A group of up to 60 hikers, including a mother and a six-month-old baby, were left stranded in Utah when flash floods battered roads and wrecked their pickup trucks
- A group of up to 60 hikers in a Utah national park were stranded last Thursday after flash flooding trapped them on a mountain
- The flooding started around noon and it was late into the night for everyone to safely exit Capitol Reef National Park
- A helicopter was called to ferry some of the walkers out of the affected areas
- A park ranger said it was the worst flash flooding she’s seen in 15 years working at the park
A group of up to 60 hikers in Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park, including a mother with a six-month-old baby, were stranded on a mountain after severe flooding trapped them there.
Orrin Allen, Noah Gremmert and Cooper Allen shared their experiences of being trapped by severe flooding during a church camp on a mountain last Thursday.
The hikers were nearing the top of the mountain as the rain began, before quickly accelerating into a torrential flood.
“We hike down, we have a great time, we watch water pour off the sides of the canyon and it looks really cool. I followed one of the falls with my eyes and thought, “Oh shoot, the road’s gone,” Orrin Allen told KUTV.
The hikers soon discovered that the path by which they reached the mountain was now submerged in water. Three of the five trucks they took to the mountain were totaled and two cars had been swept away by the water.
Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park suffered severe flooding last week that left over 50 hikers stranded on a mountain
An image released by the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office shows some of the damage caused by flooding in Capitol Reef National Park
In addition to the three young men, another 50 to 60 people were trapped on the mountain, including a mother with a six-month-old baby. After three hours of trying to wait out the storm, the group realized they had to find a way back down.
Park wardens have said that when the flooding began around midday, they were “unsure” whether parkgoers had managed “to get back to their vehicles and out of the flash flood.”
Three group leaders went ahead to find a safe way down for those trapped, and the group had to work together to ensure everyone got out safely.
Allen said the group had to climb two “five to six foot drops” and also a narrow passage of “4 1/2 feet” between a rock face and a sheer drop to the raging river below.
A Twitter post from the Capitol Reef National Park Service announcing the flooding in the park
The group of hikers, including a mother with a six-month-old baby, formed a line to get down the mountain.
A park ranger told the group it was the worst flash flood they had seen in 15 years of working at the park.
The severity of the flooding required the use of a Ministry of Public Safety helicopter to evacuate some walkers to safety.
No one was seriously injured, according to the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, although some hikers were treated for minor cuts and lacerations. A total of seven or eight vehicles were damaged or destroyed.
The Sherriff’s Office said the stranded hikers might have had to “overnight there” if park rangers hadn’t “worked diligently to clear the roads and make them passable”.
A video taken by the hikers shows three trucks nearly drowning in the rushing flood waters
An aerial view of the damage to the trucks after the floods subsided
On Sunday, a statement from the park said visitors should “expect construction machinery, large trucks, flags and 15-minute delays” due to last week’s flooding.
Capitol Reef isn’t the only national park to have recently suffered severe flooding. Yellowstone National Park, one of the largest in the country, experienced between 2.5 and 4 inches of rain in June.
The rain resulted in swelling floods that forced Yellowstone park officials to order over 10,000 visitors out of the park on June 14. The flooding caused extensive damage to the park, forcing rescue operations by air and boat, washing away homes and sweeping away a staff barracks for miles.
Officials say the damage could cost more than $1 billion and years of reconstruction efforts to repair.