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Welcome to the home of Grand Canyon hiking. The Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show helps hikers plan, train for, and better understand hikes below the rim, from short day hikes to Rim-to-Rim, Rim-to-River, Phantom Ranch, Bright Angel Trail, South Kaibab Trail, North Kaibab Trail, backpacking trips, heat safety, water planning, shuttle logistics, and more.
Host Brian Speciale shares Grand Canyon stories, trail-tested advice, safety lessons, interviews, and community wisdom from first-timers, seasoned hikers, rangers, Canyon insiders, and everyday people who have learned powerful lessons below the rim.
Whether you are planning Rim-to-Rim, dreaming of Phantom Ranch, preparing for your first Grand Canyon hike, or looking for honest stories of triumph, tragedy, mistakes, and trail-won wisdom, this podcast will help you hike your best hike.
Listeners call the show “an invaluable resource,” “the perfect mix of inspiration, realistic caution, and tips for success,” and “a welcoming place and wealth of information.”
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The heat is on quite literally, and so our team is out there intervening and stepping in at the right moment and and saving lives.
Zeena:You're listening to the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show, the voice of Grand Canyon Hiking. Presented by Hiken. Hiking packs and gear built to help you hike your best hike. Here's your guide, Brian Special.
Brian:Well, it was a brutal June at the Grand Canyon with four hikers losing their lives to heat related issues. All were preventable. I mean, the best way to not die below the rim is to not hike at all during the warmer months, and especially in the middle of summer. It is a dangerous, dangerous place. And you will find that much of what we say on this show as it relates to safety is closely aligned with National Park Service messaging.
Brian:That's not at all because we're trying to parrot what NPS puts out, but because in general, well, they're just common sense approaches, like not hiking between ten and four, having a hydration and nutrition plan, hiking wet, etcetera, etcetera. So I didn't want to spend too much time with this week's guest just talking about the same basic principles we hear all the time. The goal was to go deeper and to talk about a variety of topics important to those of us who drop below the rim. Meghan Smith is the Preventive Search and Rescue Coordinator for Grand Canyon National Park, where she has worked since 2011. Among the things she is in charge of and very, very proud of is the park's army of PSR volunteers, many of whom are a part of our community right here.
Brian:And among the things Meghan stresses to them is to watch out for the kids who are, of course, susceptible to the heat and who have perished on hikes, including one we talked about, 10 year old Philip Grimm, who died near the river in 1996, and whose story was documented in Over the Edge, Death in Grand Canyon, the book that was co authored by the recently retired Doctor. Tom Myers. NPS PSAR coordinator Meghan Smith on the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude show powered by Hiken.
Meghan:I hope that my team and I never have to endure the loss of a child visitor on the trails here at Grand Canyon. Tom has done a wonderful job in his tenure here and we miss him dearly in educating the staff and leaving behind a legacy and a structure in place to help educate other staff members that that come even after me. And so it has been kind of a mission of mine, particularly this year. We're seeing a lot of young children in the Inner Canyon. We're seeing a lot of celebration on the internet and algorithms picking up children participating in difficult recreation in places like Yosemite and Grand Canyon and celebrating that.
Meghan:And I I really would like to take the opportunity to caution parents. There is just such a narrow window for even adults in their ability to compensate in these environments. So we take it really seriously. When when I'm doing training for volunteers and staff on the trails, we're pretty liberal. This is public land.
Meghan:We don't wanna be gatekeepers. We want access to public land. But Children and Animals is a place where I draw the line and staff the 70 volunteers we have in preventive search and rescue, and the seven to nine seasonal staff are encouraged and directed to have a very narrow tolerance for kids being along. I remember back to about 2012, I was at Cedar Ridge and had educated a parent and their two children. Was a single dad hiking.
Meghan:I was worried about his fitness. I was worried about his preparedness. And they indicated that they were gonna go all the way to the river and back. And I took some extra time. I gave them all the warnings.
Meghan:I gave them extra supplies and all the caution, and they still went anyway. They had an eight year old and a 16 year old, and the next day, and so I passed all that information along, right, we have an incident commander assigned to triage calls below the rim every day of the year, three sixty five days a year. That's SAR Shift. I did a radio transmission to Sarshift broadcast so that the ranger at Phantom could hear, the ranger at which was then Indian Gardens, now Havasupai Gardens, could hear, and anyone else coming in and out of the canyon could hear. And I knew the story of those that Tom tells.
Meghan:I'd read the book, and there was definitely a red flag for me that day. And so the next day, I was assigned to the Bright Angel Trail. So my early morning patrol, and down I went at around 07:30 or eight, and shortly into my hike, it was probably 08:30 or nine, I came around the corner and there was this little boy, and I didn't recognize him. His hair was a mess. He was covered in dirt, red dirt, mule poop.
Meghan:He was a mess. And he said, lady, this trail stinks. And I looked down at him and his tousled hair, he had dried mule poop in it. And I was like, oh my gosh. You're the same family from yesterday, and it occurred to me.
Meghan:So where where's your brother? Where's your dad? You know, I immediately moved into, like, paramedic brain and was worried about them. And the older brother had gotten tired of the shenanigans and hiked out the night before, so he was unattended minor somewhere on the rim. And this young boy had stayed with his dad.
Meghan:His dad had the worst of it. He he lacked the fitness and really struggled and got sick and had a hard time. So fortunately, that was a case where there was physically a good outcome. He received the dad a stern warning at the top from law enforcement rangers about creating hazardous conditions for children. But everything everything turned out okay, and that's probably the closest near miss to a heat case that I've had with a kid, very thankfully.
Meghan:No medical requirements were demanded of me that day. But it's on the top of my mind a lot, and as we see this kind of vicarious maybe recreation or pride that family members or companions are having through, like, putting kids into these situations, and and asking them to really perform in these environments with underdeveloped bodies is really concerning, and I I have a lot of lost sleep about it.
Brian:How hard is it for the rangers, the volunteers, everyone, when you run across someone like that, which happens every single day below the rim, where you're doing your assessment. They might not even know they're being assessed, but they're being assessed. And ultimately, you can't tell them to turn around and go back to the top, or to stop what they're doing. They're they're eventually gonna be able to do whatever they they want. You can't stop them.
Brian:How frustrating is that for you when you know they could be walking into a very dangerous situation?
Meghan:So early on in their training and education, tell the team that if their blood pressure's going up and they're angry, they're doing it wrong. You have to have space for compassion fatigue. You have to have space for the things that you're discussing is just explaining the same thing over and over. You could get asked 200 times in a day the same question, but for each individual, it's the first time they've asked that question. So it's really customer service at the at the highest degree.
Meghan:We're talking about like 800 level coursework here. And there's some some tips and tricks at getting at people's why and connecting with them, in learning about them that keeps them open. Right? So particularly coming out of COVID, that seems like a memory in some ways. But just a short time ago, and we're thinking about how people learn or how people are approached.
Meghan:And in that era, there was a lot of you must do this, you mustn't do that, you have to wear a mask, you have to get a vaccination, and with that comes resistance. And so we have to be very mindful in how we approach people. Positioning yourself, your body language, removing your sunglasses, keeping an open stance that's both safe for you but invitational to conversation. If I met you on the trail as a runner, and I know that you're out there recreating, and I just stood in your way, kind of took up the space, and I said, where are you going? You're gonna have a very different reaction to me than if I leave space for you in a running pace, and I say, quick question, I just wanna make sure you've run with us on the trails before at Grand Canyon and you know the rules.
Meghan:You might put your hand up and go, yep, I'm a local, and I'll say, have a great day. You can also tell from people's cadence, you know, if fleet afoot and they're actually a local and they've run here before versus somebody that's really bounding and floundering and struggling, these are all really subtle social cues. But if you're paying attention to them, you can contact almost anybody on the trail and give them a bit of information or advice that's gonna benefit their day and or be passed on and benefit somebody else, whether it's another visitor they run into, or a family member, or a friend, and it it all kinda trickles along.
Brian:You know, just a week or so ago, actually when Silver Bridge and Plateau Point reopened, I had to get up there and do Rimter River, even though it was the middle of the summer. The only way that I'll do it is if I start late in the afternoon, and finish after, and and hike out in the dark, because to me, it's the only it's the only safe way to even consider doing it this time of year. But I just below Cedar Ridge, I ran into one of your PSR volunteers, Steve, who's in his first season coming up from Prescott, and, you know, you just as you're hiking down, I'm like, I could see him down there by O'Neil Butte, and and I could see that he was probably waiting for me, and I was like, oh, here we go. I'm gonna get the assessment and the questions. And as a hiker, you you might if you're experienced, you might be like, oh gosh, do I really have you know, do we really have to go through this?
Brian:But they are trained to do that, to assess you, and to maybe encourage you to take a different approach than than what you're doing, especially on a hot day. So I knew that he was gonna be doing his job, and he did. He did a great job. How are your volunteers trained to handle situations like that in the context they make on the trail?
Meghan:Yeah. Thanks for asking. And I just wanna shout out to Steve. Steve's new to the team this year, but he's a bonafide badass, if I can say that on air. He is a retired a retired helicopter pilot for the Coast Guard.
Meghan:So I just wanna shout out to the entire team. Whether they have a prolific career such as Steve or filled their life and their livelihood with something else that they're retired from and have turned their attention to this, they all are with great dedication and compassion and care, and they have saved countless lives out there on the trails. So I just can't give them enough credit. And can understand how their questions for some might might be like, oh gosh, I know what's coming. But I encourage you and challenge you to flip that back.
Meghan:And I ran into a runner on the trail the other day when I was out there, very unfortunately, after one of the recent trail fatalities on the South Kaibab, and I ran into a runner, and I needed him to help me because this this group that had suffered this loss still had an outstanding party member on the trail. And I knew from my assessment of him that he was, a, in good condition. Like, he he wasn't he wasn't wilting, and he was gonna make good ground, and I needed him to look for somebody for me that might have been in trouble. And so as much as you might be thinking it's a one way where we're just there to to give you information, you are part of that trail network the minute you set foot down trail, and I might need you to help me one day. And he was super once he took his EarPod out and understood that I wasn't lecturing him and I actually needed his help, he was bought in.
Meghan:He was super helpful. They did find that person, Bumped him up to the next PSR on the trail, and that volunteer crushed it and hiked him out. Chris Snyder, Papa three five. So, again, just amazing network between all the staff. It could be Wranglers, it could be Compost, it could be Zantera, it could be Grand Canyon Conservancy.
Meghan:It's a whole network, and we're all interlaced.
Brian:Yeah. And you've you've opened up the door for me to talk about the volunteers because we have a lot of them in our community. It almost gives me the chills to just think about what they do, and how they're doing it out of just this love for this place, and a way to connect with the place that's given them so much maybe over the years, and they take these these volunteer shifts so seriously, and you will love this one, Meghan. I'm sure you have not seen it, because it just just came across my my social media feed about fifteen minutes ago, and I reached out to this volunteer, and I said, can I please share this with Meghan? I'm about to talk to Meghan.
Brian:And this volunteer said, no, please don't. I don't it to make I don't want to make it look like I'm tooting my own horn. But what this person posted on their feed from a shift that just happened was someone saying, I got out alive because of you. This PSR volunteer had had a contact with this person about a mile down, Bright Angel, I think it was, and probably, you know, spoke some words of wisdom into them about we're under an extreme heat warning right now, you're getting yourself sucked down too far into the canyon, and you're still gonna have to get back out. And so this person heeded that advice, and ended up telling this PSR volunteer at the rim that, I got out alive because of you.
Brian:You got a smile on your face. What does that make you think?
Meghan:Well, it's just, I mean, it's every day. Right? And and the recounts are they're they're so sincere. You know, they the written accolades, and they come in all different pathways. I was just fielding one just prior to coming to meet with you today.
Meghan:There was a lengthy, and it was the government form. They'd filled out a compliments form for seasonal Emma Brewer, and I just said to my counterpart, Sam Hindle, that helps me manage the volunteer team, we're getting a lot of compliments. We do every year, but the volume is up this year. And and, you know, the the heat is on quite literally, and so our team is out there intervening and stepping in at the right moment and and saving lives. But even to the smallest end, right, like, they're they're turning things around for people so that they have an enjoyable experience in their public land and might wanna come back and not miserable and vomiting and, you know, having a trip to the hospital that they didn't wanna budget for in their their trip planning.
Meghan:So I I hear it a lot, and it warms my heart. I read everyone. It gets archived. It gets sent from myself to each of the staff and acknowledges their efforts. And so staff and volunteers, I include them with that.
Meghan:Another one just came in of Steve. Actually, he hasn't seen this yet, but the the person took great care to take little Polaroids of himself themselves with Steve. And then there's one with a ranger that they had assistance from. And this beautiful card, handwritten. People get really crafty.
Meghan:It's really nice. It warms my heart. And it's a way that we know that the program's working. Right? Because preventive.
Meghan:How do you measure what doesn't happen? But I can tell you that the average 350 SAR calls per year, over 80% of those require aircraft evacuation. We've been keeping data on this program for the thirty years that it's been in operation. 2027, we hit our thirty year reunion. And we know that as the visitation crept up pre COVID toward that six million mark and beyond, that those numbers were three hundred and fifty average, stayed right on the level.
Meghan:So we know that it's working there. And we take data on our contacts, our preventive actions, and our Hiker Assist. So our Hiker Assist fluctuate and average right around like eight hundred per year. So if you just took half of that preventive action where someone had to step in and help a visitor, even 400 more of those added to the three fifty average calls per year, untenable. We're barely keeping up as it is.
Brian:Can you explain how the whole, your whole operation works? You've got the regular staff, and then you've got this army of volunteers who are obviously vital to everything that you do. How does the whole operation work?
Meghan:Our volunteer team is up to an average of 70 per year. When we have them sign up for the hikes, they have to do eight shifts per year. They get to pick what trails they hike. We know from data analysis where our key crux points are and need the most attention, and so we have time frames set for those. We shift as needed.
Meghan:The pipeline was a great example of that. And we're there to patrol that upper three mile section of trails to help support Canyon District and South Rim and emergency services.
Brian:So are there any regular rangers who are on patrol on the trails every day, or is it just the volunteers?
Meghan:It's largely PSR, but they because the rangers, as you know, they're down at Phantom, they're at Havasupai Garden, they're coming in and out of the canyon on an eight and six schedule, So their their shift switch day is Tuesday, and so when they exchange, there are more of them on the trails, and they have backcountry patrol days, and they're kind of peppered throughout. But if you totaled number of patrol hours and trail time, it would be largely the volunteer team that makes up the bulk of that, or you're more likely to run into someone from the volunteer team or the seasonal PSR team, and then a Canyon Ranger.
Brian:And these volunteers, I mean, this is a is a coveted job. Right? Hey. I I know people in Florida who would love to be a PSR Ranger at the Grand Canyon. Mean, stories like that all over the place, I assume.
Meghan:Yes. They come from far and wide. We're really fortunate that in the seven years that I've been managing the roster and running the team, I have never had to do outreach in terms of advertisement. We have a wait list. People apply in August.
Meghan:There's selections made in September, and we get back to them in October, and then they're ready to come for the spring training every April. It's requirement of classroom training, two field days minimum. You have to have your CPR in your wilderness first aid, and we largely supply those trainings as well. And then after that, you're solo. And it really is an experience to have fledged the nest and be out there on your own kind of either seeing or worrying about the various different scenarios, but you're not truly alone.
Meghan:You have a radio. You have your phone. You're in contact. There's always someone nearby that you can call and get advice from, and they in time, they settle into that and and understand kind of the tempo.
Brian:Alright. Back to Meghan in a second. And not to toot our own horn here, I hate doing that, but there are at least two PSR volunteers that we know of who are using our Canyon Elite hiking packs while on duty, which means more to us than you can imagine being put to a use like that. The Canyon Elite is also the choice of Doctor. Myers and his family, and Coach Arnie and I do our Canyon Hikes with our Rim to Rim pack.
Brian:It's clear more and more serious hikers are making the switch to a pack designed specifically for Grand Canyon day hikes. The front pockets, they're great, but on a summer rim to river I did a few weeks back, I was most thankful for the insulated hydration compartment, which kept my water cold from South Kaibab all the way until I refilled at Havasupai Gardens. You will never settle for blood warm water again. Join the party at hikin.club. That's H I K I N.
Brian:Club. Your purchase directly supports this show and all the free resources we offer the Grand Canyon Hiking Community, such as the Grand Canyon Shade Tracker. Find out more at hikin.club. That's hikin.club. Alright.
Brian:Back to Meghan. What do you think is more dangerous from a hiking perspective? Overestimating yourself or underestimating the canyon?
Meghan:Oh goodness. I would say that's in equal parts. And if you do both together, you're likely to have a very bad day. I would say the former in that if if your fitness is such and you know it to be and you're on track with what you can accomplish but you've underestimated the canyon, you can always adjust. Right?
Meghan:You can always pull back the reins. You can stop your clock on your run and say, today's not my day. Right? And the geography's gonna be what the geography's gonna be, but I'm gonna save enough gas in the tank. I'm gonna follow all the preventive action rules that are out there in writing and on our website and preached by the team in person, and I'm just gonna change speeds and gears, and I'm gonna take it one step at a time.
Meghan:You can get out. But if it's the other way around, and or a combination of both, right, where you've misjudged your fitness, and you're in over your head, once you've run out of gas in the tank, and you're starting to really harm your body, right, that electrolyte imbalance, that muscle break down, the kidney damage, all the things that can go wrong, there's no one doing that in that, you know, three day period that you might be wallowing down there. And so I think the fitness is really important, and if I had to pick one, I would say is the most important.
Brian:You guys have seen, more than anyone has, the explosion, and the continued explosion of popularity of trail running. It just seems like every year it gets bigger and bigger to the point that it feels like the trail runners are far outnumbering the hikers out on the trail, at least on rim to rim and and r threes. Is that creating any extra issues for the park service?
Meghan:Yes and no. So certainly we we talk a lot about it. It is a demographic and a and a recreation group that we don't wanna minimize or ignore. The largest problems we've seen from the running community, from my perspective, is refuse, human waste, just general lack and disregard for other hikers, rude behavior, lack of preparedness. Right?
Meghan:Because you're trimmed down to nothing and you top out on the North Rim and it's snowing. What do you do? So there's kind of behavioral elements there that are hard for us to work around. They don't require a ton of our resource in rescue if you looked broadly over time and at data. There are certainly runners that need evacuation.
Meghan:There are certainly people that get into trouble. But largely speaking, they have a baseline fitness that accommodates them. If they do stop and turn off the clock and say, okay, today's not my day, and they're real with themselves, they can back themselves out of trouble. They can shade up under a rock or a tree, normalize, kind of get to a new reset, and get out.
Brian:There seems to be a little bit more friction with runners and hikers than there used to be. And speaking as a hiker, it can be very very frustrating when you've got this group of trail runners, and they have their goal no matter what, they don't care about you, they think that they own the trail, Up does not have right, they've got the right of way no matter what. How do you bridge this gap? Because I fear that at some point, something's gonna get set off, and you're gonna have a there there's gonna be an incident somewhere. I'm sure there has been somewhere in the world.
Brian:There probably has been in the canyon, but it gets very, very frustrating when hikers and trail runners try to coexist with different goals.
Meghan:Yeah. Well, and I think that's a challenge for public lands. Right? If you if you went and interviewed park service or forest service in in other states, in other topographies, you're gonna run into horse versus bicycle, you know, mountain biking versus trail running. There there are just different needs for various different recreation groups, and I don't want to minimize or take away from those individual experiences.
Meghan:I think that they're all important. My message would be please have some self awareness about your timing, and plan in advance so that you can accommodate the other user groups as well.
Brian:I was very happy that you told me that you had listened to the episode that we did last week on Gary Teal and his wife Amy, and Gary of course ended up with two broken bones on a hike down South Kaibab, had to shelter at the tip-off for a while, eventually got himself to Phantom Ranch, and ultimately had to be helicoptered out. I'm just curious what your take was on all that. It seemed to me like NPS and the Zanterra staff, they just all handled everything beautifully, and that Gary and Amy were not acting as entitled hikers, and begging to be taken out. It's like they were gonna do anything they could to get out themselves, and self rescue. And those words right there, self rescue, I think that's an important thing to talk about too.
Brian:So how did that fit into everything that Gary and Amy had happened to them in their experience?
Meghan:Yeah. I just wanna give him a shout out to his grit. It's certainly, you know, out to have learned after the fact that he had multiple broken bones and that he had that assistance from the veterinarian and bandaged him up and got himself down. That was admirable. I would add one piece of professional advice and and not so much to armchair quarterback Gary, but to give the advice to someone else that might be listening.
Meghan:And when we talk about self rescue, it's to rescue to the rim. And so what we're hoping to avoid is a costly and potentially risky and hazardous flight for personnel. Now some would say, well, that's what you signed up to do. That's like hero stuff. But having put your life on the line for that many flights into Phantom, and you have two kids at home like I do, they're four and six, you really start to get pretty picky about the types of cases that you're down there for.
Meghan:Maybe not picky, but judge y, certainly, and wishing that people had made some different decisions. So I would say the one one place I could give a correction is tape that ankle up, pop those meds like he did for pain management, and take a hike out of tip-off. Don't go down. Don't auger yourself in. Because then you then you're definitely guaranteed to have to be flown out.
Meghan:And so when we're talking about self rescue, it's it's to get yourself out of the canyon. So don't fault him. I totally agree that a flight was warranted. He absolutely needed to not hobble from Phantom Ranch around to Clear Creek or out to Plateau Point. I'm glad that that was all avoided, and I wish him well, a quick recovery, and I want him to be able to come back to the canyon soon.
Brian:You know, and I had mentioned to them that I was pretty certain that there are hikers who have a much more entitled view of things when they have even much more minor things going on than Gary and Amy had going on. How often do you run into that, and what message would you have for a hiker who, you know, you can tell is not really going through it, they're just tired and cranky, they still want a helicopter or a mule, they show up at Phantom. What's your message to to folks like that?
Meghan:Yeah. That one's hard. I think that that one pushes the buttons and and pulls at our hearts. I I'm pretty confident I can say this for my companions and peers that act in these roles as the SAR shift coordinator or as the medical responder in the canyon or those that come on the aircraft. That's really hard, is the entitlement as you as you call it.
Meghan:We we wanna recognize we live in a get it now culture. We're used to pushing a button and having something, depending on where you live, show show up at your door. Right? Could be an Uber. It could be your your order from the food place down the street.
Meghan:But we live in a really rural austere environment, and aircraft and rescue are not guaranteed. So there's a lot of factors that play into that, and I have seen my peers receive really horrible and hateful text threads from two way comms devices or from some from cell phones. They have that satellite texting capability, and it's really disheartening because the foul language and the demands are inappropriate and wrong, and I would encourage anyone that thinks like that to reassess and ask them to pause and consider the human life at the other end. So whether it's a SAR shift ranger that's left their nursing baby and wife from the bedside, and they've gone out into the living room to answer the phone call at three in the morning, and now you're yelling at them on the phone, it could be demanding that you can't get out, and in fact, you just followed the prescription because we didn't come and get you, and you had to wait, and you had to rest, and you had to recover, and you hiked out perfectly fine on your own, the human element, if we have triaged wrong or guessed wrong or gotten bad information or there's been challenges, like was alluded to in your previous podcast with the technology, you know, those cell phones, excuse me, the emergency phones in the canyon, it's pretty amazing and miraculous that they're even down there.
Meghan:And I could go at great length about the technology that affords us the ability to have them, but a ranger has triaged a call, and we got it wrong, which sometimes we do. And that weighs really heavy on us. That I have worked as part of the team to facilitate psychological and mental health care for rangers who go through that and get it wrong. So my message and my ask is to slow down. On mother nature's clock now, and it's not a get it now culture in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Meghan:We're gonna do our best. We're gonna assess you and provide what we think is appropriate for your level of need positioned against and triaged against everything else that's being demanded of those resources in the park at that same given time.
Brian:In the interest of trying to illustrate how the the whole operation works when a call comes in, let's just do it like a hypothetical. Let's say you get word at 06:00 in the evening in August that there is a hiker with a compound fracture halfway down the red and white switchbacks below Skeleton Point on South Kaibab. And the nearest ranger, I assume, is either on the rim or at Phantom, maybe at Havasupai Gardens. How does it work? How does help get to that person when it's after hours even?
Brian:And maybe it's maybe it's 07:00 at night. Everybody's you know, most people have gone home for the day, and you've gotta mobilize people. How does that all work?
Meghan:Yeah. Great question. And the answer to it is it depends. And my volunteers get really frustrated at me. They made me a plaque that says it depends because that's the answer to really everything.
Meghan:But but I understand what you're getting at, and I wanna give people a clear picture. So red and whites, right, if if you know where that is on a map, you are halfway there and halfway not. And so they would probably mobilize from the top down, and we're looking for ALS support. So advanced life support, so somebody that can give you medication, splint you, stabilize you, and manage your pain for the night, and then we're probably looking at moving you from there. Now if you're really a tough person with a lot of grit, then we could get you some crutches, and you could crutch yourself up or down to the next closest landing zone.
Meghan:But if there's just, it's not happening, right, and it's really awful, and we can't move you at all, then we're looking at short hauling you out of there. So bringing you out on a static line fixed to the underside of the aircraft. And so you have your rescuer as your short hauler, and you as the patient, and then you get probably brought down to tip-off or up to skeleton point depending on various factors. They're gonna set you down there, load you internally, and fly you home back to South Rim and then get you in an ambulance or get you in another HEMS helicopter emergency service unit,
Brian:and
Meghan:get you to the hospital.
Brian:So at best case scenario, you're waiting for someone to mobilize on the Rim, get called in, drive to South Kaibab, and then hike down to you. So you're gonna be out there by yourself for a while. Yep. Also, another thing worth pointing out, that is if this happened after dark, you don't fly after dark. Correct?
Meghan:Yeah. So our aircraft and and personnel are not outfitted with instrumentation and night vision goggles required. It's it's also swirly and squirrelly winds in the canyon. And so the pilots here are super talented and and really capable, but the park service, the Department of Interior, has issued a no fly after dark for their contracts and for their personnel to eliminate some of those hazards. And it's one of the reasons why I like to work here, and I feel safer in doing so.
Meghan:And then you have a couple choices. The ALS provider or the provider that's gotten to you will make an assessment and determination. And if you can wait the night and come out in daylight, you'll do that. If there's you know, pick another type of illness or emergency. If it's a true life threat, say it's an open fracture, God forbid, and there was concerns of contamination.
Meghan:I've seen one mid femur shaft fracture that had compartment syndrome that had been out for several days, and that needed surgical intervention. Right away, they'd lost feeling in the limb. So a night flight then would be warranted, and that's done by DPS out of, well, I I would say out of Flagstaff would be optimal, but sometimes their aircraft's not available, and then you're looking at one of their other bases from around the state, and that can be quite delayed.
Brian:I'm gonna keep bouncing around here, Meghan, because I'm so fascinated by everything, and I just keep thinking of other things I want to ask you about. So let's go off the corridor, because we all talk about the corridor trails, that's where most everything happens, North Kaibab, South Kaibab, Bright Angel. But I'll look back to I'll bring Doctor. Myers back into it. We did Rim to River on Tanner in January, and we did not see another soul the entire day.
Brian:And I've had similar experiences on Newhance, Grand View, where you don't see anybody else out there. And so I'm always leery about hiking by myself on those non corridor trails, which I assume is something you advise. But how do you handle the off corridor trails, the Hermits, the Grand Views, everything we've talked about, and people getting themselves in trouble on on those trails, and they're not patrolled. And what if they don't have a Garmin? I mean, there's it just seems like there are so many more things that could go wrong off corridor.
Meghan:Yeah. I would say maybe not more things, but the the situation and what we know from data and what we train our personnel is that if you're getting a call from one of these remote out of corridor trails or locations, it's a higher acuity, and it's very likely to need our intervention. So there are some things on the Bright Angel Trail. A complaint of nausea and general unwelledness on a hot day like today at the upper tunnel can let that simmer for a minute. It's not a life threat.
Meghan:Right? Chances are the person's gonna rest. Somebody's gonna come along, offer them water, advice. If it is bad, you know, say they are near syncope, they appear quite pale, maybe they've got some underlying medical condition. A fib is really common, atrial fibrillation, heart condition.
Meghan:Most of the elderly American population, it's really something we see often, say that's going on for them and it's not gonna get better, you're gonna get another phone call pretty quickly. And so in that main corridor, we'll let those kind of simmer, or we'll let them compound, and then we get a second call or a 911 call. We're like, okay, there's something happening here. We gotta go. But it's kind of a one and done in those outer lying areas.
Meghan:We don't sit around and wait on those. We take them really seriously. We know that if something is requested of us on the Hermit Trail, Newhans, Tanner, any of those, it needs our help.
Brian:Who do you get the most trouble from? Who creates the most trouble? Is it the runners? Is it the hikers? Is it the endurance hikers?
Brian:Or is it the vacationers who are just, hey, we're just gonna go a little little ways down down Bright Angel today. Who creates the most trouble for you?
Meghan:Trouble is hard. I
Brian:don't I don't know
Meghan:if it's trouble. I would say every Tsar story starts with I was just gonna. Right? Ah. You know?
Meghan:So the minute I hear that, it it's a red flag.
Brian:I was just gonna what?
Meghan:Well, it could be I was I I just planned to hike to the river and back. Well, you know, there's a lot of factors that go into that. You know? What time did you start? What's your fitness?
Meghan:Who are you with? Have you done this before? What do you have packed? Are you overpacked? Are you underpacked?
Meghan:Are you eating what you packed? So you can go down kind of a plethora of important considerations that go with each of those user groups. I drive my minivan the wrong way on Runway Streets on my family vacation a lot because I have two kids in the back. I'm trying to pass out snacks. I'm not, you know, I'm not oriented.
Meghan:I'm not paying attention. Am I dumb? Am I bad? Am I a horrible person? No.
Meghan:I'm just unfamiliar. Right? And so the underprepared, underplanned, and lacking fitness, and maybe overconfident is definitely a formula that concerns us. It's it can be kind of a recipe for disaster. It doesn't mean that they're wrong.
Meghan:It doesn't mean that we should treat them poorly or have judgment on them, it probably means that they're gonna need our intervention somewhere along the way.
Brian:You know, that word unfamiliar that you used I think is an important one, because there are so many people who are unfamiliar, no matter whether we want them to be unfamiliar or not. And I think a lot of people will say, and I I just did a post recently in our Hike Club Grand Canyon Facebook group, where I did a video up at Bright Angel, and I was just pointing out, I was like, know, I'm kinda surprised that there's not more signage around that is to deter folks. And this is right after, you know, we just had four deaths in June, and I'm like, you know, I just wonder why there isn't more signage up here that warns of the dangers. And the reaction was very, very mixed. A lot of commenters would agree, and a lot of people say it's responsibility, we can't hold people's hands, blah blah blah.
Brian:And my response to that is, well, we can't hold everyone's hand, but there are so many people, whether we want them to be or not, who are unfamiliar with what they're doing, and they might come up to Bright Angel Trail, hey, I've heard of this before, let's just go down a little ways. And the cycle begins. Right? They get sucked down too far, and they can get themselves in trouble without even realizing it. So I don't know what your take is on that.
Brian:It's not a criticism of the park service, it's just an observation about potentially having more signage around the rim. Do you think there needs to be any, or is do you fall more into its self responsibility?
Meghan:Yeah. We go back and forth on that a lot. I and my team, Jo Baird, our public affairs representative, and her team, we spend a lot of time collaborating, not only more signs, less signs, where do we place them. We have a duty to notify the public of hazards, and we encourage people to seek information. We have also put signs up.
Meghan:If you remember last year, if you toured through that junction there at Tonto West in tip-off, there was a sandwich board warning people about that detour, right, across the Tonto, four and a half miles, before you get to HG, and it's not flat. It's canyon flat, but it's not flat. And it winds in and out and in and out, and you're never you'd never feel like it's gonna end. We had some serious rescues there last year. And when we asked those individuals, did you see the sign, and what do you think about the sign?
Meghan:This is just informal data gathering, right? And not to shame anyone, but we wanna know, like, did did people see it? They said, oh, yeah. I I didn't think it applied to me, or I, you know, I I thought that I had been doing all the right things and that I I would still be okay. So I am not one to say people don't read signs because that's not entirely true.
Meghan:And I'm also not one to feel like we need signs everywhere because we've actually done studies, and we've been educated by subject matter experts at the PhD level from Arizona State University on heat risk signage. So we've actually got a lot of input on this. And there it takes a lot of human capital, believe it or not, to manage signs. You're like, well, how you just put you put it up, and it's just there. If it gets faded, if the if there's tape involved, and you can see the tape, if the tape weathers, if the sign shifts, if there's a glare on it, if it becomes covered in dust or dirt, it's really harsh in the sun environment, there's all these factors.
Meghan:And if you leave that unattended, people will think that the message on that sign does not matter. So I'll liken it to two things. How many times have you come down the North Kaibab, Brian, and there's been a pipeline break, and you get to Phantom, and there's two halves of people, and people are like, oh my god, there's a pipeline break. Can you believe the trail's open? It was so sketchy.
Meghan:I can't believe that they let us walk by that. And then the other half of the people are going, what pipeline break? I didn't see a break. It's all a matter of perspective. I'm gonna make it one step more personal.
Meghan:How many times have you gone into a public building, and there was a sign in front of you, and it said push or pull, and you did the opposite of what the sign told you. It's not that you didn't read the sign. Right? I've done it. So signage is important.
Meghan:It's very important. Once somebody, if we invite you to think about their behavioral mindset, they bucket listed, they planned, they saved the money, they got the flight, they flew here, they drove from Phoenix, they ate at the El Tovar, all things worked out, And there was a sign at their trailhead that said four people died on this trail this year, this month, don't go, which is a larger social pressure and behavioral pressure. All the effort that they have taken to get to that place on the map, or the sign that told them four people died here. We see it all the time. So in conclusion, I will say we are pending a joint study.
Meghan:I'm very much looking forward to a sociological study that goes through the proper channels and pathways that we can then interview visitors about this very thing, and learn more about behavior, sociology, decision making, and how it relates to us and heat illness at the Grand Canyon. So stay tuned for more.
Brian:Hey. Fair enough. Fair enough. I do have to bring up Victor Vomit because that's probably the best Grand Canyon sign in history, and the most iconic sign in history. And so I wonder why Vic isn't up on the rim where he would get photos taken, there would be a photo op, and people might actually read what it has to say.
Brian:Is Vic too graphic for rim level, and he always has to be down below the rim?
Meghan:Oh, you know, that's a great question, and I love that idea. Australia has a campaign out that's around metro safety. It's called Dumb Ways to Die, and it's really actually quite funny and cute, And they actually have a pledge where people push a button and they get a picture in front of the the sign and the billboard with all their various characters, and it has made some improvements on metro pedestrian safety around their their train. And so it makes me wonder if we had Victor at the rim and people could interact with him. I've never tried to get him placed up there.
Meghan:He predates my management and supervisory role of the program. I remember the sign that was there before Victor and the transition to Victor, but I shall explore that. I like that recommendation.
Brian:Yeah. That's a I mean, Vic Vic is a legend. He's a Grand Canyon legend. Mean, we made a T shirt out of him, for crying out loud. But I yeah.
Brian:I just wonder if that would just be a subtle way, you know, that's not just this sign that's in your face. You can't miss the Victor Baumet sign, and I I think people would wanna have their picture taken by it, and maybe that would bring awareness just in itself. If you could stand on the South Trailhead, the North Kaibab Trailhead, or the Bright Angel Trailhead, and have, I don't know, thirty to sixty seconds with every group that was about to start a rim to rim, What would your speech be?
Meghan:You're not gonna like my answer, Brian, because the answer is it depends.
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Meghan:In fairness, each different group is a different user group with a different agenda and a different why. So you gotta learn their why. You gotta ask them a question first. What are they in for? What's their why?
Meghan:And then when they give you that, then you can tailor custom design in a brief split second the messaging that's most important for them.
Brian:Okay. It's a group of women in their fifties who are doing a one day crossing from South Kaibab to North Kaibab.
Meghan:Okay. Good. Fair. Hello. I'm so glad that you've joined us at the Grand Canyon.
Meghan:Raise your hand and show me how many of you guys have hiked this trail before in this fashion. Okay. Great. You're the ladies in charge today. I love this all women team.
Meghan:I am so bought in. One day when I raise my kids, they fledge the nest. I'm gonna find a group of awesome badass women to hike this hike with just like you have. I want to make sure that you know if you anyone here on the team is starting to feel worn down by the heat, starting to feel the effects, just general tiredness and laziness, not wanting to to go, you get a forty to sixty minute time out, and you gotta pick a buddy. They gotta stay with you.
Meghan:So no single people on the trail. Don't separate. Always have a buddy. Forty to sixty minutes, make sure you cool yourself down, make sure you're eating and drinking in equal parts. I just wanna let you know and caution you that we don't know why, but women fifties and older in that menopausal stage that are taking hormone replacement therapy, thin, slender build, athletic build, they are prone, we know, to hyponatremia.
Meghan:Raise your hand, give me a show. Who here knows about hyponatremia? Hopefully I get a few. Great. You're my experts.
Meghan:Wanna make sure that you know salty food is super important. If you're on a low salt diet, I'm gonna apologize to your doctor later. But right now I'm gonna tell you salt is in. It matters a lot on this hike. When we're talking about food, we're talking about salty, lightweight carbohydrates.
Meghan:What do got in your packs today? Okay. Seeing some sandwiches. I'm seeing some pretzels, chips. Lightweight, airy, easy, digestible.
Meghan:That all looks good. I want you to make sure you eat it so you gotta start early. Keep those guts activated. Keep blood flowing to the guts. If you stop eating and you are just not feeling the appetite, that's gonna propagate and get worse throughout your hike, and then you're behind the curve.
Meghan:If you drink too much, don't eat enough salt, you're gonna become hyponatremic. You're gonna have too much volume and too much water and dilute out that really important sodium. And I won't even get you started on what can happen with that. It can get kinda messy. Anybody have any questions for me?
Meghan:Great. Excellent. Have a great hike. Hope everyone's safe. If you have any problems or get into trouble, there's an emergency phone at Manzanita, there's one at Cottonwood, and there's a ranger at Phantom Ranch.
Meghan:Have fun.
Brian:Yes. That was brilliantly done. That's one of the best moments in Grand Canyon Hiker Dude show history right there. So perfectly said. It's almost like you've done this before, Meghan.
Meghan:Yeah. I was on Party Canyon District for two seasons. My ranger station was Manzanita. I would hike 16 miles with my groceries to get there. So I know the Inner Canyon well.
Meghan:I hike less these days with two young kids at home. But, yeah, every group is different, and you're gonna it's so important. You gotta ask them a question first or learn one thing about them, and then you can give them something tailored to them. You can keep it light, you can make it fun, you can get buy in. Like I said, this is 800 level, PhD level customer service.
Brian:What in general is the biggest mistake that you see hikers make?
Meghan:Well, when it comes to the dangerous end of things, it's pushing on when you really need to stop. And that's where I get worried about the runners, you know, you mentioned them earlier. They have a capacity to push through a bonk, you know, as you hear people say, and that there's a lot of things around their ability to keep going. But hikers with less fitness or less experience will also try that, and that's where things get really dangerous. And so if things are not going well, don't push on.
Meghan:There's nothing we will always accommodate. If you're on our radar, even if you're not, you are not gonna get a ticket from us or a citation if you've out of bounds camped for a night because you needed to self rescue. Our preference is that you pick up an emergency phone, you seek out a ranger, you pass word-of-mouth up or down the trail so that we know that you're there. But if you called on the emergency phone at tip-off and said, hey. My hiking companion's throwing up.
Meghan:What should we do? We're gonna say, do you guys have supplies? Yep. We got our backpacks. We were aiming for Phantom Bright Angel Campground.
Meghan:We're gonna go, would you stay at tip-off? Well, yeah. We could do that. We're always gonna accommodate you, so just don't push on. There's no reason.
Brian:How often are tickets given by Rangers?
Meghan:Oh, I I'm not law enforcement, so I can't tell you statistics on that.
Brian:But it happens.
Meghan:I told you oh, yeah. Yeah. There there are certainly, that's one of the, you know, violating closures like we saw in the spring with the the North Kaibab. I was star shift one day, and ranger down at Phantom had, we thought, just a couple, a handful passing through that closure, but there turned out to be nine or 10 of them. So she was busy writing tickets that day.
Meghan:Yeah. There there's violation. And and that's not that's not the goal. Right? Like, the Canyon Rangers that I know and have worked with for years, their goal is prevention and peace are ing just the same as my team.
Meghan:They're gonna try for education first. They're gonna they're gonna try for all that buy in. And that citation is really there if they're not open, if if the the violation is egregious. Some people just don't know. Our foreign visitors in some situations are young people that are just freshly out of their homes and in their first semester of college.
Meghan:They don't know that they needed a permit, you know, and so you offer them an alternative of like, would you go to the backcountry office when you get out and pay your fee? They're gonna work with you. Our goal is to keep people safe.
Brian:Grand Canyon Preventive Search and Rescue Coordinator Meghan Smith. You heard her. The goal is safety, and a big part of that is knowing where not to be on the trails. Meghan says the data shows that the four most deadly spots on the corridor trails are, can you guess them? Two on South Kaibab, one on Bright Angel, one on North Kaibab.
Brian:They are, in no particular order, the frying pan on North Kaibab, which is roughly the area from the box to Cottonwood where it's open and exposed and just hot and nasty. Devil's Corkscrew on Bright Angel Trail made the list, which is just over a mile from the river, and the first big climb on Bright Angel, also, yes, a bad place to be in direct sun. Then on South Kaibab, again, no surprise, the red and white switchbacks below Skeleton Point, and then the switchbacks just above Black Bridge made the list as well. Combined, the historical data show that about two hikers die per year on those spots combined. Well, yeah, we can say it over and over again, hiking in the heat is never a good idea, but it's ignorant and I guess somewhat arrogant to think nobody's going to do it.
Brian:Summer is and always will be the busy season at the Grand Canyon, so if you're still going to drop in, you need to be committed to strategy and sacrifice to give yourself the best chance of success. And if you can, coach Arnie says, advanced heat training is part of it.
Coach Arnie:Danger, danger. We're talking about heat. And this is one that I've embraced because I came from a a school of fear. I was very fearful of heat many years ago when I was competing in triathlons and really got freaked out by the heat even though I was living here in Arizona and Phoenix. But I have learned now to embrace it.
Coach Arnie:So let's let's look at a few things here that we can learn from because it is the number one cause of death in the canyon. And that's something you need to think about. Okay? So first thing I always help people realize is look at your trip date. If you're going at a time that it could be potentially super hot, you need to think about it.
Coach Arnie:And what can you do? What can you do about that? And that's where you have to look at could be the shade tracker, could be when you're when you're gonna start, when you're gonna finish. You gotta look at all those things, your health, your fitness level, and you gotta work that into your trip planning. Then the next thing that I do is I practice everything in the heat.
Coach Arnie:I mean everything. My hydration, my food, the clothing I'm gonna wear, my pace. Pace is huge. A lot of people think, oh, look at my look at what I'm able to do in Wisconsin or Minnesota or somewhere where it's cool and you get to the canyon and you get slammed because you're not doing that same pace. So you gotta practice the pace that you think you can do in the heat.
Coach Arnie:So here are
Brian:some best
Coach Arnie:practice tips that I like to share. Is hike in the heat if you can. Hike in the heat. You know, one of the things that I did in leading up to my r five was I picked a date here in Phoenix where it was a scorcher. And I started at night and it was a 108 degrees, I remember when I started.
Coach Arnie:And I think I finished and it was probably over a 110, but I went all night and it only broke under a 100 for just a couple hours and dipped to about 90 degrees. But I did that for fifteen hours. But I did that for a reason, because I wanted to feel my body and test my body and all the things I just talked about in the heat. So I didn't wanna be caught by surprise. So here's a real simple tip if you can do it, is get in the sauna.
Coach Arnie:So if you're in a cold climate and you have access to a sauna, dry is best, but in one month, you can get heat adapted. In one month, three to five times a week, twenty to thirty minutes, you can get heat adapted. But you gotta be intentional and you gotta be consistent because if you're not, it's not gonna pay off for you. But the dry sauna can get you heat adapted. But if you have access to heat, get out there, practice, practice, practice.
Coach Arnie:So it's not a surprise to you when you're coming up Bright Angel and you're going through Devil's Corkscrew or you're on South Kaibab and that sun's over your head, and you're getting roasted. Please do not get caught by surprise. I love you guys. Take it seriously. The heat is real.
Coach Arnie:I love you guys. Talk to you later.
Brian:Coach Arnie, Arnie Fonseca Jr, our resident exercise physiologist and Canyon coach. If you have questions for him or need help with anything, he will actually pick up the phone when you call. His contact information is in the show notes. Coach Arnie. Hey, next week we're starting a new series called Canyon Confessions.
Brian:These are going to be full episodes so we can all learn from the mistakes that we have all made. A while back, I asked for submissions in our Height Club Grand Canyon Facebook group, and we got some good ones. So look out for that. We'll talk about all of them, and let me know what you think of it. Canyon Confessions, look for that starting next Wednesday.
Brian:Alright. That is for now. Stay safe out there everyone. My name is Brian Special encouraging you as always to go hike the canyon. Take that first step.
Brian:Embrace the journey. And when you get there, whether it's for time goals or taking your time, just hike your own hike and savor every step in the majestic Grand Canyon. We'll see you next time on the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show powered by Hiken. Support the brand that supports this show at hikin.club. That's hikin.club.