Working on the edge of the Grand Canyon

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK – Tourists peer over the railing at the South Rim, where the earth falls away nearly a mile to the Colorado River below. A mother directs the youngest children in the group away from the rail with a no-nonsense tone, and the teens take turns holding out their phones for selfies with the massive gulch.

Kevin Hartigan isn't immune to the beauty. He lives with it every working day. But he has a special job to do, keeping nature and technology in harmony.

He walks beyond the visitors and points far down the South Rim. "That's where we rappelled off, down there," he says, indicating an area well beyond the barrier that protects visitors from a fall.

He describes a trip down the side of the Canyon to access a power line that was far beyond the reach of the few trails in the area.

Hartigan's relationship with the Canyon is much more intimate than many Arizonans'. As the local representative for Arizona Public Service Co., he is responsible for keeping the lights on and water flowing at the nation's second-busiest national park.

Sometimes that job involves checking fuses that serve the historic lodge or hotels at the park and the surrounding areas of Tusayan and Valle. Sometimes that job requires flying in a helicopter to the bottom of the Canyon to ensure the lights remain on at Phantom Ranch. Sometimes it's checking for a failed power line in a driving snowstorm.And sometimes it requires pushing off over the Canyon's edge to maintain the power lines.

"Some of our lines are inaccessible and to get to them, we have to make some rappels," he said.

The last such trip required four different descents down drops of 300 to 400 feet and being flown out of the remote area by helicopter.

"We were perfecting our rappelling skills and inspecting our lines," he said.

APS bought the remote power system at Grand Canyon from the National Park Service in the 1950s.

But the electrical system does more than just power the 800 or so hotels, homes and other customers on the Canyon's edge. It's important for keeping the taps flowing, too. Water at the South Rim of the Canyon is brought in via a pipe from the North Rim called the Transcanyon Water System. The pipe runs all the way down the north Canyon wall, over the river, and up the south wall, where pumps are required to get the water to the top of the Canyon.

The pumps are the biggest power load for the Park Service, and crucial for keeping the water in the tanks that supply the South Rim.

Hartigan peers over the edge of the South Rim where the power poles march steeply down the slope of the Canyon carrying power to those pumps. Faint, precarious routes along the cliff's edge can be used to access each.

"You can't just drive up to any (electrical) equipment," he said. "In the Valley, you are used to the equipment either on the street or it's in the alley or it's a backyard. Here I am lucky if I get to drive to it. A lot of times I'll need to climb it. And for everything that is in the Canyon, I need to hop on a helicopter, fly to it, look at it and then figure out how to hike to it."

Hartigan, 39, has been at the Canyon for five years, and realizes his position is special. He was hired as an APS lineman in 2002, working at Navapache Electric in northern Arizona before that.

During a family vacation to the Canyon several years ago, he saw the large electrical substation near the Bright Angel Trailhead and Lodge, and a power house previously used to make steam and electricity for facilities on the Rim.

"I thought, wow, isn't that cool," he said.

He also realized that it was some fortunate employee's job to keep that equipment operating properly. Because of the importance of keeping the park powered, and the need to have someone on site if a problem arises, the APS employee lives in a company house about a quarter-mile from the Canyon rim.

He talked with his APS co-workers about how nice it would be to have that job, and eventually, when the previous Grand Canyon local representative announced his retirement, word got to Hartigan.

"I just lucked out," he says. "I'm just a dumb lineman."

The small community on the South Rim is isolated, he said, but the perks far outweigh the downside, he said.

When he goes for a jog with his wife, Danielle, they run along the iconic Rim Trail. When he wants to spend some time outdoors with his three children, Kylie, 15, Trevor, 18, and Tanner, 21, they take a walk down the Canyon that people travel the world over to see.

The family stories are filled with references to the outdoors.

They taught Kylie to hike as a toddler by placing Skittles candies at regular intervals along the trail. Hartigan also reminisces about night hikes in the Canyon when the weather was just right to bring the scorpions out in droves.

"One time we were hiking back at night wearing Tevas (sandals) and I didn't even want to look down," he said.

On this day, Hartigan's commute will be short and sweet. A seven-minute helicopter flight from the Rim to the Colorado River at the bottom, where he will inspect an underground power line that was dug up as crews replaced a portion of the Transcanyon water pipe at Phantom Ranch.

Many Park Service and APS tasks are accomplished by employees hiking into the Canyon. But the park uses helicopters when there is critical work to be done.

Helicopter flights over the Canyon are limited, and tourist flights below the rim of the Canyon are prohibited by the Park Service.

After descending through the steep area of the Canyon known as the Abyss, the helicopter carrying Hartigan follows the river to the sandy bank at Phantom Ranch, and Hartigan's gear is unloaded.

Because of weight limits on the helicopter, Hartigan only brings the bare essentials for the work to be done. His equipment needs must be balanced against the Park Service employees sharing the flight that day and the equipment they need.

The helicopter lifts off to take the Park Service workers to another site where they will be testing water quality.

The Phantom Ranch area was inhabited by native Americans as early as 1050 A.D. A tent camp for tourists was set up at the site in 1903, and the ranch itself and four stone and wood cabins were built in 1922 to accommodate travelers in the lush, shaded side canyon running perpendicular to the Colorado River.

More developments at the ranch followed, with APS bringing electricity to the facilities in 1960, allowing evaporative coolers and other amenities for the rental cabins, employee housing, ranger station and cantina.

Hartigan hikes up the north side of the Canyon to the rental cabins, where he will install a meter to evaluate the power quality.

The information is needed before the Park Service proceeds with planned improvements at some of the facilities in the Canyon.

He passes a construction site where crews are replacing a portion of the Transcanyon Water System.

"This isn't good," he says, walking quickly along the top of an open trench the construction crew has dug.

The crew has left the underground power lines exposed in multiple places where they should be buried to protect hikers and others from danger.

He pokes around the campsite where the construction crew is living. Nobody home. Park rangers soon explain that the construction crew has hiked out of the Canyon for their week off. They don't get to fly in and out. They'll hike back in five days for their next shift.

No good, Hartigan says. The exposed power lines are a safety hazard. Reburying them would take at least an hour, and he doesn't have a shovel. Burying a power line wasn't on the agenda today.

Meanwhile, Park employees chatting on the radio notify Hartigan they have finished their tasks and the helicopter is heading back his way to pick him up.

If he misses his ride, it's about a 10-mile hike up the Bright Angel Trail to the Rim more than 4,400 feet above.

A helicopter might be sent back for him, but the wind is picking up as the day warms up. If the winds get high enough, the helicopter will be grounded for the day.

Phone calls are made.

The Park Service doesn't want Hartigan stuck at the bottom of the Canyon. If there is a problem, even a small one, with the electrical service at the top, where all the hotels, restaurants, and cash registers are located, he's the one they need to restore it.

A ranger steps in, volunteers to bury the exposed power lines, and Hartigan is on his way back down the trail to meet the helicopter waiting for him at the water's edge.

The Grand Canyon is the second-busiest national park in the country, with about 4.8 million visitors per year, and the Park Service is intent on ensuring those trips go well.

Power failures are inevitable with winter storms that knock down ponderosa pines and take out the lines occasionally, but Tim Jarrell, chief of facility management and engineering at the Canyon, said APS has done a commendable job keeping the power flowing and the park open.

"Closing is the last thing we want to do, absolutely the last thing we want to do," Jarrell said. "Forty percent of visitors at the park are from international destinations. They've planned these trips their whole lives. Even those from the U.S. plan for long, long times. We don't want to disappoint them when they get here."

One of the key reasons APS has a presence in the park with Hartigan is the remoteness. The next closest APS linemen that could handle an outage are in Williams, about an hour away.

"We are at the end of the service line," Jarrell said. "In a lot of areas, you can feed power from multiple directions. You can feed it around another loop. We don't have that luxury here. When our power is out, we are out. There is no way to reroute power to the park."

For that reason, the Park Service has long requested that an APS employee be based at the park.

"It has been very handy to have somebody here in the park to deal with those kinds of situations," he said.

Even more important than electricity is the water that's pumped up to the South Rim using the APS power line, he said.

The South Rim has storage tanks with about two weeks worth of water, but can't draw the tanks all the way down because they need much of it on hand for fire suppression in the event of an emergency.

When the water supply gets too low, the park has to curtail operations and start trucking in water, an expensive endeavor.

"It has only happened a couple times," Jarrell said, referencing times when the water line itself broke, not the power line.

Halfway down the South Rim of the Canyon, deer scatter into the brush and hikers at the Indian Springs area stop to view the helicopter swooping in for a landing as the rotor wash whips cottonwood branches over the trail.

The engine shuts down, and Hartigan collects his tools as park employees grab their equipment.

Hartigan needs to install a meter that will tell him how much power the pumps are drawing as they send drinking water up the Canyon wall to the South Rim. The Park Service is preparing to replace the pumps later this year.

"We don't want to see these pumps kick on and the lights go off at Phantom Ranch," he explains.

Getting water to the millions of park visitors is a major undertaking. From 1901 to the 1930s, it was done with railcars. In 1932 the pump station was built at Indian Gardens, a historic farming area used by Native Americans. The structure uses native stone to blend in with the surroundings.

At first, the pumps drew water from springs near the Gardens, but in 1970, the Transcanyon Water System was finished.

The water comes from Roaring Springs, which is about 4,000 feet down the North Rim of the Canyon. Gravity draws the water through the pipeline, down the Canyon, across a suspension bridge over the river, and partway up the South Canyon wall to Indian Gardens. From there it splits into two pipelines pumped to the South Rim.

Hartigan quickly installs the meter in a large utility cabinet as hikers from around the world cool off in the shade along the small creek flowing toward the Colorado River. Some ask directions.

"I try not to take this all for granted," Hartigan said. "It's good to talk to people to remember what a special place this is that I get to live in."

After he installs the meter, he paces the area looking for cellphone reception. He was meeting a representative from a telecom company at Indian Gardens during this stop. The telecom worker hiked in.

After a brief discussion, Hartigan is back in the helicopter with the park employees and the craft lifts off and heads back to the flight center on top of the Rim. It's barely noon, and Hartigan has more work to attend to outside the Canyon walls.

"Any day you are flying into the Canyon, that is pretty good duty," he said. "You pinch yourself. 'Really, this is what I'm paid to do?' "

Because of the remote location, Hartigan's job includes much more variety than the average utility worker. He also manages all the customer service for several hundred people living in Grand Canyon Village, Tusayan and a few other small enclaves along the rim.

"There is a dual role to be the face of the company," said Daniel Froetscher, APS senior vice president, transmission, distribution and customers. "He's got a ton of responsibility."

In utility parlance, Hartigan is a "troubleman," which is a type of lineman. Troublemen are the first responders who are called in when customers report a power outage.

They meet with customers affected by the outage and try to identify the problem on the power system.

If the problem is safe for one worker to repair, the troubleman makes the fix. Or the troubleman might find a way to reroute the lines to restore power to the affected customers. If it requires a crew, the troubleman calls in a crew.

APS has approximately 600 linemen, foremen and troublemen.

Troublemen have gone through the four-year apprenticeship to become a lineman and usually worked as a foreman on a crew, Froetscher said. APS has about 100 troublemen in the state, with more than half in the Phoenix area, he said.

"It takes a different breed to be in the first responder category to begin with, especially in these regions," Froetscher said. "It is difficult terrain, and at times of the year, difficult weather. Working alone, safety is paramount. These guys are good. They are well trained, very competent."

Hartigan recalls one particularly harsh winter storm a few years ago when high winds snapped a tree and broke a power pole several miles east of the main entrance to the park.

He knew with the fading daylight and snow he would need help, so he called in another troubleman from Williams. The two headed out under the power line on 4-wheel ATVs to find the damage.

"It had brought the lines down and broken the pole," he said. "It took us until about midnight, but we got the lines cleared up and got the lights back on.

By then, the storm had stopped, the night had cleared and the air was still, and the workers knew the customers down the line would be comfortable.

"It always feels good to turn the lights back on for folks," he said.

ON THE BEAT

Ryan Randazzo covers energy, technology, mining, defense and aerospace.

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ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com

Phone: 602-444-4331

Twitter: @utilityreporter