Editor's Letter

Thirteen. In seven days.
That’s how many rescue missions were flown into the Grand Canyon as May turned into June. I saw one of the helicopters. It came down off the North Rim as I headed into Supai Tunnel. A few hours earlier, somewhere behind me, the search and rescue team performed what’s known as a “helicopter short-haul” to save a struggling hiker. Nobody wants to see a helicopter short-haul.

Short-hauls are extremely dangerous. Like Ethan Hunt in the “vault scene,” these maneuvers involve a first respon­der, and oftentimes an injured backpacker, dangling from a chopper on a fixed line. The technique was developed by the Swiss in 1966 and made its way to the States in the early 1980s. It’s effective, but risky, especially when rangers have to make a “hover exit” — jumping from a floating helicopter — because there’s nowhere to land. Thermal updrafts and crosswinds can make things even more difficult. So, nobody wants to see a short-haul. But they’re inevitable.

“There’s always going to be another search, another rescue, another emergency waiting tomorrow,” says Della Yurcik, a retired ranger who worked for 20 years in the backcountry of the Grand Canyon. Now, she volunteers at Manzanita Rest Area on the North Kaibab Trail, where she encourages hikers and helps keep them alive. I first met Della on a rim-to-rim hike in the middle of those seven days. Like everyone else who meets her, I fell in love. Della is wise, fierce and genuine. And she’s cheerfully reassuring to hikers who might be doubting their ability to make it out.

“Years from now,” she says, “our visitors are going to remember how we made them feel, not the number of emergencies we responded to.”

She can’t fix a broken plank on a footbridge, and she’s not a geologist, but Della’s a rockstar in the Grand Canyon. With groupies from around the world. She even has her own water bottle sticker: FWD — “Friends With Della.”

We didn’t expect to be the first hikers at the trailhead, but I was surprised by our place in the queue. There were at least three dozen hikers ahead of us, their headlamps lining the trail like luminarias — from Yaki Point to Cedar Ridge.

I was hiking with my younger brother Jeff, who turned 60 a few weeks earlier. Instead of buying himself a Corvette or a cask of Amontillado, he chose to mark the milestone by testing himself in a waltz with Mother Nature. His son was hiking with us, too. He’s a 20-something mountain man who skips along with the agility of a bighorn sheep and the strength of a mule. On this day, Jared slowed to our pace. Still, we made good time going downhill.

That’s how it is in the Canyon. There’s an inverted reality, one that fosters delusion. This hike isn’t so hard, people think. But that’s not the case. Unlike a mountain hike, where you earn the summit and coast back down, the Canyon works in reverse, offering a free pass, of sorts, to the bottom. The point of no easy return.

“Down is optional, up is mandatory,” the backcountry rangers like to say.

We got to the river quickly, with only a few stops. One was for a mule train led by Remy, a wrangler who looked as if she’d wandered in from the set of Yellowstone. I asked about her alarm clock. It went off at 1:30 a.m., two hours before mine. When I shared that, she smiled, as if to say, “It must be nice to sleep in.”

The goal when hiking rim to rim in late spring or summer is to get through The Box by 8 a.m. Like the Darien Gap, it’s a test. But instead of swamps and rainforest, the challenge of The Box is the blistering heat, which radiates from 1,200-foot vertical walls and bakes anyone who dares to enter after breakfast. Even in the shade, the temperature can hit 120. That’s too hot for human beings. And it’s worse for hikers, who risk hyperthermia and encephalopathy, a brain dysfunction that can lead to confusion, agitation and aggression. And maybe a helicopter short-haul.

We got through on time and ticked off the miles to Cottonwood Camp, which sits under a canopy of poplars along the icy waters of Bright Angel Creek. It’s an oasis any time of year, but in the weeks surrounding the summer solstice, it’s Auntie Em’s basement. And Louis Zamperini’s life raft.

“For three searing summers,” Amy S. Martin says, “I lived on the creek’s bank as a backcountry ranger, the perennial waters providing a welcome haven to every living being within miles. It is a place of refuge, as is all of the Grand Canyon.”

Cottonwood is where I met Della, a friend of a friend who connected us. We touched on our common denominators and asked each other questions. In between our words, she encouraged every hiker to unhook their backpack and lie down in the creek. “Hike wet” is her mantra. And she has other advice.

“Eat real food — pizza, potato chips and sandwiches,” she says. “Not just goos and bars. And when you start to have a problem, stop hiking. Rest in the shade and hike out later with a headlamp. The mission-driven ‘hurry up and get there’ attitude is very common, but most problems can be resolved when you stop hiking.”

We stopped. Repeatedly. Everyone does in the last few miles, even elite athletes like Molly, who shared a rock with me on the west side of Redwall Bridge. We stayed close the rest of the way out, and watched that helicopter drop from the North Rim and fly into the depths of the Canyon. It seemed to be something unusual. A helicopter … what are the chances of that? we thought.

Little did we know.