Backpacker From Va. Dies in Grand Canyon

Bryce Gillies, a seasoned hiker and McLean High School graduate, had just returned from an overseas development project when he set out by himself this month on a backpacking trip into the Grand Canyon.

Gillies, who attended college in Arizona, was drawn to the canyon there because he "loved its magnificence," his father, Randy Gillies, said Monday night.

After a month spent building a clinic in Africa, Gillies began the backpacking trip July 18, his 20th birthday. Three days later, he was reported overdue, the National Park Service said. Searchers, led by Park Ranger Anne Petersen, found his body Saturday.

Officials had not released a cause of death, but his father said it appeared to be dehydration. Apparently, his father said, a small navigational error was compounded by extreme temperatures.

The Park Service said Gillies's car was found at the Bill Hall trail head, half way between the canyon's Tuweep section and a developed area on the park's north rim.

After a wide-ranging search turned up personal items, rescuers focused on the Bonita Creek area. Gillies was found about one-half mile from where the creek joins the Colorado River, the Park Service said.

Bryce Gillies had carried enough water for the route he planned, his father said. But he said the apparent navigational error kept his son from reaching Thunder River, where he intended to replenish his supply.

Randy Gillies said he was told that Bryce tried to save himself by descending toward the floor of the canyon, to reach the water flowing there. As he headed down, the father said, his son descended 20- to 35-foot rock faces without a rope. At that point he found himself at the top of a 100-foot drop that he couldn't negotiate unaided.

"Bryce made a heroic effort to rescue himself," the father said.

But the predicament might have been insurmountable. At the high temperatures that had set in, the father said, dehydration can occur in as "little as a couple of hours."

Randy Gillies thanked searchers for their efforts, and he emphasized the importance of filing a backcountry permit, which he called imperative for any wilderness venture.

The father lives in McLean with Gillies's mother, Warna. A brother, Neal, also survives. According to the father, Gillies graduated in 2007 from McLean High and then entered Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, near the canyon.

Gillies, an Eagle Scout, had taken college calculus at George Mason University in high school and was a physics major in college. He had a four-year president's scholarship at the university, which he chose in part for the area's beauty. At Northern Arizona, Gillies, an outdoor enthusiast who had hiked the Appalachian Trail, learned to kayak and to rock climb.

He had spent June in Ghana as a project leader with Engineers Without Borders to build a medical clinic, and his father said he looked on such work as a possible career.