“Made it to Bryce Canyon!” Jeanne Roblez Howell, 64, an 11th- and 12th-grade math teacher at Verde Valley School, told her family in a group chat at 12:43 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 25, shortly before her death.

She is survived by her husband Brian Howell, whom she married on Sept. 6, 1980; daughter Teresa “Tess” Harrell; son Benjamin Howell; son-in-law Arthur Philip Harrell III; daughter-in-law Brianna Renee Howell; and nine grandchildren.

On the morning of Aug. 25, Tess Harrell made her daily phone call to her mother after dropping her own children off at school.

“We ended up talking about how raising kids is hard,” Harrell said at her mother’s celebration of life at VVS on Friday, Sept. 9. “But she told me that she loved every single second of it. The good, the bad, the hard, the easy. ‘I was meant to be you and Ben’s mom and I loved it. I love being your mom. Thank you,’ is what she said to me. I told her, ‘Thank you for putting up with me.’ All those cringe growing pains I went through and teaching me how to be the best me. We had our moment of sentiment and started talking about her school. The call got choppy and the phone line dropped … That was the last conversation that I would ever have with my mom.”

Howell messaged her family that she was setting off to hike the Fairyland Loop trail at Bryce Canyon at 1:24 p.m., a route she had taken over a dozen times on previous trips. She estimated that it would take her three hours. 

She proceeded to send her family several more photos of the landscape, ending with a final photo of the red canyon walls at 1:49 p.m. She would typically provide them with hourly status updates.

“She carried with her three different tracking devices,” Benjamin Howell said. “Her phone, she also carried with her bear mace that had a GPS tracking device and she also carried a Garmin Mini that was another tracking device … They did an incredible job looking for her, and they found her quite quickly due to my wife finding [her] GPS coordinates [through the Garmin].”

Brian Howell first called Sedona 911 at approximately 4:50 p.m. to report that Jeanne was late checking in and was directed to contact the Utah Department of Public Safety. 

“According to the park’s official report, at 6:24 p.m. MDT [5:24 p.m. Arizona time] Brian Howell attempted to contact his wife Jeanne but was unable to reach her,” NPS spokesman Peter Densmore said. “Brian Howell became concerned and contacted the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, who contacted Bryce Canyon National Park. A Bryce Canyon National Park ranger contacted Brian Howell at approximately 7 p.m. MDT and, after gathering information about Jeanne, began a preliminary search for her.”

“A search of the area was conducted in cooperation with the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office and the Utah Department of Public Safety,” the National Park Service stated in a press release announcing her death. “The body of Mrs. Howell was discovered at 1:30 a.m. on [Saturday], Aug. 26, within Campbell Canyon, approximately a mile east of the Fairyland Loop. She was pronounced deceased at the scene by a Garfield County medical examiner.”

The Garfield County medical examiner has not released Howell’s cause of death, but her injuries were consistent with those observed in similar fatalities resulting from flash flooding. The family has confirmed that is also reflected in the death certificate which they received near the end of October.

“I jumped in the car and just went straight up there because I figured I’d join in the search for her,” Benjamin Howell said. “But by the time I got there, they found her body about 30 minutes after I got there. Then in the morning, we identified her at about 10:30 a.m. — 11:30 a.m. in the morning Utah time. She still had her backpack, knives, flares, her Garmin was still with her, which was kind of incredible that of all the damage she sustained, all her stuff was still with her.”

The family has stressed that Howell was well-prepared and was constantly in touch with them, and that her death “was a complete freak accident.” She was prepared and had a plan but was caught off guard by flash flooding.  

“The official rain gauge at the park visitor center collected 0.37 inches of rain on Friday, Aug. 25,” Densmore said. “The rain gauge is located 0.3 miles west of Campbell Canyon and the Fairyland Loop Trail.”

Benjamin Howell contends that the precipitation in the area around Fairyland Loop Trail greatly exceeded the amount of rainfall at the visitor center. 

“I just want to make it abundantly clear that it wasn’t like she was out there being a goofball not knowing what she was doing,” Benjamin Howell said. “She has hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. She’s hiked the Grand Canyon, she’s hiked Mount Olympus.”

Brian Howell, Jeanne’s husband of nearly 43 years, made his living as a mining engineer for BHP Billiton and worked primarily with explosives at the start of his career. He would relocate anywhere the company needed him and Jeanne would usually find a job teaching nearby.

It was a lifestyle that eventually led the couple to Sedona in 2014 after Brian’s assignment in South Africa ended and he rejoined his wife among the red rocks. Jeanne started teaching math at the Verde Valley School that year. 

She began her career teaching in Salt Lake City Utah after she graduated from the University of Utah. She had wanted to be a math teacher since she was nine years old, and her career choice was also how she met Brian, “because she was his math tutor in college,” Benjamin Howell said.

Afterward, she taught in Bloomfield, N.M., before the couple moved overseas to Papua New Guinea, followed by Groote Eylandt in northern Australia, where Jeanne took a break from teaching in order to spend her time raising her two children.

“Then [we] moved back to [the] Bloomfield-Farmington area in New Mexico,” Benjamin Howell said. “She taught at Bloomfield High School for a number of years until 2010, when they moved to South Africa. Over there, she taught at the American International School of Johannesburg … then she moved to Sedona where she finished her career teaching at Verde Valley School.”

For Benjamin Howell, the birthday parties hosted by Jeanne have a special place in his memories of her. He remembered the time she turned their backyard into a life-sized version of the board game “Goosebumps” that he was a fan of growing up.

“Holidays with her were incredible with how she would dress up,” Benjamin Howell said “She had 25 days of Christmas, where she [had] 25 separate outfits that she would dress up in and go to school in. They were not just your average just put on a t-shirt, they were full elf costumes, full Grinch costumes, full Mrs. Claus costumes.” 

Jeanne also was a frequent hiker at Rabbit Ears in Sedona and had a ritual that involved wearing two ornamental earrings each day of the Christmas season. She would place them daily on a yucca on the trail, so that by Christmas day, 50 of them would be on display on the yucca.

“Then, from January 1 through January 30, she would hike back out there and pick up two ornaments every day,” Benjamin Howell said. “Just those little special things she used to do that made things incredibly meaningful.”

Benjamin also reminisced about the times when she was the only mother who would go to Boy Scout camps, where she would instruct the scouts in the art of crocheting. 

“When we lived in Australia, they didn’t have a dance class and I wanted to dance. So she started a dance class,” Tess Harrell said. “Not just for me, but for every little girl that wanted to dance. She not only created experiences for me and my brother but for others. Halloween didn’t exist, [so] she made it. She would go out to the houses on the island and pass out candy to them so that they could pass them out to us. Pretty soon the entire island caught on. They still celebrate Halloween to this day.”

“My dad has said that he doesn’t want or need anything, just time to recover,” Benjamin Howell said. “He wants my mom’s story to get out there but doesn’t want to be the one doing it. That is why Tess and I have been doing that for him.”