprising to even the most experienced among us. The trips I’ve taken with dry suits and fleece onesies (thanks erin & hig!) have been the best, but still, not exactly … comfortable.

Dry suits aren’t wrong, but unless there’s a storm going on, I’ve just used wet suits for the Narrows in winter.  Here’s my 9-year-old, heading up the Virgin River:

Wearing a wetsuit and doing fine (albeit coming from an Alaska winter):

For a milder winter trip in the four-corners region, I’d go to the South Rim of GCNP (and will again in January).  As a 10-year-old, our daughter found it, not exactly shorts weather, but Capri-length pants compatible.  Only the very highest portions of the least-used trails had much snow: While the Bright Angel and Kaibab trails usually need nothing beyond some experience on snow/ice (or microspikes for the clueless).  The inner canyon is lovely for hiking in winter with temps around 50F and not the intense sun of summer:

In both cases, we were day-hiking (and had additional clothing along).  For an overnight, as the ill-fated couple was doing, I’d have a 20F bag plus clothing that could add to that and a bomber (i.e. CCF) pad for each person plus an inflatable pad.  And the sleeping bag and extra clothes would be double-bagged for water-proofness.  The news report indicated they got cold overnight on a permitted overnight trip, so it sounds like a series of missteps – getting chilled during the day, not getting out of the weather quickly enough, not having warm enough sleep gear, maybe something get wet, and not recognizing the seriousness of the situation sooner would be my guess. 

I thought the weather has been pretty bad for the last couple of weeks all over the US.  In Austin, Texas, at least where we are normally in the high 60s/70s with lots of sun, we had no sun, cloudy, mid-40s to mid 50’s and raining on and off. Pretty miserable weather with no sun – it has finally lifted and we had sun come out on 26th.

If such conditions were present in Zion, then I would suspect, it would have been very miserable in the Narrows coupled with wading in the cold water. Normally you would expect good sunny manageable weather in Utah in November. Most likely they mis-calculated and ended up during probably a bad weather window.

Good weather spell or not, those deep canyons fill with cold air and even on a sunny day this is not much sun down there… it’s like being in a refrigerator, only colder… oh.. and then there is the very cold water. It’s all speculation, but maybe one or both of these people slipped, fell in the water, and got their extra clots and sleeping bags wet…

And probably no wood down in there to  make a fire…