Work Story as Promised

Here is a rough draft of my work story, a version of which will be published in the Sutton Center's newsletter.

My Side of the Mountain Canyon:

An Ultimate Fly-off Story.

The Sutton Center recently participated in the filming of a program for the Discovery Channel that two of our Bald Eagles, Bensar and Fiona, were filmed flying over sections of the Grand Canyon.   This upcoming television series and possible feature length movie will show how birds are involved and intertwined in many facets of life around the world.   Since this is a main focus of our It’s All About Birds! program we felt it would be fitting for us to participate in such a venture.

After several weeks of training the Eagles to fly over long distances we were off from the center in Bartlesville to the Grand Canyon National Park the first week of October to meet up the film crew that had flew in from England.  Work began right away even though the initial conditions were less than perfect.  High winds made that first day difficult as we got the birds desensitized to the scenery and flying short distances on creance from several different points along the canyon’s rim.  All in all the first day went well even with the poor conditions, and the weather promised to be nearly perfect for flying and filming over the next several days. 

Day two was to be the first day of filming.  The sun was shining and winds were light and we were set up and ready to film in the morning.  There were two main shots that we were trying to get from the birds; one was an “onboard” shot where we mounted a small camera on Fiona’s back via a backpack mount and the other was a flyby shot of Bensar flying along the rim of the canyon.   Both birds flew well this day.  The canyon seemed to distract the birds very little, if at all, and the first day of free flights and filming went off with hardly a hitch.

Day three started off much the same, a beautiful morning and a lot of confidence that the day would go smoothly allowing us to get many of the shots that we needed.  We made some adjustments to Fiona’s flight path that greatly improved the footage from the onboard camera from the day before and then moved on to the flyby shots of Bensar flying from one point to another on the rim of the canyon.  We went through our process of weighing the bird, getting his diet ready, and putting a radio transmitter so that we could find the bird in the case of a potential flyoff.  Everything checked out and his first three flights of the day were perfect. 

Just as Bensar was called for his 4^th flight something in the crowd of onlookers spooked him and he took a wide arcing flight path away from the provocation.  Under common situations this would not be much of a problem as the bird would circle to a distance away from what made him uncomfortable and then come back to his target where there would be reward waiting for him, but being next to the canyon provided a different scenario.  Most likely the air movement in the canyon was different than what the bird was used to and he quickly lost his altitude from the rim.  We could only watch as Bensar causally circled lower and lower into the canyon. 

Of course we knew that there was always the possibility that is could happen but it still seemed unbelievable even as we watched it unfold right in front of us.  Instantly the focus switched to eagle recovery mode.  Since the eagle had on a radio transmitter it was first a simple matter of getting out the receiver, which has a directional antenna on it, and working to get a rough estimate of where the eagle might be in the canyon.  Through years of experience using this equipment we had a good idea that the bird was less than a mile away, down, and the basic direction of where he had landed.   With the help of a park ranger that had been assigned to help us for the day we learned that one of the park trails nearby led to the general area where we thought the bird would be.

The producer from the production company, Steve Sherrod, and myself quickly mobilized the equipment we would need for a difficult hike that would last several hours down the park’s Tanner Trail.  We still had a strong signal from the transmitter and began our hike towards the audio lifeline.  The trail descended very quickly and within the first 40 minutes we had gone down nearly 1500 feet from the lip of the canyon.  The signal continued to grow stronger with every switchback we hiked and so did our hopes of getting Bensar back quickly.  Roughly two miles down the trail I was getting a very strong BEEP from the telemetry receiver indicating that we were getting very close.  I decided to climb up on a nearby boulder to take a look up that trail and there he was!  Nearly two hundred yards straight down the trail Bensar was perched in a small juniper tree lightly flapping his wings in the breeze.  I quickly pulled out my glove and called to the eagle, but it seems that Bensar was not quite ready for his adventure to be over and he took to the wing flying perpendicular to our direction and over a small red rock ridge with the signal from the transmitter quickly fading.  We hurriedly continued our hike down to the rock wall where we last saw him flying and realized that we were not even half way down to the bottom of the canyon and that where he flew was not going to be easy to access.  With light fading fast we decided that we needed get out of the canyon and made the arduous hike back up to the rim.

The next day we decided that we would get the gear that we need to spend a night in the canyon for our next attempt at finding our wayward eagle.  The signal strength from the transmitter had changed very little from our final reading from the rim the day before indicating that the bird had not moved any further, so we began our second hike down the Tanner Trail reaching the red rock ridge just before nightfall.  Here we made camp for the night with the intention of going backcountry the next day.  This involved hiking down a water shed that appeared to lead to the bottom of the canyon. 

Fly-off day three began with a granola bar breakfast and difficult task of trail blazing down a steep canyon wall with a lot of loose rocks and thorny plant life.   The steep path leveled out slightly into a dry creek bed that featured large boulders and several 10-15 foot drops gradually lowering us further and further toward the canyon floor.  Just when things were looking promising we dropped in over a large boulder that led down a smooth slide in the rock ultimately terminating in an 800 foot vertical drop straight down.  Even with Steve and myself being experienced in rappelling, there would have been no way to climb back out around this route especially if we located the eagle so our only choice was to hike back out and come up with a plan B.

The next day we met with the park’s backcountry office to find out what options we still had available to us.   The possibility of the Tanner Trail, what appeared to be the closest route, had been tried and ruled out, helicopters were not allowed to go below the rim of the canyon except in the case of an extreme emergency involving a life and death situations of humans, so our last option appeared to be a hike down the New Hance Trail to the Colorado River, up the river several miles, and then backcountry to where we believed the bird to be.  Estimated time: a 3 day hike down and back.

After careful consideration we decided that this may be our last option.  Luckily, three park employees, one from the backcountry office and two park wildlife biologists, volunteered to make the trip with me to help with getting the bird out of the canyon assuming that we found him.   So it was decided that the next day I would set out on the New Hance Trail with the park volunteers and attempt to make a day and a half hike in one day to get to the where we assumed the bird to be. 

The New Hance Trail begins near Grand View point and descends nearly 6000 feet over 7 and a half miles to the Colorado river.  We got our start around 10a.m. and by 2 o’clock I had reached the Hance Rapids on the river.  At this point the volunteers set up camp and I continued on another two and a half miles east down the river to the point where I could access where the Seventy-five Mile Creek emptied.   By triangulating the signal that we had gotten at the top of the canyon with my current one at that time, I deduced that, if I could get to the bird, going backcountry into this area would give me the best chance of finding him.  So I left the sandy shore of the Colorado and headed up the narrows away from the beaten path. 

The winding narrow path up the creek bed was walled by vertical cliff faces nearly 500 feet high for the first mile or so.  This caused the signal coming off the transmitter to weaken considerably often testing my belief that the bird was actually in this part of the canyon, but I continued on hoping that the signal would come back strong around each turn of the canyon.  After several miles of walking in the shadows of the rock face, the creek bed widened by several hundred feet and I decided that this was be a good place to again check the signal.  Beep, Beep, BEEP! As I turned to my left the signal went from very weak to incredibly strong!  In front of me was a small thorny tree, a slope of gravel that went up maybe 20 feet and a 20 foot wall that appeared to lead to a level area of rock that went back a ways until the next cliff started.  I assumed that Bensar would be up above the wall.  It looked like an easy enough rock climb, so I dropped my pack, picked up the eagle glove and some meat to call him with and started to psych myself up for what I would find at the top of that rock wall.  I started toward the small tree moved four steps to the left around the tree, stepped up on a small boulder, and there he was!  Just sitting there on the ground, nestled up right next to the bottom of the rock face!  I couldn’t believe it!  I had not seen this bird in four days and there he was plain as day not twenty feet from me!  After the initial shock of actually finding him, I started to put on the glove and before I could even get to his food he was flying toward me. 

I quickly put his jesses, swivel and leash on him and officially had Bensar recovered!  It was at this point I fully realized why it was called the Grand Canyon and not just canyon.  I still had to get back to the base camp where the rest of the rescue team was waiting for me and then get the bird back to the top.  After a quick snack for me and the eagle it was nearly 6 o’clock when I started back out of the Seventy-five Mile Creek and the sun was only an hour or two from setting.  Bensar was pretty manageable on my  fist while hooded as we made our way back to the river and west along  the shore until we reached the first  point that I was dreading, an avalanche rock slide that forced the trail away from the river and up and over about 300 feet or swim.  Since I was carrying several thousand dollars in electronics to find the bird, the swim was out , so up the series of climbs we went.  First I would lift Bensar up as high as I could and set him on a rock, then I would climb up, then lift Bensar and sit him down, then climb, and this process repeated over and over again as I made my way up to the top of this rock outcropping.  During this process the sun was setting and as it got darker the trail markers became very hard to see.  I soon realized that it would be too dangerous to continue on with this climb.  So I found a small cave that was recessed into the cliff face, tied Bensar to my pack and rolled out my sleeping bag for the night.  I couldn’t help but think about the book “My Side of the Mountain,” with the boy living in his hollowed out tree with his falcon, Frightful, but this romantic view of the situation quickly slipped away as I was kept awake all night by an Eagle that decided to be nocturnal.  Nonstop, Bensar remove water bottles out of my pack, pulled at the straps, jumped on and off and generally made a lot of commotion throughout most of the night.  At least it was a beautiful weather and a beautiful evening.  I laid comfortably on top of my sleeping bag and watched shooting stars until I eventually did fall asleep for several hours. 

I woke up in my cave just before sunrise, packed up my gear and eagle, and then went back to climbing on up to the peak of this section of trail.   The trek back down was not easy either as it was literally on a “trail,” term used lightly here, down an actual avalanche back to the final half mile stretch of the river  to the base camp.  Surprised, was the expression I saw on the faces of campers as I walked through rafting group’s overnight location to met up with the volunteers that accompanied me down.   After telling my story of the night before and some pictures with the eagle, the rafting group graciously offered me a ham, egg, and cheese biscuit with some coffee and bid us well on our final hike back  to the top of the canyon.

Being that the volunteers had no experience handling an eagle we decided that it would be best to take turns carrying Bensar hooded in a cradled position similar to a baby for his final ascent out of the canyon.  He was not overly happy about this arrangement at first but soon settled down and rode well for the next eight hours as we gradually hiked our way up through the twelve various rock layers that make up the walls of the Grand Canyon.  We took many breaks along the way to rest and make sure that Bensar had plenty of food and water, but made good time and reached the rim safe and sound around six o’clock in the evening.  After four and half days, nearly 30 miles and almost 20,000 feet of hiking up and down the ordeal was over.

I’ve been through a lot of fly offs in my years of training free flight birds but this was by far the most challenging.  Full of highs and lows, both literally and figuratively, this endeavor was something that I’ll never forget.  On the first day at the park I said “you know the view is nice but I would enjoy this place a lot more if I actually go into the canyon and experience it.”  Next time I’ll be more careful of what I wish for.  

-RVZ