When Wieke De Boer reached the Grand Canyon early Friday for what was meant to be a solo hiking adventure, nothing about the morning hinted at the frightening ordeal that was about to unfold.
A seasoned hiker who had visited the landmark repeatedly, De Boer noticed one unfamiliar detail before starting her descent: a bulletin board flyer outlining flash-flood evacuation routes through the canyon.
De Boer, 47, from Tucson, Arizona, typically hikes the Grand Canyon in winter and said she had never come across that kind of warning before. This time, she paused long enough to read it carefully before moving on.
Within two days, that brief stop would prove crucial. Her memory of where those evacuation paths led would become a key factor in her survival.
‘I normally go in the winter, and so I’d never seen that before,’ the Arizona mother told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview.
‘So, I actually looked at it and paid attention to it and so I knew where I was supposed to go when it happened.’
By Saturday afternoon, De Boer was among dozens of hikers desperately fleeing to higher ground as a catastrophic wall of water, mud and debris tore through the bottom of the Grand Canyon, sweeping away almost everything in its path.
The floods, the worst in 60 years, were made worse by the Dragon Bravo Fire, which ripped through the area last year and left large sections of the Canyon vulnerable to mudslides.
Wieke De Boer, 47, of Tucson, Arizona, had been enjoying a solo hiking trip and was camping at the hard-hit Bright Angel Creek campground when monsoon rains triggered heavy flooding and debris flows that swept along the bottom of the Canyon
A catastrophic wall of water, mud and debris tore through the bottom of the Grand Canyon, sweeping away almost everything in its path on Saturday
The heavy floods claimed the lives of two men, chiropractor John Giusti and his friend, martial artist Brent Rosenkranz, 42.
A third man, Timothy Smith, 53, who was also traveling with the group, is the only person still unaccounted for as of Wednesday.
De Boer, meanwhile, escaped with her life after being given just five minutes to grab her belongings and run.
At first, however, she had little reason to think she would need it.
The University of Arizona math instructor had checked the weather forecast before leaving home and knew rain was in the offing but says she welcomed the idea, hoping it would lead to cooler temperatures at the bottom of the Canyon where summer highs can soar to 120F.
The first day passed off uneventfully with just a few splatters of rain – but that would all change on the Saturday.
That morning, De Boer set off on a run to the North Rim at 5am and was less than three miles from completing the strenuous North Kaibab Trail when a storm hit.
‘I was hit with another little monsoon storm,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘I say little, but that’s just because it didn’t last that long.
‘It was maybe 15, 20 minutes, but it was quite severe and there was a lot of lightning and there was hail.
At first, De Boer, an experienced hiker who had made the journey many times before, had little reason to think she’d have to follow the evacuation routes that day
The Arizona mom, pictured with her children, was given just five minutes to grab her belongings and run
Officials on Tuesday confirmed a second body was recovered after severe flash flooding hit the Grand Canyon
‘That’s when I decided to turn around because I looked at the trail and there was water running over it and a thousand feet below me, I could hear Bright Angel Creek and it just was getting louder and louder.
‘There was water coming over the cliff down on me. And then as I turned around and started heading back down, there was a waterfall that wasn’t there [before].’
The decision to turn back saved her life, although De Boer says at that point, she still hadn’t realized the level of danger she was really in.
Video taken by De Boer at the time shows the creek still within its banks, albeit swollen and brown, but that wouldn’t last for long.
Back in camp, she continued to check on the water level of Bright Angel Creek, noting it had only risen a foot, and tried to take shelter in her tent.
‘I live in Arizona and so I know about flash floods and my tent was next to the creek,’ De Boer said.
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‘So, I definitely kept looking out and making sure that the creek was still where it was before and wasn’t rising too quickly.’
‘It seemed OK,’ De Boer added. ‘It [the creek] was still a good bit below me.’
The college professor, pictured with her family, initially tried to sit the storm out in her tent and only to realize the full extent of the danger moments later
De Boer filmed a video showing the creek still within its banks, but that wouldn’t last for long
After two to three hours, she says, floods eased off enough for helicopter rescue flights to begin
But despite her precautions, her tent soon flooded and when she looked out again it was to discover the whole of the Bright Angel Campground underwater.
It was then that two rangers arrived and told her to evacuate immediately to higher ground, giving her just five minutes to throw her belongings into a bag and run.
‘When the rain let up a little bit, I got out of my tent to see what I could do to make the situation inside my tent better, to see if I could maybe move it to a drier spot.
‘And then I looked around and I noticed there were no more dry spots. It wasn’t just that my tent was sitting in a puddle. The whole site was flooded basically.
‘That’s when two rangers came by and told me that it was time to start evacuating.’
Cellphone signal in the Grand Canyon is patchy at best and nonexistent on the Canyon floor, and while De Boer had satellite service enabled on her phone that let her text her daughters to ask for the rain forecast, the warning from the rangers was the only hint a disaster was about to strike.
De Boer says she briefly took shelter at a ranger station with two other people but was told to move to higher ground yet again with the group then holing up in a mule corral.
‘That’s the point when the wall of water came through because as we were already under the mule corral, there were other people that came running from down lower in a little bit of a panic,’ she said.
The heavy floods have so far claimed the lives of two men, chiropractor John Giusti, left, and his friend, martial artist Brent Rosenkranz, 42, right
Authorities are continuing to search for a third missing hiker, believed to be 53-year-old Texas pilot Timothy Smith. He was hiking with the two men whose bodies were recovered
The flash flood, seen in another video of De Boer’s, was so strong it destroyed pedestrian bridges and badly damaged 40 percent of the Transcanyon Waterline – a facility that provides water to campgrounds and hotels within the Grand Canyon National Park.
By now, De Boer’s group had been told to move again – this time across Silver Bridge to a new point higher up the canyon.
‘We were pointing out things that were floating down the river,’ said De Boer.
‘We were like, oh, there’s a Yeti cooler from the construction workers and oh, there’s another Yeti cooler.
‘Then eventually it was like, oh, there goes the whole bunkhouse and you could see their beds floating down and oh, there’s our fridge floating down the river.’
Eventually, after what De Boer thinks was between two to three hours, the floods eased off enough for helicopter rescue flights to begin, with the choppers evacuating the exhausted survivors to the South Rim where they were met by care crews from the American Red Cross.
‘I’m super grateful to not just the rangers that for sure saved lives, but also from the moment that we got evacuated out and arrived up on the South Rim, we were taken such good care of,’ De Boer said.
‘The Red Cross was there. There were people from the local high school there.
Sixty-two people were airlifted from trails on Saturday, according to the National Park Service
‘It was amazing. I couldn’t have imagined it being any better than that.’
Still, despite being home safely and reunited with her teenage daughters aged 14 and 16, De Boer knows she had a lucky escape.
‘I think about that had I not turned around at the North Rim when I did, I would’ve been in the box when the flood hit.
‘Had I left not at 5am but 6.30am, things would’ve been very different. Or if the ranger hadn’t come by when she did, I think I would’ve just been hunkered down in my tent trying to keep it from blowing away when the water hit.’
