{"id":67,"date":"2013-05-19T17:24:15","date_gmt":"2013-05-19T21:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/?p=67"},"modified":"2013-05-19T17:26:19","modified_gmt":"2013-05-19T21:26:19","slug":"zion-park-utah-1978","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/?p=67","title":{"rendered":"Zion Park, Utah, 1978"},"content":{"rendered":"

5-17-12\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The prompt:\u00a0 \u00a0It might have happened like this\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

The three showed up late at the Ranger\u2019s office, wanting permission to camp overnight in one of the rim canyons of Zion National Park.\u00a0 The young man\u2019s name was Jon, without an \u2018H\u2019, and his girlfriend Lou had brought along her best friend Beth.\u00a0 They knew they were pushing it, but they flew through check-in, and headed up the trail around the rim of a smallish box canyon.\u00a0 Halfway to their destination campsite, it was already getting dark, and the setting sun painted the walls of the canyon a deep striated red.\u00a0 At the point of deep dusk, Jon called it quits, and he and the girls set up the tent in near darkness.<\/p>\n

The next day, I had planned a trip to Zion with my new co-worker Steve.\u00a0 We were mud loggers on a geothermal well being drilled just north of Beaver, Utah, and I had gotten my first paycheck after graduating from college.\u00a0 Thrilled and flush with hard cash, I went out and bought a new camera, and wanted a chance to try it out on the scenery.\u00a0 Steve had suggested Zion.\u00a0 He had been in the area for two months already, and was there for the beginning of drilling.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This Saturday, we had some time off and headed for the park early, wanting to spend a long day of hiking and photography.\u00a0 We checked in, and headed up the trail to a small box canyon.\u00a0 It started out chilly, but the sun rose over the rim, and it suddenly got glorious.\u00a0 We were taking our time, strolling up the trail, planning on spending lunchtime just sitting and looking over the rocks.<\/p>\n

As we moseyed up, ahead of us appeared two girls, heading down the trail.\u00a0 They looked panicked, but didn\u2019t stop to talk or ask for help.\u00a0 They just plowed on down the trail, making time.\u00a0 Steve and I looked at each other, decided they were nuts, and laughed at the absurdity of the situation.\u00a0 On we went.<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes later, a commotion on the trail stopped us in our tracks.\u00a0 We moved off of the trail to let a party of Rangers go by.\u00a0 There were three official looking ones in uniforms and hats, and four others dressed casually.\u00a0 All had backpacks.\u00a0 Two of the casual types carried ropes, and two carried a basket stretcher between them.\u00a0 Again, Steve looked at me, I looked at him, and we shrugged.\u00a0 We had come looking for adventure, and it looked like we were about to find it.<\/p>\n

Half an hour on, we came upon the Rangers setting up to climb down the face of the canyon.\u00a0 Ten feet from the edge of the cliff was a largish pop-up tent.\u00a0 Equipment was on the ground all around the rangers, and they were describing the rope work techniques to what were now obviously trainees.\u00a0 Steve and I didn\u2019t loiter, as we had guessed what was going on.\u00a0 We continued on around the rim to the opposite side of the canyon, and sat to eat our lunch, feed the chipmunks, and watch as the rescue commenced.\u00a0 Except it wasn\u2019t a rescue.<\/p>\n

From the looks of it, the campers had set up in the dark, and couldn\u2019t see that the tent was pitched so close to the edge.\u00a0\u00a0 Jon, answering the call of nature in the middle of the night, walked out of the tent and ten feet away from the sleeping girls.\u00a0 When they woke up in the morning, Jon was gone, and when they looked outside the tent and saw that they were ten feet from a three hundred foot drop, they sensed the catastrophe, and ran for the Rangers.\u00a0 Why Lou and Beth didn\u2019t stop to ask us for help, we\u2019ll never know.\u00a0 Maybe they knew we couldn\u2019t do anything.<\/p>\n

Steve and I watched as two rescuers rappelled down the cliff to extract Jon from the rock splinter that he had smeared himself into.\u00a0 We watched at the basket stretcher was lowered by the topside crew, and fed the chipmunks as the body was secured.\u00a0 The lift up again took a while, but there was no hurry. Jon wasn\u2019t feeling any pain.<\/p>\n

I got some good pictures from that day.\u00a0 Red rocks and blue sky, the water-eroded cliffs of Zion, and a single basket stretcher being pulled up two hundred\u00a0 feet of sheer stone.\u00a0 I stayed on that rig for seven weeks before being sent to Houston for more training.\u00a0 Then eight more years of drilling holes on the ground.\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t the first dead body I had seen, and it wouldn\u2019t be the last.\u00a0 It may have been the most memorable.\u00a0 It was certainly one of the saddest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5-17-12\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The prompt:\u00a0 \u00a0It might have happened like this\u2026 The three showed up late at the Ranger\u2019s office, wanting permission to camp overnight in one of the rim canyons of Zion National Park.\u00a0 The young man\u2019s name was Jon, without an \u2018H\u2019, and his girlfriend Lou had brought along her best friend Beth.\u00a0 They knew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-promptedwriting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}