“With Death staring you in the face, you truly understand what it means to be alive.”—Haro Aso
How many of you out there have come within an errant swipe of the Grim Reaper’s scythe? It’s tough to make it all the way to retirement age without ducking the wrecking ball once or twice, and we’ve had our share of close calls. Once, in grade school, Mr. Bill fell off an undependable log into the nasty Shawsheen River, bouncing right back up and noticing a small tree which had fallen out into the river. He went back down before he could grab onto it and got his foot caught in some metal trash on the bottom. “Oh-oh,” he thought, “and me a long way from my last Confession.”
Eventually slithering loose, he got to the surface, grabbed the tree and pulled himself out of the water. “Damn,” he remarked. “I always thought that stuff in the comic books about going down for the third time was silly. I almost got a chance to find out.”
That Sinking Feeling
Arches National Park in Moab, Utah seems a safe enough place, with its dearth of narrow hiking trails, dramatic drop-offs or confusing wilderness. Little kids frolic along its gentle trails, parents in tow, pointing out one or another of the endless stream of natural arches. No one gets eaten by bears or mountain lions, terrified by Gila monsters or bitten by ill-mannered chipmunks. As hiking goes, it’s a day at the sandy beach as long as you stay away from lonely Courthouse Wash just off the Hayduke Trail, which experienced hiker Austin Dirks didn’t do.
There is an evil section of the Wash where flowing water saturates loose sand, creating a dangerous trap, despite appearing solid and shallow. Austin stepped into what looked like normal sand and quickly sunk to his thighs in quicksand as the water-saturated sand lost its friction, trapping him. Quicksand forms when there is no friction between the grains of sand, making the ground unable to support weight. We have all seen quicksand do its ugly work in old Western movies and early television serials, where the poor victim sinks into oblivion and his sad, weathered cowboy hat is left floating on the slimy surface.
Now all these unpleasantries can be avoided if there is just a heroic savior nearby with a rope, which seems to happen a lot in the movies. Alas, Dirks was a lone stranger in a strange land and he had communicated his hiking plans to nobody. Anyone who has been to a large national park knows there are vast swaths of landscape where cell phones are useless, so Austin Dirks seemed to be in a bit of a pickle. Christmas might indeed be approaching but visions of sugarplums were not dancing in his head.
But as Batman has his utility belt, Dirks had his Garmin emergency satellite beacon, which he activated with fingers crossed. His message was forwarded to Grand County emergency responders and one John Marshall got the call at 7:15 a.m. “I was just rolling out of bed,” said Marshall. “I was a little sleepy and I’m scratching my head. Did I hear that right? Did they say quicksand?”
Marshall put his boots on and rendezvoused with a team that set out with all-terrain vehicles, a ladder, traction boards, backboards, a drone and five golden rings. Soon, the men had a bird’s-eye view of the situation. The drone camera showed a park ranger on-scene with a shovel, which was useless. The quicksand flowed back as soon as Dirks shoveled it away. The rescue team arrived and positioned the ladder and boards near the backpacker and slowly worked one leg loose. By that time, Austin had been standing in near-freezing muck with temperatures in the 20s for two hours and was having fantasies about The Cremation of Sam McGee.
The rescuers finally pried him out and warmed him up until he could stand. As soon as he was able to walk, Dirks insisted on hiking out on his own, even carrying his backpack. “Many people think you will eventually sink into the quicksand and sort of drown,” said Marshall. “But in quicksand, you’re extremely buoyant. Most people won’t sink past their waist. In 2014, we had a 78-year-old woman who got stuck just two miles from here for over 13 hours. Her book club got worried when she missed their meeting. They went looking for her and found her car at a trailhead and we got her out. Fortunately for her, it was June. Without that beacon, Austin would have been toast.”
The Survivors Hall Of Fame
1. Jordan Hatmaker, skydiver. She wasn’t an expert but Jordan Hatmaker had taken enough jumps to recognize that something was wrong. On November 14, 2021, she jumped from a height of 4100 meters and deployed her parachute, but it didn’t open. She tried again and again, but a series of unfortunate malfunctions led to the chute not opening until the very last minute, causing her to crash land. Although she somehow survived, Jordan suffered a spinal injury, broke a shin, shattered an ankle and was paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors were pessimistic as to whether she would ever walk again, but they didn’t know Jordan. Three months after the accident, she began walking. Eventually, she even made a climb to the Mount Everest base camp.
2. Jean Hilliard, popsicle. The prospect of being frozen for six hours brings visions of mega-frostbite and a slow and gruesome death. Not for Jean Hilliard, however, who slipped on some unfriendly Minnesota ice in the harsh throes of winter, knocked herself out and lay frozen for six hours until a friend wandered by. At the hospital, doctors had trouble inserting an IV cannula because her arm was frozen solid. They used heating pads to thaw her out and she woke up, but her extremities, especially her toes, were numb for a long time. Remarkably Hilliard recovered fairly quickly and has experienced no lasting physical effects from her frosty adventure.
3. Aron Ralston, hiker. Many of you have seen the film 127 Hours, in which Ralston was hiking in a remote Utah canyon when a boulder fell, trapping his arm. With no one around to hear his cries for help and his water supply dwindling, Ralston made the critical decision to sever his arm below the elbow using a dull multitool. Finally freeing himself, Aron rappelled down a 60-foot cliff and hiked several miles through rugged terrain before being discovered by a search-and-rescue helicopter. His saviors radioed the rescue back to their home base and asked Ralston if he had any words for the folks back home. “Ouch!” he said.
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| On the horns of a dilemma, Aron Ralston still managed this selfie. Note his right arm immobilized by the large rock. |
4. David Steeves, USAF pilot. Lieutenant Dave was ordered to fly a Lockheed T-33A trainer jet from San Francisco to Craig Air Force Base near Selma, Alabama on May 9, 1957. Shortly after takeoff, the jet disappeared without a trace and Steeves was declared dead after an extensive search yielded no results. Many thought the pilot might have defected (the incident was at the height of the Cold War) and donated the jet to the evil Russians. In July, however, Steeves popped out of the Sierra Nevada, claiming that he ejected after the jet exploded, then parachuted to safety. For two weeks, he survived without food, eventually discovering a ranger’s cabin in King’s Canyon National Park, where he found fishhooks, beans and canned ham to sustain himself. Since the missing plane wasn’t located, Steeves’ career bottomed out and he eventually left the Air Force to become a test pilot. In 1977, Boy Scouts discovered the cockpit canopy of the plane, the serial number matching that of Steeves’ jet.
5. Angela Hernandez, Sunday driver. In a scene straight out of Hollywood, Ms. Hernandez, 23, swerved to avoid a small animal in the road and accidentally drove her SUV off an oceanside cliff in Big Sur, the vehicle tumbling about 200 feet down onto a desolate rocky beach. (This is an incident your wife will mention when she thinks you’re going too fast on the way to Carmel.) Despite suffering a brain hemorrhage, fractured ribs, a broken collarbone, ruptured blood vessels in both eyes and a collapsed lung, Hernandez managed to pull herself out of the sinking car, then walked around the area for days until hikers stumbled across her wrecked Jeep and scoured the beach. Eventually, they found Angela crumpled up, laying on some rocks. After surviving for seven days, she was finally rescued.
6. Ryker Webb, wandering tyke. Three-year-old Ryker was playing with his dog when the two of them decided to take a little walk in the woods. The dog eventually went back to base camp but little Ryker kept on truckin’. A massive search was launched but two days went by with no luck. Then, a family visiting their remote cabin in the middle of the wilderness heard the faint cries of a little boy coming from behind a shed. They found Ryker tucked into a lawnmower bag, dressed in a light blue onesie covered in dirt. The little boy had survived two days in the Montana woods in near-freezing temperatures in an area rife with bears and mountain lions. He told his rescuers he was “very, very scared.” Not as much as his grateful parents, though.
The Meanest Cut
There are bad days, and then there are bad days. Loren Schauers of Great Falls, Montana had one of the latter in 2019 while working as a laborer on a bridge. Oncoming traffic nudged him close to the edge of the road and he fell 50 feet, which was bad enough. The forklift that fell on top of him was the cherry on the cake. It crushed the lower half of his torso and severed a forearm. Schauers underwent intense surgery, with doctors performing a hemicorporectomy, a procedure that surgically removes organs and bones in the lower extremities. Surgeons amputated everything below his navel, unsure of whether he’d even survive the operation. Loren surprised everyone by making a successful recovery.
Imagine yourself in his predicament. Twenty-plus years old, suddenly shot from the prime of life into a pit of uncertainty and dismaying limitation. Suicide is a valid temptation, serious depression almost inevitable. joy an unfathomable creature which lives in a universe far, far away. But Loren rolled on and even found a wife, Sabia Reiche, a trooper of the first magnitude. They married in 2021 and now spend their time making YouTube videos on their channel “Sabia and Loren,” where they document their journey since the accident. They have amassed half a million subscribers on the platform, with dozens of videos uploaded since 2019.
The elephant in the room is freely discussed. How long can a person in Loren Schauers’ condition carry on? Nobody knows because there are few people to compare him with. Sabia’s research tells her the average time until death is about 11 years, but there is one man who has lived for 24. As one might imagine, comparison is virtually impossible because every case is different. “We’re going for forty years,” say the Schauers. “Two down, 38 to go.”
Don’t be surprised if they make it. Loren hasn’t even gone down for the second time.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
