The remote area at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where searchers are in a fourth day trying to find a missing woman and a teenager, attracts relatively few visitors each year, according to the National Park Service.
Tapeats Creek, where Lou-Ann Merrell and Jackson Standefer lost their footing Saturday during a family trip, is not particularly difficult to hike for experienced backpackers, said Chris Forsyth, president of the Grand Canyon Hikers & Backpackers Association board. But heavy water flowing through the creek can make it challenging, he said.
Merrell is the wife of Randy Merrell, who helped found the Merrell Boot Co.
National Park Service spokeswoman Robin Martin said about 3,500 people got permits in 2015 to camp in the general area where the two hikers went missing, the latest readily available data. About 41,000 total people that year got permits to backpack in the Grand Canyon in total.
The Merrells, Standefer and the boy's mother were on a path known as Tapeats Trail when the pair fell, authorities said.
An intense search for Merrell and 14-year-old Standefer resumed Tuesday, Martin said.
The search includes three ground teams consisting of about 20 people total, a National Park Service helicopter, a drone and an inflatable motor raft that was flown into the canyon. Search crews are looking within a mile and a mile and half of where the hikers were last seen, as well as where the creek meets the Colorado River.