Susan Billingsley - Grand Canyon River Guides

iver. We had it figured out, and they were going to stayuntil ten o’clock Monday night, but they left their list athome.Steiger: They forgot about the two cairns?Billingsley: Well they looked, but that was a littlemistake on everybody’s part because if you’re a thousandfeet above the river you can’t see a rock cairn in themiddle of a rock pile. (laughs) So that didn’t work outvery well. Sunday night, we lit off the firecrackers whenwe got to the top of Stairway, and they lit off theirs. Welit off two more, they lit off two more. We thought“Well, they know we’re here. Obviously.” But they justhappened to let theirs off at the same time we did. Theynever heard ours. So they were pretty sure we couldn’tmake it. And then, we killed ourselves to get to Tuckupby ten o’clock. We got two miles below at a spring, andwe were so tired. We were sick from eating cactus apples,because we had run out of water, and the water inTuckup is really bad. I was really sick and I had fallen inMohawk, and I’d hurt my head. So we’re sitting therelike, “Okay, we got a half-hour to get the last two miles.”There was this little pool in the spring, and the trailcame up and crossed the spring, and we were sittingdown at the bottom next to this pool, so Jimmy said“Okay, you guys take my pack, I’ll run up the trail. It’sonly two miles.” We said “Okay.” He said, “Then for surethey’ll know we’re here by ten o’clock.” So he gets upand he starts to cross, and he slips. We’re sitting therejust dead, and he just slides down and (swoosh-thud)right in front of us. We’re sitting there looking at him,and we all laugh. He goes “Okay, this is for real.” So hegets up and he goes (swoosh-thud), falls down again.(laughs) But then he gets up. And then we carried hispack out, we get up there. Nobody. They left atsundown. They couldn’t remember how long they weresupposed to stay! So it took another five days for ’em toget there. Gosh, when was that? That must have been… graduated in ’71, it must have been ’70, maybe,1970–’69. All we took—because we knew we were goingto cross the river—was an air mattress and a spaceblanket, because we wanted to keep it light.Steiger: No sleeping bags.Billingsley: No sleeping bags.Steiger: What kind of food were you eating?Billingsley: Dried rice.Steiger: That was it?Billingsley: We had other food, but we ate it up. Bythe time we got to the North Rim, we had half a Ziplocof dried rice and some fudge crumbs.Steiger: And that was it. For how many people?Billingsley: Three of us. Jimmy Sears and JohnWehrman and I. So it was a long week. But it was okay.But then we had to hike another thirty miles to get outat the end of it. We went through every possibility whythey didn’t come pick us up.Steiger: And what did they decide? They went backaround, how’d that go?Billingsley: To Flagstaff. Then when they found outwe weren’t there, they went around to the south side.They hiked all the way down Mohawk, they hiked as faras we did on this hike. Got down to the river, saw thecairn, said, “Oh, no.” (Steiger: “They made it across.”)So they hiked all the way back out. Monday morningthey got back to school, and were going to come aroundand pick us up, but they decided, “Well, we’ll go to oneclass. We’ve missed so many now anyway.” So they madethe mistake of saying something in class, and the teacherheard them, and said, “You mean there’s three peoplemissing in the Grand Canyon?!”Steiger: “And you guys are sitting here in class?!!”Billingsley: So they called the sheriff, and thesheriff wouldn’t let anybody go out and pick us up. Theymade it official. And it took them three more days.Steiger: To mount the search party? So those guyscould’ve come got you that same day?Billingsley: They wouldn’t let them go. They tookthem with them, all the way over and up the north side.Steiger: Because they didn’t want them to be losttoo.Billingsley: And they stopped at every little dunkyplace and bought more beer and more steaks, and pickedup people and had this huge party planned at Toroweap.They were getting to do this big party. In the meantime,Dr. Butchart drove up, and he was driving around. Andthen John Riffey. He got his plane up in the air too.Steiger: Did they find you, was it Riffey that foundyou?Billingsley: (whispering) No, we got ourselves out.Steiger: You just got out?Billingsley: We finally hiked all the way out to theroad that goes into Toroweap. And we thought, well, wecould hike down to Toroweap, or we could hike toCraig’s Ranch. It was five miles that way, and I don’tknow how many that way. So we were hiking up thisway, and this camper came up and stopped. We lookedpretty bad. We asked if we could get a ride into Kanab,and they didn’t want to give us a ride, but they gave us abunch of food and said they would call somebody whenthey got there. So that was fine. We sat down and wedrank like a quart of milk and cans of peaches. We juststuffed ourselves.Steiger: Was water an issue?Billingsley: Yeah, water was an issue. We had tohike all the way down in the canyon every day andsiphon it out of this really yucky pothole.Steiger: All the way back down into Tuckup?Billingsley: Yeah, because the water was making usso sick—the water in this Tuckup Springs itself. Well,we stayed on the rim for three days.Steiger: Waiting.boatman’s quarterly review page 37