Something Stung Me

Prologue

The last week of August 1976 I floated the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon—7 days, 179 miles from Lee’s Ferry to Lava Falls.

I had the two-lane blacktop to myself. The western New Mexico countryside was beautiful—lush and green, rolling hills, stands of dark timber, and aspen glades dotted with wildflowers.  My little red Porsche, not always smooth or reliable, was humming along perfectly, hugging the curves with confidence.  Lost in the moment, I topped a hill to come face-to-face with a huge black locomotive, not one chuffing across the road, but coming straight on. I braked hard and crept to a stop. What?! I got out to see if I could make sense of such an improbable sight.  The black behemoth overfilled a large, low flatbed trailer, unhinged from its tractor, which was nowhere to be seen. A crew of four men filtered out of the trees to explain they had mechanical trouble and the tractor had limped away for repairs, leaving the big steam engine sitting on the highway.  They were ferrying it to a wealthy rancher nearby who had bought it for his museum. We exchanged pleasantries and I got back on the road for Page, Arizona, where I was to meet our guide and other rafters for a float trip through the Grand Canyon. It was the first of several improbable events yet to unfold on the trip. 

I spent the night at a motel in Page, Arizona, 20 miles upstream of Lee’s Ferry, where we were to push off the next day.  The next morning, I joined our guide to meet a group of about 20 fellow rafters, more than one of whom remain memorable fifty years later. 

We boarded an old bus for the ride to Lee’s Ferry, a historic shallow point on the Colorado, first used by Indigenous Americans.  Before pushing off we visited a riverside store to buy beer, chips, candy, and soft drinks.  Beer—lots of it—was especially popular with the other groups, mostly loud, young, and male. Our rafts were big, silvery, canvas lash-ups formed of five banana-shaped pontoons about three feet in diameter and 20-25 feet long, the type used by U.S. Army engineers to build temporary bridges over rivers as Allied armies marched across Europe in WWII.  Ours was made of five pontoons lashed side-to-side.  The back ends of the middle three were stubbed off to mount a wooden transom, to which was clamped a small outboard motor for pushing us through slow water and for steering rapids.  In the middle was a wooden platform piled with food coolers, bags, equipment, and other gear.  It wasn’t immediately apparent where humans fit in, but soon enough some of us were sitting on the pile, and others astraddle the front ends of the pontoons, holding tight to grip ropes like the surcingle gripped by bull-riders.

Rafts were released at half-hour intervals to ensure spacing on the river.  As the trip unfolded, we leapfrogged other rafts, each of which took on a certain personality according to the rafters on board. 

Two rafts stood out. One featured an attractive young woman sporting a red bikini and huge yellow straw hat who sat apart, regally composed, her head buried in a book, while her raft-mates explored the banks or yelled as they shot the rapids.

Also, impossible to miss was the law enforcement brigade, an almost entirely male crowd that was  loudly going through their ample stores of beer. 

Save for the improbable events of our last full day on the river, the trip was pleasant and exciting—we ran through strong rapids that pitched us around like a toy and bent the raft nearly to right angles. 

A few days into the trip we rounded a bend to see two guys in street clothes waving frantically from the riverbank. Like the big steam engine on the road, they looked as if they had dropped from the heavens, which wasn’t far from the truth—their helicopter was on the far side of a small rise.

Ken nosed the raft to shore. What could we do to help?  They were pilots ferrying a new helicopter to Las Vegas to have navigation avionics installed. Of necessity, they were navigating with only a magnetic compass and map, good enough for a Boy Scout Merit Badge but not equal to the job at hand. They were lost and low on fuel, saw us on the river, and dropped down to get directions. I had a private pilot’s license and was familiar with the navigation maps they were using.  We laid out the maps and easily pinpointed the location. They offered profuse thanks and gingerly picked their way up and over the rocky rise and disappeared.  In a few minutes the chopper whirred into sight, they gave us a wave and began their climb out of the Canyon. 

The ensuing days were fun and educational—breakfast, time on the river, stop for a snack or to see something of local interest, back to the river, stop for lunch, more time on the river, stop one more time, back to the river and then stop for the night.  The scenery was breathtaking, the food was excellent, and Ken gave lectures on Canyon geology, biology, and history. He mentioned Beaver Falls several times as especially beautiful and worth the two-hour hike up Beaver Creek.  The long hike discouraged everyone but me, another guy, and a girl, 18, traveling with her brother.  Ken beached the raft at the mouth of Beaver Creek and the three of us took off for Beaver Falls. Ken came along as a guide. 

The first section of the trail was narrow and steep but soon gentled, allowing us to enjoy the surprisingly lush vegetation—wild grapes, cottonwood, and an abundance of other features including beaver dams and travertine mineral dams filled to overflowing with crystal clear water.  Nearing the falls the trail rose steeply, taking us out of the shadows of the ravine into direct sunlight. At the top we stopped to enjoy the view—rank on rank of red cliffs and buttes receding into the distance under a dazzling blue sky.  As we maneuvered to find a place to sit, the girl jumped up and shrieked “Something stung me.” Only then did we hear the ominous buzz of a rattlesnake—she had sat down on a rattlesnake. It was small, just four rattles, but size wasn’t much consolation—every rattlesnake bite is serious.  I killed the snake with a rock, broke off the rattles, and saved them to give to her later.

Ordinarily, snakebite victims should avoid exertion to keep blood flow at a minimum, lest venom get pumped quickly throughout the body. However, there was no alternative but for her to hike back to the raft and the emergency radio. I explained that she would be okay because the snake was small, and the bite was in fatty tissue with sparse blood supply. Ken told me aside that the raft had no antivenin—authorities considered its use without expertise as dangerous as a snakebite. 

Ken and the girl headed back down the trail to the raft and emergency radio. It was fruitless to go back with them—I had nothing useful in my medical kit and the raft’s kit had no antivenin.  The other guy and I hiked the short remaining distance to Beaver Falls, made our leaps from the top, and began a quick-step hike hoping to catch up with Ken and the girl. 

We hadn’t gone far when we came upon a group of four guys I recognized from the lawman, beer-drinkers raft, one of them slumped on the trail.  His buddies said he was weak and couldn’t walk.  I said I was a physician and asked a few questions.  No, he wasn’t drunk, but he’d been drinking a lot and was probably dehydrated and tired.  I asked him a few questions, to which he responded listlessly but coherently, and decided their assessment was right.  What he needed was rest, fluids, and salt, but he was a two-hour hike from getting anything but water.  

A big man, it took all of us to struggle him upright. He stood, wobbling, complaining of nausea and dizziness, and sank down, head on knees.  We tried to stand him up again but he shook his head in protest.  We’d have to carry him out, but having no stretcher, it quickly proved folly; he’d have to walk with our assistance. By now he seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation and tried to stand on his own but couldn’t.  Before hoisting him up again, I whispered menacingly into his ear that if he didn’t give maximum effort, we’d have to leave him for the night. That got his attention.   

Shadows were long when we reached the steepest, narrowest part of the trail near the river. I worried he might fall with disastrous results. What to do? The creek had widened as it merged with side-water of the main river.  I wondered out loud if we might float him out with life vests from the raft. No one could think of a better plan, so a few of us hiked to the river to find our raft was gone and the beer drinkers’ raft waiting.

Their guide told me Ken and the snakebite victim had made it back and she seemed to be holding up well. The emergency plan depended on radio contact with tourist aircraft flying the Canyon. They tried but had no luck.  Ken had ordered our raft downriver to the next campsite and left on a long hike to the Havasupai Indian Reservation, where there was a phone he could use to call for a helicopter rescue from Nellis AFB in Las Vegas.

We gathered lifejackets and hiked back to our patient, strapped the jackets on his chest, arms and legs, and heaved him into the creek.  I held his head out of the water as the others tugged him along. 

By the time he was settled on the raft it was “too dark to shoot,” as we say in deer camp.  Rafting after dark was not allowed, but off we went. Joking and beer drinking were, temporarily at least, a thing of the past. We bounced off the canyon walls and washed through several small rapids without trouble.  After an hour or so it was a relief to see lights ahead at the campsite. 

That’s when I learned about the helicopter rescue attempt.  Ken had succeeded—a marathoner, he’d run the whole way. Nellis AFB had dispatched a Huey, one of the workhorse choppers from the Vietnam era with a signature rotor blade “whoop, whoop, whoop”—the type I’d jumped from in my days with the 101^st Airborne Division.  The chopper came but hadn’t been able to get the girl because they couldn’t find a place to land in the dark.  They tried hovering but couldn’t get low enough long enough to toss our snakebite victim into the door.  Assuming they get the patient, they hadn’t brought antivenin or other medical supplies. They’d be back to get her at first light the next morning. 

I found our snakebite victim huddled with her brother near a campfire.  She was in good shape—slow, steady pulse, no respiratory distress, emotionally composed.  Her butt, however, was turning bluish black, a not unexpected finding.  The only thing I had to offer was some Benadryl capsules.  It is a very effective antihistamine but isn’t used often because it is notorious for making users very sleepy.  She didn’t need an antihistamine, but sleep would be good.  After she drifted off I spent a few minutes reassuring her brother, who told me they were confident of her physical stamina: she was the reigning Ohio state high school 440-yard low hurdles champion and won a medal in the ten-meter platform diving competition. 

I had just joined our group around the campfire when the guide from the raft carrying the girl with the big straw hat came to me and said she was having trouble breathing.  She was agitated, breathing heavily, and complaining of tingling in her face and hands—a classic case of anxiety hyperventilation. I didn’t ask what she was anxious about; it’s best to avoid the topic because it takes too long, it’s no time for psychotherapy, and most patients can’t name what it is they are anxious about.  I spent a few minutes telling her there was nothing to worry about and gave her a Benadryl. Soon she calmed down and went to sleep. 

The next morning the Huey returned to fetch our snakebite victim.  It was a thrill to hear it coming.  The sound is riveting to anyone who has an experience with it.  I didn’t go down to the landing zone; there was no need of it. This time the girl and her brother hopped aboard without incident.  I learned later that she spent ten days in a Flagstaff, Arizona hospital, and recovered completely.  It might not have been such a happy ending if the bite had been on her foot or hand—the tissue around a snakebite swells immensely from fluid and local hemorrhage and the dense fascia around the arms and hands restrains the swelling.  The result is high-pressure zone (compartment syndrome), which strangles blood supply and can cause gangrene of fingers, toes, and more.  I learned later from the Forest Service that it was the first snakebite to a tourist in the Grand Canyon in sixteen years. 

The next morning as we were having breakfast and looking forward to the last and biggest rapid, Lava Falls, the bikini rafter came to see me, now sedately dressed and poised.  She apologized, saying that the raft trip was her women’s lib trip and she hated every minute of it. She was due to meet her mother at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, was going to get a manicure, pedicure, and a massage, and was never going to do anything so foolish again. 

Then the dehydrated lawman appeared.  He, too, had recovered and was sheepishly apologetic for having caused so much trouble. 

Lava Falls was a wild ride, but it lasted for only a minute at most.  We navigated the rest of the way to the takeout point without incident.  Helicopters had been booked to take us out.  We ascended at a steep angle, close to the wall of the canyon.  As of this writing, it has proved my last chopper ride and one of the best.  I’ve had plenty of chopper rides, some sitting in the door with a parachute strapped to my back, and could relax and enjoy the view. It was spectacular—like taking an elevator to heaven.