“Then he kind of laid down, but he could wave his hand.”įrom the helicopter, the search team lowered a rescuer into the canyon, who was able to harness and hoist Mr. He was kind of leaning up against the side of a rock cliff,” he said. He was alive, but “just spent,” Lieutenant Alldredge said. Using infrared equipment, rescuers detected a “glimpse of a body” a few miles from where the two had split up, the lieutenant said.
On Monday, when the search and rescue helicopter was launched, the rescuers started to spot signs that they were zeroing in on the hikers, including camping debris and a backpack. They were about 10 miles into the canyon, the lieutenant said, and “conditions were so bad. Smith told the authorities after he was rescued. Watson situated and left to look for help, the lieutenant said, recounting what Mr.
Watson had hurt his leg and said he could not go on, Lieutenant Alldredge said. The men regrouped before pressing on to search for Mr. Smith clambered onto a bank, the official said. Watson, an orthopedic surgeon who specialized in sports medicine, and Mr. The rushing water had carried the hikers miles downstream, until at some point Dr. “You got a five-foot coming at you, and the walls are three feet wide,” he said. “Then they got hit with the flash flood,” he said, describing such floods as “horrible, violent events,” with water pushing forward between towering canyon walls. On Saturday morning, he said, they could hear the quickening sound of water. The hikers did not get very far that first night, and set up camp, he said. The days before the three hikers set off had been rainy, adding to a season of wet winter weather that had already spewed runoff into the canyon.
TAMPA WEATHER PATCH
He said Buckskin Gulch is typically dry, but hikers come across a patch of water or a knee-deep pool occasionally.
Rescuers evacuated at least 11 hikers from other groups from the area in the past week, Lieutenant Alldredge said. While the area is attractive to hikers, the slot canyon’s slender passages can be perilous during heavy rainfall, forming a chute through which powerful floods can surge. The effects of stormy weather are daunting on the pathways that thread through the steep canyon walls, particularly in Buckskin Gulch, a narrow gorge that winds for about 16 miles through steep, sandstone walls, making it one of the longest slot canyons in the world. The Bureau of Land Management and the Kane County Sheriff’s Office this week issued an advisory to discourage visitors from continuing their hikes, saying that “severe and unpredictable” flash flooding could occur in Buckskin Gulch, another canyon, called Paria, and Wire Pass, a starting point for hikers setting off into the canyons. Southern Utah had been deluged by stormy weather. While the men were well-prepared, the prospect of their disappearance was alarming, considering the weather and the challenge of searching miles of narrow canyons by helicopter. On Monday morning, the wife of one of the hikers called the authorities to report that the group had not been in contact. The men, who worked together at Orthopaedic Medical Group of Tampa Bay in Florida, were experienced hikers on their way to Lees Ferry on the Colorado River, a distance of about 50 miles that they had hoped to reach by Sunday night, Lieutenant Alldredge said in an interview. “Four hundred-foot cliff walls, two feet apart.” Alan Alldredge, an emergency services official and spokesman for the Kane County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s very popular and it’s quite a big deal if you have got the stamina to do it,” said Lt. The hikers - Edward Smith, 50 Jeffrey Watson, 50 and William Romaniello III, 53 - had set off on March 10 from Wire Pass, a trailhead that leads into Buckskin Gulch, one of the nation’s longest and most rugged slot canyons, or narrow gorges, which runs through the south of the state. Two hikers were found dead and one was rescued by helicopter earlier this week after storms and heavy rainfall triggered floods that surged through a narrow canyon in southern Utah, the authorities said on Thursday.
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