The Grand Canyon is an outdoors-person paradise. Hard-core back country backpackers come from, literally, all over the world to hike the seemingly limitless trails. But all this beauty and grandeur attract more than the well trained and physically fit. You are just as likely to encounter someone pushing a walker in front of them as you are someone with a 50 lb pack on their back.
In the past few days a family from France were visiting the North Rim. A mother, father, two adult daughters and a son-in-law. They were enjoying a hike on the North Kaibab Trail. This is the trail on the north side that goes all the way to the bottom of the canyon and connects to the Bright Angel Trail to the South Rim.
But you do not have to take the trail its full distance, and most don't. There are a number of overlooks and points of interest that are a relatively short walk in distance. However, they all involve elevation changes worth making note of. What is an easy walk out, and down, can and usually is an arduous climb back.
Such was the case this day. The family from France enjoyed a leisurely stroll down to a place called Redwall Bridge. It is roughly 2.5 miles in distance and 2,000 feet in elevation drop. They had turned to come back up the trail and had made their way back to a point called Coconino Overlook, less than a mile from the trailhead and only 800 more feet of climb. One of our Volunteer Interpreters, George, a 74 year old that has been doing trail assistance and rescue on the North Kaibab for ten years or more had just spoken with the family. George left the family enjoying a rest stop and view and hiked on up the trail. He had not gone a hundred yards when a panicked man run up from below and started calling out in German and broken English something about someone falling down.
In less than a minute George was to the scene (George is not like any other 74 year old you know, he can move!). It was the 64 year-old father of the French family. In the words that George described it to me; "The man had suddenly clenched his chest and fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes." George put out a may-day on the radio and started giving CPR immediately. Just by pure luck there was a high-level medic and EMT training session going on at our admin building. Twenty guys burst out of the room and were at the trailhead in less than three minutes. With several of them carrying 75 lbs of emergency gear on their backs, they sprinted down the canyon trail. The guys carrying the portable de-fib machine were first to arrive and they had administered three shocks by the time the guys with oxygen bottles arrived.
CPR, adrenaline and oxygen were administered for a solid hour, right there on the trail. At that time one of the senior medics on the scene called it and the rescue became a recovery. With the new widow and children looking on he was most respectfully put in a body bag, strapped to a one-wheeled gurney and hand carried the last half-mile out of the canyon.
All of the responders were visibly shaken. They were the best at what they do and there were so many of them and so quick on the scene. It should have been a different outcome. Only the autopsy will tell for sure, but everyone suspects that it was a heart attack so bad that medical technology did not exist that would have brought him back.
The family had set up camp in the campground before their hike but were now in shock and disoriented from the ordeal. Their patriarch was gone, his body being transported to Flagstaff four-and-a-half hours away to the coroners office, they were at a loss for what to do. In the campground we keep two sites reserved all the time for the soul purpose of having a place to "house" emergency response teams. The lodge must do similarly as they made rooms available for the family until they could get themselves collected and make arrangements to get to Flagstaff in a day or two.
This is such a happy place with families and people of all ages having the time of their life. There is the occasional twisted ankle and separated parties but soon all is fixed and forgotten. Not today, today the harsher side of life has made its presence known.
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