#008 - Field Skills: Flash Floods | Reading Water, Weather & Slot Canyons
Wildlands News Podcast — National Parks, Public Lands & Survival
Flash floods kill more people in the U.S. in an average year than lightning, tornadoes, or hurricanes — each one individually. This Field Skills episode is the survival companion to the Zion series, built for anyone heading into the Narrows or any slot canyon in the desert Southwest.
Host Shawn Spainhour, a former Army officer, breaks down why the desert turns rain into a killer: baked ground that absorbs nothing, watersheds that funnel runoff from fifty miles away, and slot canyons that send water up ten feet in seconds. You'll learn why the weather where you're standing is almost irrelevant — the 1997 Antelope Canyon flood that killed eleven people fell from a clear sky seven miles upstream — how monsoon season stacks the odds against you, and how to check the forecast for the whole watershed instead of just your trailhead. Then the field signals that mean move now: the low roar, water turning brown, the smell ahead of the surge — and the single most important rule when caught, which is go up, not out. Plus the decision-making and group-dynamics traps that talk smart people into bad canyons.
This is a Wildlands Field Skills episode — the survival curriculum that runs between the park series.
Wildlands — know the land before you reach it.
More description
Flash floods kill more people in the U.S. in an average year than lightning, tornadoes, or hurricanes — each one individually. This Field Skills episode is the survival companion to the Zion series, built for anyone heading into the Narrows or any slot canyon in the desert Southwest.
Host Shawn Spainhour, a former Army officer, breaks down why the desert turns rain into a killer: baked ground that absorbs nothing, watersheds that funnel runoff from fifty miles away, and slot canyons that send water up ten feet in seconds. You'll learn why the weather where you're standing is almost irrelevant — the 1997 Antelope Canyon flood that killed eleven people fell from a clear sky seven miles upstream — how monsoon season stacks the odds against you, and how to check the forecast for the whole watershed instead of just your trailhead. Then the field signals that mean move now: the low roar, water turning brown, the smell ahead of the surge — and the single most important rule when caught, which is go up, not out. Plus the decision-making and group-dynamics traps that talk smart people into bad canyons.
This is a Wildlands Field Skills episode — the survival curriculum that runs between the park series.
Wildlands — know the land before you reach it.
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