ST. GEORGE — Somewhere beneath the waters of the Virgin River — perhaps even of Lake Mead more than 100 miles downstream — lie the remains of two Boy Scouts killed 50 years ago in a flash flood that swept through the Zion National Park Narrows.
A skull fragment recovered from the river five years ago and believed to be from one of the flood victims is evidence of the passage of time since the deadly incident. Even now, the memory of that day in September 1961 doesn't rest easily for one of the survivors of the ill-fated trek undertaken by a wilderness expedition group called Socotwa.
"It rained a little bit during the night but nothing significant. We weren't sleeping under tents or anything like that," Ivins resident John Bangerter said in a Feb. 23 interview. "I guess it had been raining back in the hills behind us — of course, that we didn't know."
Bangerter and more than 20 others, including the Scouts, were hiking the Narrows on what they expected to be a two-day trip.
Instead, after camping overnight and descending into the Narrows, the group was caught up in a wall of water and debris that swept through the slot canyons and carried off five of their members — 48-year-old Scoutmaster Walt Scott of Murray, who was the trek's leader, and four teenagers from the Salt Lake Valley and Park City.
"We had just barely got out of the very Narrows, where if two persons were walking side by side, they could each hold the other's hand and then also reach and touch the opposite wall — and the walls ran up 100, 200 feet," Bangerter said. "And (we) heard this roar behind us. We stopped and looked, and here comes this wall of water about 3 feet high."
Bangerter and four others with him were on ground that was high enough that they weren't swept off, although the water rose about 8 feet to the point that it lapped at their feet as they pressed their backs against a wall of the canyon, he said.
Another small group was safe on an even higher bank. Fifteen others in a side canyon lashed themselves to trees to avoid being pulled away by the torrent. But Scott and the four teens were less fortunate.
"I didn't see it, but (my friend) Buzz Moss thought he saw one of the group, possibly Walt Scott, coming down floating, struggling in the water, and (he) saw the backpack," Bangerter said. "And that was all we saw. We didn't see any more of him."
The bodies of Scott, Steven Florence, 13, of Park City and Paul Nicholes, 17, of Salt Lake City were eventually recovered, but the bodies of Alvin Nelson and his best friend, Frank Johnson, both 17, were never found. Bangerter said he would still enjoy repeating some of his Socotwa adventures if he could, without the tragedies.