Guide Dies in Grand Canyon Fall

A physician and guide on a commercial river trip fell about 25 feet to her death in the Grand Canyon, officials said.

Sabra Jones, 44, of Gallup, N.M., died Monday after the fall along Havasu Creek, about three miles from the stream’s confluence with the Colorado River, National Park Service officials said.

Rangers said they received a call Monday afternoon that someone had fallen in the Havasu Creek area. A helicopter responded and medics tried to treat Jones, but she died at the scene, rangers said.

Jones was a board member of the Social Educational Environmental Development Services, which was founded by a mountaineering guide to provide basic necessities such as clean water and toilets for impoverished villages in Nepal. A radiologist, she also provided health care for the Navajo Nation and the Zuni Pueblo, according to a biographical sketch on the SEEDS Web site.

“No one was as full of life as Sabra,” SEEDS co-founder Keith Goldstein said Tuesday. “She was really the most active person I knew. And she was a genius, really.”

Jones loved the outdoors and “threw herself into extreme situations,” Goldstein said. He said she recently returned from Nepal.

Employees at Rehoboth Christian Hospital, where Jones did some of her work, attended a grief support session Tuesday morning, hospital officials said. Hospital Vice President Bernice Brewer said radiology department employees were distraught at news that Jones had died.

The National Park Service and the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department are investigating.

The river trip was being conducted by Tour West Inc., officials said.