Mike Cortes, a Colorado resident, has been to the Grand Canyon before, but he’s never left with survivor’s guilt — until recently.
He and his brother hiked the Grand Canyon from rim to rim — a trip he had been planning for a year. After completing his hike around noon, Cortes took a selfie overlooking the canyon — featuring storm clouds looming behind him. He posted the picture, tagging the Grand Canyon, before heading to his hotel room to sleep.
The rest of the events that day, unbeknownst to him, would make national headlines.
Cortes woke up soon after to the sounds of his notifications coming in one after another. Messages like, “How could you post that?” “That’s so insensitive.”
“And it dawned on me what had happened. And I just was shell-shocked and in tears for days,” he said.
“And now I’m kind of dealing with the survivor’s guilt. But even more than that, I have a lack of rescue guilt. I got out just hours before any of this unfolded.”
A flash flood tore through the inner canyon on the afternoon of Aug. 29 — leaving two dead and others missing.
A difficult day in the canyon
David Gregory, from Dallas, Texas, started his hike into the canyon with a friend and his two sons only a day after Cortes did. The four got a last-minute cabin reservation in Phantom Ranch.
After a 6 a.m. shuttle ride to the North Kaibab trailhead, the group stepped out to rain and thunder hovering over the canyon. They looked at the weather on their phones — which showed only a small amount of rain for a short period of time.
“So we decided to just to wait and see if it cleared up,” said Gregory. “We didn’t want to hike when it was thunder and lightning.” Forty-five minutes later, the storm cleared, and the four hikers started descending toward Phantom Ranch.
Gregory says the bright Arizona sun started peeking through, and the looming storm clouds shrunk to small, white clouds when the group reached the canyon floor at about 1 p.m. “We were getting a little hot and sweaty toward the end of the trail,” he said. “We certainly weren’t thinking about more rain or anything like that in the near future.”
Gregory remembers his friend wanting to hike the Clear Creek Trail following a small stream across the canyon floor. After only a short while, he remembers seeing storm clouds form once again. “Maybe we shouldn’t go too far,” he remembers telling his friend.
By the time they had made it back to Phantom Ranch, rain was pouring. Gregory remembers the four hikers running into a canteen, looking out the window and seeing the wind whip around the canyon corners. He looked out to see the Bright Angel Creek — typically a clear, peaceful stream hikers would stick their feet into after walking long hours. It had turned deep, chocolate brown.
Still, neither his group nor other parties around him seemed to be very concerned.
After they returned to their cabin, a park ranger came by and told the group Phantom Ranch was going to be temporarily evacuated.
Still, not much concern. The group was still planning to make dinner reservations at 5 p.m.
“Obviously the creek was picking up a little bit more volume, but we really had no idea what exactly happened up the canyon, which we couldn’t see,” Gregory recalled.
Roughly 50 hikers who were in Phantom Ranch walked single file across the Bright Angel Creek bridge to higher ground. Soon after, another park ranger came by to collect names and ages.
“We felt pretty safe where we were,” he said. After an hour or so of deliberation from park rangers, the decision was made to take the hikers to safety by helicopter.
“On my helicopter were three of the campers — two of them whom seemed shell-shocked because they had nothing with them,” said Gregory.
All the hikers were taken to an evacuation center — a nearby elementary school, which he described as “really well organized.”
The days that followed
“Since I’ve gotten back,” said Gregory, “my attitude, my perspective has changed a little bit in thinking that we were a lot more fortunate than we had realized at the time.”
He and his party soon learned that one of the bridges they had crossed was wiped out by flash floods just minutes after they passed it.
“The gravity of the situation has kind of sunk in more now than it was at the time,” he continued. “And (I’m) definitely, very thankful and appreciative for what the park ranger did and kind of getting us all kind of going.”
Not everyone was so fortunate. Two hikers died and one remains missing.
Cortes — who posted photos and videos of his trail running through the canyon only a day prior — saw his comment section turn from offended strangers to appreciative family members.
One of those family members — related to one of the deceased hikers — responded to his video.
“Thank you for posting this because it gave me a sense of the peace that he must have been in before this tragedy struck,” Cortes remembered reading.
“Those messages can leave me shaking,” he said. “At that point, it feels less like I’m sharing my own experience and more like I’m being trusted with someone else’s memory.
“That has made sharing the footage feel like a way of giving something back to a community of people who each have their own relationship with the canyon.”