They hadn't seen a single bird in 10 hours—until a tiny yellow-and-gray one stopped on a rock in the Grand Canyon trail they were traversing, or trying to, on Aug. 29. As the Washington Post recounts, 40-year-old Jessica Buscher, her sister, and a friend were attempting the famed Rim-to-Rim hike when a fast-building storm suddenly turned "The Box"—a narrow, no-exit section four-mile section of Bright Angel Canyon—into a deadly danger zone. Though recent fire burn scars left "the terrain more vulnerable [to floods] and chock-full of debris," the women were well-prepared: They had a permit, had studied the conditions, and spoke with a ranger the night prior who casually mentioned "a 10% chance of thunderstorms."
A ranger they saw at 1:50pm praised them for not being scared by a little rain. Everything changed at 2:14pm as a storm caused the Bright Angel Creek to rapidly rise. The women came upon "a damaged section of trail now washed into a surging river. It was their only way forward." Buscher's sister balked at proceeding, but that's when they saw the bird—who Buscher believes was her late brother, guiding them forward. A quarter-mile later, the trail disappeared into the raging water. The women ditched their 45-pound packs and managed to scramble 10 feet up to a rock ledge. "If we were 10 feet further down the trail in either direction I don't think we would be here," says Buscher. Read their harrowing story in full.
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