Heaps 2017-05-03

Date of Event:  5/3/2017
Canyon involved:  Heaps
Region:  Zion National Park, Utah
Country:  United States
Submitted by:  Sonny Lawrence
Source:  self-report
Injuries:  Hypothermia
Cause:  Inadequate equipment

Description of Event:  I descended Heaps canyon with four friends. I have descended it twice before. I was the only one of the five of us who had done the canyon. My friends were all advanced canyoneers. Weather was clear. Over the years, I have had many discussions about the final corridor, up climb and final rappel sequence. I tend to run cold. So, for Imlay and Heaps I have always used a drysuit. I did so this time. My drysuit functioned perfectly in a swimming pool a few months ago. Not so this time. Once I was into the deep, dark, cold, wet section; I felt water entering at the level of the pee zip. I stopped, took off my harness and operated the zipper back and forth a few times. There was no obvious problem. However, I would discover the next morning that the end stop for the zipper had become separated from the drysuit. This resulted in a toothpick sized hole that let water in. The defect was not visible to me while I was wearing it. It was worse when I swam. As the canyon progressed, I was getting increasingly wet and cold. In the sections that involved a lot of movement out of water, I felt fine. In the water, I was not. I mentioned twice to one of my friends that I was cold. Twice I may have stumbled. However, that is a difficult thing to verify given the loose material I was walking in. Of note, I did not have shivering, mumbling or confusion or the other symptoms listed in the analysis of this incident. A few minutes later the group asked me if I should stop and warm up. The location they chose on canyon left did not look inviting. I said no. Hence, we continued for a few minutes. They asked again. This time the location looked reasonable. I climbed up a short distance above the water and sat down. The next thing I knew, I was sitting with a space blanket wrapped around me and an emergency candle between my legs. That felt great. My friends built a small fire and coaxed me to leave the candle. I slept for a while on a lovely hard rock mattress. I think there must be a mathematical equation that describes the longer a person lays on a rock, the harder it gets. Over the next few days I became aware of what had happened as my friends gave me bits and pieces of information. After I sat down, I became incoherent. They had to fight me to get my wet clothes off. They feared I might die of hypothermia. One of the individuals who stayed with me had experience with death, hence he and another got to share the hard rock bed. Two others finished the canyon and called for rescue.

As the sun came up, I closely examined my drysuit, discovering the problem. Duct tape would easily make an emergency repair. We considered finishing the canyon. However, we knew the rescue team had the GPS waypoint of our location. So we waited. After three flybys of the helicopter and a few hours of deliberation, two rescuers descended from the rim to our location. The plan was for all five of us to finish the canyon. They each brought 300 feet of 11 mm rope. Neither had done any canyoneering. Neither had ever been in Heaps before. Off we went. Eventually we got to the end of the final corridor. There was a blue webbing anchor tied around a log on canyon left. I backed up the webbing as a meat anchor  while the other four descended 60-ish feet, down the watercourse slot. Now they were looking down 500 feet to the Emerald Pools. Oops, I had misdirected them. However, they discovered that my two friends the day before had also gone this way. They had tied together 500 feet of rope and descended, leaving it attached to the anchor. While the two rescuers and my two friends were in the watercourse slot, I did the standard climb up the usual exit route.  . The four had to ascend back up.  . We finished Heaps in the usual way (non-watercourse route) using one shorter canyon rope plus the two 11mm ropes.

Once the ropes were pulled and people were leaving the Emerald Pools, one rescuer took down my name, etc. He asked with hindsight did I think the rescue was needed. I gave a rather convoluted answer. When I was hypothermic and incoherent, my friends decided that rescue was needed. But then I warmed up and discovered the cause of the leaky but fixable drysuit. At that point no rescue was needed. However, we had no way to communicate that until the rescuers arrived. But if the three of us would have exited the canyon without the rescuers on the usual route, we would have discovered there was no rope. At that point rescue would have been needed (or at least we would have needed more rope than we had). Perhaps we would have figured out that our two friends the day before had taken the watercourse exit route.

Analysis: Drysuits can fail. As in this case, even being prepared with repair material may not be enough. The cause of the leak was not obvious. Consequently wearing a thin wetsuit inside the drysuit may mitigate the cold and prevent a disaster. Other thermal concerns such as extra warm, dry clothes and the ability to start a fire are important. Space blankets are a must.

The greatest concern is why I missed the usual exit up climb. I appreciate I had been hypothermic. That has some lingering effects physically and psychologically. I had little food or water for the previous 12 hours. I had little sleep. Most importantly there was the blue webbing around the log. It was like a huge magnet that pulled me to it. I developed tunnel vision on that anchor, ignoring what I knew about the canyon.

Table: common signs and symptoms of hypothermia.