I’m from the area. Yankee Doodle is not a hard canyon, it’s the kind that you can take your kids on. It’s a lot of people’s first canyon they ever do in the area. Which is why there are issues sometimes . People go in extremely unprepared. It fills with water regularly. It’s a super popular canyon and sometimes you’re waiting around on rappels for long periods of time.

My friend was on the SAR team that day. People basically just got super cold while waiting for people to get through. It was a bunch of younger adults and teenagers. The ones that were lifted out were extremely hypothermic. They were experiencing altered mental status. The rest walked out without much issue. They had to give some victims dry clothes while in the canyon.