Babes Hole spring... What a name for a place. Also what a misnomer, barely any water, no babes... This is a story about the first time that i tried to visit. I have since made the trip down "babes hole spring canyon" a technical canyoneering route with a few easy rappels.
Sometimes you can tell how a trip is going to go just based on the first few hours in the morning. For this particular morning, we woke up a bit late, having stayed up too long teaching one of the team members, E, how to rappel (there may or may not have also been some drinking involved that might have delayed us a bit the night before, i mean hey, it was college after all). We set off from D's house in flagstaff for Babes hole canyon, a route that leads into the upper Sycamore canyon area southwest of Flagstaff, of course travelling in my BMW 3 series expecting to go some 35 miles down dirt roads. It was the best car for the job because it was the most functional car available to us, i definitely got that car into a lot of placces where may people were surprised to see it. After making the first turn and driving a few miles down a dirt road, i asked D for driving instructions. After a thorough search of the car, it turns out we didnt have the driving instructions (nor apparently a route description nor map but that will come in later). After a quick call to D's dad, we had the instructions relayed to us over the phone and were off again.
Sometimes you can tell how a trip is going to go just based on the first few hours in the morning. For this particular morning, we woke up a bit late, having stayed up too long teaching one of the team members, E, how to rappel (there may or may not have also been some drinking involved that might have delayed us a bit the night before, i mean hey, it was college after all). We set off from D's house in flagstaff for Babes hole canyon, a route that leads into the upper Sycamore canyon area southwest of Flagstaff, of course travelling in my BMW 3 series expecting to go some 35 miles down dirt roads. It was the best car for the job because it was the most functional car available to us, i definitely got that car into a lot of placces where may people were surprised to see it. After making the first turn and driving a few miles down a dirt road, i asked D for driving instructions. After a thorough search of the car, it turns out we didnt have the driving instructions (nor apparently a route description nor map but that will come in later). After a quick call to D's dad, we had the instructions relayed to us over the phone and were off again.
Eventually we made it to what we throught was our parking area (in reality it was the area for the Dorsey Springs trailhead, our desired trailhead was a the other fork of the road, a couple miles away). Feeling confident as only college aged males can (when visiting a somewhat unknown canyon without a route description or map) we set off down the trail. The hike in was nice, if uneventful. I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake laying in the trail, but if you travel enough in Arizona you come to realize that this happens relatively often and you become attuned to their presence, your "lizard brain" picking up on their whereabouts before you conciously acknowledge they are there. We followed what seemed to match the route description we had read the night before, hike down from the canyon rim, cross the drainage a few times, then turn and start heading down when the trail leaves the drainage going left-down-canyon (south). We started our descent into the "canyon" really more of a water drainage gully, but this type of travel was familiar as many of the canyons in arizona begin with this type of gulley. We eventually crossed what seemed to be a trail traversing the gulley but didnt pay much attention to it, maybe it was just a well worn game trail.
The descent seemed liek it was taking too long to get to the top of the technical canyon section, maybe it was jsut last night's beer and whiskey consumption that was slowing us, it was hard to tell. Then, unexpectedly, we popped out of the gully at the canyon bottom, at "sycamore creek" a jumble of large waterworn rocks covering the base of the dry waterway, the water having ducked underground for this section. Weird, we throught. We must have missed it. We lingered in the canyon bottom, enjoying the beauty of the Coconino sandstone and its white brush-stroked canyon walls, remnants of ancient dunes that are slowly becoming sand again. With the afternoon quickly approaching and the very real idea that water would be scarce (afterall, there was none in the creekbed that we could get to) we turned upcanyon and began looking for a way out, knowing full well now that we were not where we thought and the trail we had planned on using to re-ascend the canyon would not be available to us, but also not wanting to return up the steep gully we had come down.
After some time, we found another gully that was not quite as steep as our way in, and had some good game trails that seemed to head up it, so up we went. Once again, the hiking was uneventful, until i looked back and realized that E had blown through his water and seemed to still be dehydrated. We stopped, i donated my water to him to keep him going, then continued up the hot and sunny game trail. A bit farther, i noticed that E was starting to have trouble walking. We all sat underneath a tree to try and recover a bit and get a game plan for what we would do. At this point we could see the canyon rim, somewhere up there would be our car and our way out of here. the difficulty- knowing where exactly it was, and how we would help E get there as he was becoming more dehydrated by the minute.
"Hey D, where is the map, i want to take a look" i mentioned. We were currently on a bit of a bench, a lower angle feature that traverses the canyon below the rim proper. With so many springs in the area, surely there was something nearby that we could get to for water to re-hydrate, then continue on.
"it just... blew away"
"Well where did it go???? I will go get it!"
"I dont know, over there?" d replied.
I searched for a bit but new it was in vain, later i realized that there never was a map. We were quickly becoming a statistic and i knew it.
What to do? We checked for cell service, not expecting to have any. On our ascent, once we hit the bench we had come across a well-traveled trail where we chose to stop and evaluate what to do next, so that was good. The question was, which way to go? Where could we find water?
We tried calling a friend, maybe someone could come out with a map (thinking the trail should be easy to find given the obvious terrain features) and ride that trail with some water for us. Not enough cell for a call, through. We sent a text instead but no response.
We sent a message to D's dad, it was ~4pm at this point. We said that we were delayed and running out of water, and that if he didnt hear from us by 7pm he should call in SAR for help, we would try to get ourselves out until then. This message got out to its intended recipient, however was missread and we quickly got a text from SAR command saying that we should stay put and they were going to come find us. Shit. Well, i guess it was time to hunker down and get comfy as it would be a bit.
We tried calling a friend, maybe someone could come out with a map (thinking the trail should be easy to find given the obvious terrain features) and ride that trail with some water for us. Not enough cell for a call, through. We sent a text instead but no response.
We sent a message to D's dad, it was ~4pm at this point. We said that we were delayed and running out of water, and that if he didnt hear from us by 7pm he should call in SAR for help, we would try to get ourselves out until then. This message got out to its intended recipient, however was missread and we quickly got a text from SAR command saying that we should stay put and they were going to come find us. Shit. Well, i guess it was time to hunker down and get comfy as it would be a bit.
Trying to make oursevles visible, we layed out bright colored webbing, reflective space blankets, and our gear in clearings and across the trail to make it obvious where we were. A Helicopter flew overhead a few hours later after which we got a call saying they would send in the technical teams over the cliffside as we were not on a trail. We responded that we were most definitely on a well-traveled trail and no technical rappeling was needed to get to our location, we hadnt take the rope out all day. The helicopter air-dropped a package with water and gatorade, a radio, and some blankets. We were told to get comfortable, warm, and drink up. We lit a fire as the sun was setting. Arizona always has amazing sunsets and is full of amazingly beautiful, if harsh at times, wild spaces.
After an hour or two, we were told a command had been established at the trailhead and that they were thinking of waiting until morning to send in teams to get us out. Seeing as this was somewhat of an accidental call, and, after some Gatorade and water that E was back to normal, we radioed back that we would be happy to walk out that night. They sent in a team. The trip out was uneventful and we got back by midnight or so. As they had staged at the Kelsey trailhead (our intended location) we got a ride over to the Dorsey trailhead, where many of the members were quite surprised to see the good old bmw parked, in relative disbelief that someone could drive a car like that all the way back here without puncturing the oil-pan or some other car-destroying breakdown.
The aftermath was interesting, it a bit humiliating. Having never been exposed to something like that, it was curious to see how wrong the media got the story- apparently we were three middle aged men and one had a heart condition causing the rescue? which required ropes and we were on the side of a cliff. Not exactly accurate but at least they got the date and the location mostly right!
This was also my first experience with Search and Rescue. We all felt really bad about the somewhat accidental call, as we really did want to try and self rescue first but to some extent were not given the chance, we were trying to build in safety into our plan that backfired a bit. In reality, D and I both felt like, if anything, we should be the ones helping out with the resuce, we new a few of the Coconino County SAR members and had both spent many years traveling together in the outdoors. We were definitely victims of the YAM mentality (young aggressive male, maybe not aggressive in the combative sense but aggressive in our decision making, we should have just turned around when we didnt have the info we needed, and D should ahve come clean about not having a map/route description). Lessons are learned, sometimes they are learned the hard way through, as was the case here. This event inspired me to look into joining SAR through, and ~8 years later i did just that. Now i help others when they make questionable decisions or things line up just right to result in a difficult situation, and i am happy to help knowing that i too was once in that situation.
