Bowl of Marsh Mellows

Phantom Creek, Grand Canyon - photo by JoAnn Sturman

W.R. Priskna
fliesinyoureyes.com

An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.
William Shakespeare, "King Richard III"

Captain “Chunks” Henry called me into his office, “Priskna, there's a hiker lost in the Grand Canyon. He left the South Rim alone ten days ago for a week trek and is three days overdue. It's been snowing heavily with low temperatures in the canyon, so it's a long shot that we'll find him alive. We're taking two choppers to search for three or four days. We'll leave at dawn tomorrow.”
Captain Henry received his nick name Chunks from fixed wing pilot training. The legend was he got airsick on every flight while learning to fly and often made a mess of the cockpit. On his last check flight to earn his wings his instructor told him if he puked during the flight he would fail him. Henry held back until he was coming in for the final landing. “Sir, I'm going to get sick.”

“Henry, if you want your wings, don't puke!”

Henry, always being the quick thinker, unfastened his oxygen mask, unzipped the front of his flight suit, and vomited large chunks of undigested food inside his flight suit. He zipped up the suit, reattached the oxygen mask, and made a stellar landing. He earned his wings and was forever known as “Chunks.”

I couldn't believe my luck. I'd never been to the Grand Canyon. While growing up I read about the one armed John Wesley Powell floating down the Colorado River in 1869. There were drawings of him lashed to his captain's chair while his wooden boat careened through the treacherous rapids. Now I was going to be able to see what he saw from a bird's eye view.

We took off from Tucson for the 300 mile flight to the Grand Canyon. There was a strong high pressure system over the Southwest, so even though it was January the sky was predicted to be cloudless over all of Arizona. As we flew north of Phoenix towards Flagstaff, the ground elevation rose and the snow covering the desert became thicker as we neared the South Rim of Grand Canyon. Before landing we decided to take a look at the canyon. When it came into view, we didn't see the greens, reds, and browns or the buttes, peaks, and gorges of the canyon, but a mass of white billowy clouds filling it from the South to the North Rims and from the east to west as far as we could see. It resembled a huge bowl of marsh mellows flush with the canyon rim. None of the peaks within the canyon pierced the white canopy. The largest canyon in the world was hidden beneath a dense veil.

After landing to refuel, we met with the local search and rescue teams. Civilian flight operation had been canceled due to the clouds in the canyon. We were told the cloud deck was 500 to 1000 feet thick, so beneath it at least 4000 feet of vertical visibility would be present from the Colorado River to the bottom of the clouds. Flying in the canyon would not be a problem but penetrating the cloud layer would be tricky with zero visibility and many land forms jutting into it from the canyon floor.

Captain Henry briefed us for the afternoon's mission. We studied the map of the Grand Canyon noting where the prominent obstacles were located. We picked an area north of the Bright Angel Trail trail head where there were fewer dangers. We planned to enter the clouds at fifty knots with a 500 hundred feet per minute descent rate and anticipated emerging in one to two minutes of flying time.

Over the next four days we flew four missions a day. On the first three days we left the brilliant sunshine and descended into the gloom below the clouds. After we passed through, we found ourselves under a densely overcast sky. We were able to see for several miles but the canyon was missing its usual vivid colors. There was a surprising amount of snow at the higher elevations, but as we descended toward the Colorado River it quickly melted. We spent hours swooping and diving around the canyon's ridges, valleys, buttes, and mountains. We skimmed miles across the surface of the river, but there was no sign of the lost hiker.

On the morning of the fourth day we planned to conduct one more search before returning to Tucson. Again we woke up to sunny January skies, but a brisk wind had developed overnight blowing the clouds out of the canyon.

Captain Henry called us aside, “We're going to give it one more try this morning. The odds of finding him alive are remote, but a least with the sunshine we could see a reflection from a signal mirror.”

On this day we didn't have to enter the canyon in our practiced, methodical way. This time we used the IMAX approach – skimming a few feet above the ground at full speed toward the South Rim. As we burst over the cliff's edge separating the rim from the canyon, we suddenly experienced thousands of feet of air beneath us. It was so exhilarating we tried it several more times before concluding the mission.

Several month later the remains of the hiker were found in a remote side canyon. He had been buried in an avalanche during the unusually heavy snows in the canyon and as the warm spring weather melted the snow, his brightly colored clothing alerted some unsuspecting hikers.