Camper Survives 8 Days Trapped In Canyon

Being trapped for eight days in a deep crevasse in southern Utah taught John Ey patience, if nothing else.

Ey, a 44-year-old printer and photographer from Tucson, Ariz., was rescued Wednesday night after a search dog tracked his scent to the 75-foot-deep crevasse in the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, 210 miles south of Salt Lake City.

“It was hard, horrible,” Ey (pronounced eye) said from a hospital bed in Page, Ariz., where he is being treated for dehydration. He hopes to leave the hospital on Saturday.

Ey, who was camping alone in the area started what he intended to be a day trek the morning of Oct. 8.

The area is fractured with crevasses called slot canyons, some hundreds of feet deep and only two or three feet wide. Ey dropped into one he believed he could hike out of. He was wrong.

A worried telephone call from a friend to the sheriff on Tuesday sparked an intensive search.