Getting Their Monies' Worth

I was out for a hike up the Narrows to see what the conditions were since it was early in the Spring and no one had been up yet.  I hiked up the Riverside Walk and was one of the first people in the river. As soon as I was in the river, though, someone came back to tell me that someone was calling for help. I thought okay, maybe someone is hurt or stuck somewhere, probably Mystery Canyon. Then another person told me the same thing. I was sure now that something was going on and this was now going to be the focus of my day. I got to the waterfall below Mystery and someone yelled down to see if I could get a Ranger. When I told them that I was a Ranger, they let me know their situation. They got a rope stuck on the second to last rappel in Mystery. They had been there all night. I told them that I would be back and to just hang tight. Luckily, I knew how to handle this situation. My radio would not get out, so I hiked all the way back to the Temple of Sinawava, where my radio still would not work. I talked to one of the shuttle bus drivers and he was able to forward my request for the line gun, a three hundred foot rope, and two people. I waited for some time and then Ray and Kelsey showed up with my requests. We hiked back up to Mystery Canyon and Ray gave me the joy of shooting the line gun. I shot a piece of twine connected to a projectile and the people up there were able to tie it to a tree. This caused a bit of a commotion because every person coming by now informed us of the loud bang in the Narrows. We let them know that it was us and they were reassured, but it was actually a lot of fun to shoot the thing. Then we attached a 300 foot rope to this line. We had some radios and luckily the people up top had radios also and were able to get on the same frequency as us. We talked them through the whole scenario and really all they were going to do was rappel down. The only way that they knew how to rappel was with a beaner block. So I had to explain to them how to rappel off two strands. We did not have to do anything more for them because they were not hurt and they were already canyoneering to get to this point, so Ray made the call that they could just finish rappelling. I was nervous about them coming down and it did not look too pretty. But they both made it and when they got to the bottom, I realized that I was the one who had issued them the permit. We joked about getting a full service canyoneering experience from me of issuing the permit, locating them stuck, and then getting the necessary equipment to rescue them. I did not make it up the Narrows on this day as most of my day was now shot, but I was happy to be able to find a way to help some people out.