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Scotty Thybony's Canyon Commentary: The Inscription

Scott Thybony

Writer Scott Thybony has come across many unusual and mysterious things on his treks in the remote regions of the Grand Canyon. In this month's commentary, his discovery of a name etched into a rock leads him to the story of a doomed, grim expedition in the Arctic more than 100 years ago.

At dawn I descend from Eremita Mesa and cross to the Hermit Trail. Last night's thunderstorm has cooled the air, letting me make good time before the sun tops the rim. Leaving the main trail I follow a path to Sweetheart Spring and find an inscription carved in the cliffrock. It reads, "Harry Kislingbury '89." That would be 1889, an early date for the Grand Canyon. On my return to town I decide to dig into the story.

Harry, it turns out, arrived in Flagstaff when he was 18-years-old, three years before his Canyon trip. An orphan, he was one of four brothers who lost their mother in a harsh Montana winter and their father during a disastrous polar exploration.

Credit Sue Kislingbury
Lt. Frederick Kislinbury (left), Arctic, late 1880's

Frederick Kislingbury had served as second in command of an expedition, launched in 1881, under Lieutenant Adolphus Greely. It was a venture plagued by infighting and mutinous plots, an epic journey across frozen seas, and finally starvation.

Years later, an Arctic explorer came upon their abandoned camp and found a school textbook with an inscription on the flyleaf: "To My Dear Father," it read. "May God be with you and return you safely to me. Your affectionate son, Harry Kislingbury."

To learn more, I arrange to meet Sue Kislingbury, a retired railway engineer from Winslow. Inside La Posada Hotel she places a stack of family photographs on a table and pulls out one more from the winter of 1877. It shows a detachment of armed

Credit Frank Jay Haynes
Lt. Frederick Kislingbury, 1877, with a detachment of Lakota scouts

Lieutenant Fred, she calls him, wears fringed buckskin and moccasins. When word reached him in the field, he rode 180 miles through fierce winter storms to reach his dying wife at Fort Custer. Not long afterwards he was on his way to the Arctic, thinking about his 4 motherless sons. "My God!" he wrote a friend, "I cannot die now. I must come back."

Sue pulls out a faded photo of Lieutenant Fred, this time dressed in a heavy fur parka and surrounded by a blank expanse of ice. By the time a rescue party reached the last few survivors 3 years later, he was dead. Toward the end, the explorers had been reduced to eating their boots, and something more. Evidence soon emerged of cannibalism, and the authorities ordered a cover-up.

In Sue's stack are images of her relative Harry Kislingbury, letting me put a face to the name carved along the Hermit Trail. One photo has Harry standing with a railroad crew outside the roundhouse in Winslow, wearing coal-blackened coveralls. For generations Sue's family have been railroaders. "It has to be in your blood to stick it out," she tells me. "It's a tough job, that 2:00 a.m. call to go to work at 3:30. The people who are raised as rails, we understand this life."

Credit Sue Kislingbury
Harry Kislingbury - far left - at the Roundhouse in Winslow, AZ, late 1800's

Harry's brother, Walter, was Sue's great-grandfather, and before I leave she hands me a worn book. Gold lettering on the cover reads, "Every Little Boy's Book," and inside is an inscription penned in a flowing hand. "From dear Papa far away, In the Arctic Sea's, To my darling Walter, Christmas 1881."

The ship carrying the book steamed away from Lady Franklin Bay in a hurry when a channel through the ice opened momentarily. Kislingbury, having had a falling out with Greely, was supposed to be on it. But the ship couldn't wait, and he missed his only chance to escape. Lieutenant Fred, who would never return to his 4 sons, stood on shore and watched it disappear.

Scott Thybony has traveled throughout North America on assignments for major magazines, including Smithsonian, Outside, and Men’s Journal. An article for National Geographic magazine was translated into a dozen languages, and his book, Canyon Country, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. He once herded sheep for a Navajo family, having a hogan to call home and all the frybread he could eat. His commentaries are heard regularly on Arizona Public Radio.