Hikers in the Grand Canyon National Park can be seen taking shelter in caves to avoid waterfalls of mud and slime caused by flash floods last week, in a video released by USA Today.
The same floods last Thursday sadly took the life a a 33-year-old Arizona woman, Chenoa Nickerson, whose body was found on Sunday by a group on a commercial river trip on the Colorado River.
The flash floods also forced the evacuation of at least 104 people – hikers and indigenous villagers – from tribal lands near the park, via an Arizona National Guard Black Hawk helicopter that made 10 rescue trips in total.
One of the hikers trapped in the video, which was shot at Mooney Falls, was Carly Johnson. There’s a chained ladder at Mooney Fall for tourists to use to scale the cliffs and according to Johnson posting on Facebook , “the ladder was under water by the time we got to the top of the chains. Once we got off the chains, we saw a wall of water coming at us and were able to run into this cave.”
The muddy water came in waves, leaving them trapped inside the canyon until they were evacuated.
When the flash flood occurred, many visitors were enjoying the waterfalls or trekking from Hualapai Hilltop to Supai Village, an eight-mile hike one-way. The floods trapped visitors at different points along the trail as well as at the Havasu Falls and campground areas, according to Abbie Fink, a spokeswoman for the Havasupai tribe. The Havasupai said their tribal homeland, a popular hiking destination that borders Grand Canyon National Park, was devastated by the floods.
“The trail into Supai and to the campground and falls are unpassable, the damage to the campground is extensive,” the tribe wrote on its website Saturday. “Therefore, the Council has made the difficult but necessary decision to close Havasupai to tourists until further notice.”
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