The National Park Service is investigating a mysterious illness afflicting boaters who’ve rafted down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon this season.
The illness features symptoms like fever, joint aches and fluid in the lungs.
Those symptoms hit Matthew Wappett of Logan, Utah, not long after finishing his trip down the Colorado in June. One of the first stops he made after setting foot on dry land was an emergency room. He had a massive infection in his knee that has since cleared up.
“Ever since June 6, I've had fevers, bone joint aches,” says Wappett. “I felt like I've had the flu for a month, essentially.”
Nobody else on his trip got sick, so he thought he was alone with this mystery illness until his daughter discovered a Facebook post from a different boater who mentioned similar symptoms.
“It helps me feel like I'm not crazy,” he adds. “I seriously thought that I was just a wuss, and that, you know, it was the post-trip blues.”
The boater who made that post on Facebook, Steven King, also floated down the river in June.
As of July 9, he tells KNAU five different groups of people who recently rafted down the Grand Canyon have reached out to him about similar illnesses and described similar symptoms.
“Test results have been negative for everything and inconclusive for leptospirosis, so we’re thinking maybe lepto,” King said via Facebook messenger on July 9. “Antibiotics seem to have worked though, everybody is either fully recovered or almost fully recovered from our crew.”
Leptospirosis can spread to humans through contact with water or soil that’s been contaminated by the urine of infected animals like rats or livestock, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But King says leptospirosis doesn’t explain all the symptoms his group has experienced, so “maybe we are still stumped.”
At the same time that boaters are piecing together what happened using Facebook, the National Park Service Office of Public Health is leading an investigation into the illnesses.
“At this time, the investigation is ongoing, and we are not able to comment on the extent of the illnesses, potential diagnoses, or other details while the investigation is underway,” wrote Joëlle Baird, a spokesperson for Grand Canyon National Park, in an email. “We will share additional information with the public as it becomes available.”
Wappett says he was recently contacted by the officials leading the investigation, and they said they’d follow up with him later.
“I keep going through my head: Are there things I could have done that would have helped me avoid this?” he says. “We were super careful around bats and keeping [a] clean camp, and you know, all the standard things, but when the wind picks up and you're breathing dust … you can't avoid exposure to these things.”
To avoid leptospirosis, the CDC advises people not to swim or wade in water that might be contaminated with animal urine, especially after floods or heavy rainfall.
