Sedona community mourns loss of teacher, mother killed while hiking in Utah

SEDONA, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) – A well-known teacher in Sedona has died while hiking in an area hit by flash floods in Utah. It happened Friday at Bryce Canyon National Park. Her family says she was an experienced hiker who always carried the proper equipment.

The National Park Service says on Friday, Aug. 25, 64-year-old Jeanne Roblez Howell of Sedona was overdue from a 2 p.m. hike on the Fairyland Loop trail. The area was searched in cooperation with the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office and the Utah Department of Public Safety. Her body was discovered at 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 26 in Campbell Canyon, approximately a mile east of the Fairyland Loop. She was pronounced deceased at the scene by a Garfield County medical examiner.

Her son, Ben Howell, says she had hiked this exact trail a handful of times and was the safest person you’d find out there. A week prior, she completed her wilderness survival training class, and on her hikes, she would carry two first aid kits, a GPS locating device, whistles, knives, and everything you could think of. Those who loved her are having a hard time wrapping their heads around what happened.

“How do you tell your kids one of their heroes is gone?” Howell said.

Jeanne Howell’s husband sent her a message to her GPS satellite phone at 5:24 p.m., not knowing it would be the last. Jeanne was hiking at Bryce Canyon, but her family noticed silence as the day went by. Her son Ben got in the car and drove to Utah to look for her.

“I literally took one step on the trail to start looking for her and got a call from my dad,” he said. “My dad said they found a body.” Search and rescue crews found Jeanne early Saturday morning. The park announcement suggests she was swept away by floods caused by thunderstorms and heavy rain. “She had been washed down a mile from the trail,” Howell said.

Ben Lee is the head of school at the Verde Valley School in Sedona. It’s where Jeanne has taught for the last nine years after moving there from South Africa. She has lived all over the world, even leading students and staff on a hike to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. “To think this accident had happened when she was in her element was very difficult for us to understand,” Lee said. “She was so full of life and lit up the room with her presence.”

Jeanne was known to inspire her students while also setting her own goals. “Her practice was to be sure over the course of a calendar year, she hiked as many miles as the year, so in 2022, she hiked 2,022 miles,” he said.

Jeanne was married to her husband for 43 years. She leaves behind two kids and a handful of grandchildren. “There will definitely be a hole. Jeanne was larger than life in a lot of ways,” he said.

Students at the Verde Valley School have created a makeshift memorial outside her classroom door. They have taped photos and sticky notes with messages on them.

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