ARIZONA

Man home safe after 3-day ordeal on San Carlos river

Sean Holstege
The Republic | azcentral.com

A Lakeside man who was stranded by a flooded river in the mountains of remote eastern Arizona was home safe but weary Tuesday after a three-day ordeal that worried his family and vexed rescue crews.

Gary Snider

Gary Snider spent two nights alone in a truck, surviving on peanuts, apples and granola bars, and writing a short story to stop his mind from drifting into dark places.

He finally got out of a place known to outdoor enthusiasts as the Ten of Diamonds area on the Black River on Tuesday afternoon.

Snider, 67, watched his brother hike out to get help, slip in the swollen river and almost drown two days earlier.

"I thought he'd gone under. I thought he drowned," Snider said. "Then, I saw him get out. That put a lump in my throat. I thought he was a goner."

Snider resolved to stay put and not chance the high, fast waters. His brother, David Snider, hiked out with a stranger from another camping party stranded upstream. Together the men reached safety, but the river was too high to ford for rangers' trucks from the nearby San Carlos Apache Tribe.

The next day, Monday, the tribe called the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which dispatched a helicopter to airlift the two campers still trapped upstream. The helicopter returned for Snider but couldn't find a place to land.

"They came back and hovered overhead for quite a while, looking for a place to land. Then he flew off," Snider said. "I wasn't going to cross that river because I saw my brother almost go bye-bye."

He resolved to wait for the waters to recede, however long that would take. People on the other bank of the Black River were told it would be a couple more days.

"The nights were long and cold," Snider said. "I could see my breath. It wasn't a pleasant night's sleep, but it was better than having no shelter at all."

Monday night, alone, cold, Snider's mind started to wander, he said.

"Too much goes through your mind. You can't turn your brain off," he said. Among the thoughts that crossed his troubled mind was maybe he was getting too old for this kind of thing.

So he started writing a short story about the first time he ever hiked along the Black River, back in 1977. He and his brother had been going almost every year since, but hadn't gone since the Wallow Fire devastated the region three years ago. They had never seen high, muddy water in September, not like the kind that got one truck stuck in a hole as deep as the hood when they arrived Friday.

Tuesday morning, Snider decided to hike out, the long way around, in a way that kept him from fording the frothy Black River. As he was getting ready, a ranger showed up and guided him out. It was only a couple miles, but taxing on a man in his 60s.

The ranger drove him to Globe, where he called his nervous wife, Karen, who had been told he had been, then had not been, rescued on Monday. All he could think about was seeing her again.

When she did show up, they went straight to Bashas' supermarket and bought a giant steak. Then they drove it back to the San Carlos Apache ranger station and gave it to the man who ended Gary Snider's ordeal.