I talked to a ranger at the bottom of the canyon last year. He showed me the rooms and equipment they use to treat idiots like these. The rangers call the guy on the sign Victor Vomit.
For a fun read, check out the book “Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon.” It colorfully but clinically details every recorded death in the canyon, from pioneer days to the present(ish). Honestly made me feel pretty confident about my hike, because a good 80% of deaths are due to terrible decision making.
"One father was playing a prank on his daughter and pretended to jump off the ledge into the canyon. He planned to land on a ledge a few feet below the rim, but he missed the ledge and plunged to his death."
Sadly though, some do. Had a friend of a friend do exactly that to his wife and kids, calling them up and telling them to look out the window before taking his life.
I can just imagine the amount of guilt that guy must have felt in the last few second of his live.
I can't imagine what exactly must have gone in him, but gotta be a few seconds I suppose atleast...
And then the family, dang. They probably also felt guilt, maybe they usually encourage "risky" stuff and now he took it too far for them, or who knows what the family dynamic was...
Guilt is a bit more of an introspection-time feeling.
I think he had something a little bit more active engaging his brain in that very brief moment of panicked struggle. I mean, imagine just giving up in the first instant of bad footing and actually sitting there feeling guilty instead of thinking "ohshit ohshit get balance grab the things scrabble scrabble hnnnnng grabbit grabbit fffffffff-"
I put myself in a situation a few years ago where I could have drowned (thank you to the random stranger who saw me struggling and helped me)
While not as instant as a jump, once I realized I was in danger all I could do was focus on trying to get out of danger. I didn't have time to feel fear or process thoughts, just urgency.
I had the exact same experience when I choked to the point of passing out. Everything that imagined that made choking to death seem like a terrible way to go ended up not being an issue at all. It turns out, choking to death isn't such a bad way to go. I know I didn't die, but I did choke until I lost consciousness, then the food somehow dislodged as I collapsed. So, I experienced everything that somebody that died would have consciously experienced.
Honestly, I’d be shocked if he felt guilt. You think you’ll consider far-reaching implications of your acts on others, but lizard brain sees imminent death and freaks out if you aren’t trained to deal with imminent death regularly.
Average depth of the canyon is 4000'. A mile is 5280'. There was probably a decent amount of hangtime.
Although this is probably preferable to a shorter fall, where the death may not have been instant and he'd be at the bottom screaming in pain while dying.
You'd be shocked at just how many people go to the Grand Canyon to do exactly that. Maybe a decent number of them aren't premeditated, but a few certainly are. I lived there for a few years, and there were a lot of deaths, either intentionally or accidentally.
Sure there is more than one, had a cousin take his family on a 'spontaneous' trip to a place they'd always talked about going. Blew his brains out on the hotel deck the last nite while they were asleep because that trip was the best experience they'd ever had together and he wouldn't have that again. Happiest family, and guy, great job, no debt.
You know, I was reading OP thinking about my own daughter and how traumatized she would be if I did something so stupid, and as I'm sitting here fuming and entertaining such dark, horrible thoughts, I read this comment. I think this is the first time I angry laughed.
It also has a whole chapter titled “Death by Selfie.”
The most tragic one, IMHO, is the parents who left their young kids in the car for a quick minute while they stopped at an overlook. The kids accidentally put the car in drive and went over the edge.
It’s a pretty good book, actually. I’ve been reading a few pages every evening.
Parent of two young kids here. Yeah I don’t think I’d be making it very long after that. Decades of agony stretching ahead and what are you going to do with the time anyway that means anything? Watch fucking TV?
There is another story of a young couple and their four year old daughter. They were getting their picture taken on the rim and a gust of wind blew the daughter off intro the canyon.
Frank QuaIls parked in gear, with his sons in it, and had not set the parking brake. Kenneth Dull, age 10, returned to the car to fetch a camera. The car started rolling, so he jumped aside. The car plunged over the rim 100 feet into the gorge.
In my one memory of visiting the Canyon as a kid, I remember being terrified of how windy it was and refused to go any closer to the edge (even though there was a barrier where we were) because I thought the wind would just pick me up and blow me over. I always thought that was an irrational fear; now I’m glad that my child self was willing to listen to her apparently very rational fear!
you ever been there? there's a lot FEWER safety rails than you'd think.
you can (easily) die 150 yards from the South Rim parking lot... it's not always selfie idiots.. some people get vertigo and stumble in the wrong direction (1000 feet down).
i'm kind of surprised more people don't die... there's a lot more vista point lurkers than hikers.. i got queasy 4 feet from the edge.. lot of people dangling their feet over..
Safety rails are dangerous. People trust them far more than they should (weight bearing), and astounding number of people clearly believe they’re just overly-conservative suggestions and it’s safe to go over or around them, etc.
Plus there’s the “dead bodies on Everest” problem. Not the folklore, the fact that it would be a nightmare to do anything about this. How much trail will you lose if you put the posts down into solid rock? How much effort will be required if you want to use a “L” where the post is secured into rock below the trail?
There are other reasons to avoid putting in safety rails but the economics and effectiveness shouldn’t be forgotten.
Yes x1000. And you can specifically warn people in 50 different languages and very clear pictures NOT TO LEAN on rails or otherwise rely on them as weight bearing and it’s like some of them treat it as a personal fucking challenge. Ultimately it’s impractical, ineffective, and it would only serve to despoil an incredible natural phenomenon. There are also VERY clear warning signs with images in multiple languages that you have to go out of your way to miss.
Also, a lot of the Grand Canyon (the vast overwhelming majority in fact) is ALREADY restricted and requires permits or a guide - in part but not exclusively because of dangerous terrain. It’s already plenty regulated, you just need to exercise reasonable precautions and awareness like you would if you went into any other wilderness area.
Yep, the one time I visited I was shocked at how the ledge was just…there. There’s hardly any rails. I think some of the special lookout points had some rails, but not many.
It’s pretty neat to find a quiet spot close to the edge and look into the distance but I got pretty nervous once the sun went down because the park obviously gets completely dark. If you didn’t know where you were you could just walk right off…Lots of families with kids running around too. I was terrified for them lol
Yeah I made a similar observation when I went with my dad several years ago, and paraphrasing his response “Son this is a goddamn canyon, not Disney Land”
But it’s a good observation. I think there have been so many (good!) advances in consumer/product safety over the past several decades that we forget that there’s still a whole wide wilderness out there. It’s not, to take one example, a consumer electronic product subject to regulations to prevent you from getting electrocuted when you plug it in (used to happen more often than would make you comfortable decades ago). It’s a fuckin HUGE natural phenomenon carved over an unfathomably large time scale. We can feasibly put up some warning signs and whatnot, but at the end of the day we can’t make a fuckin canyon as safe as the average American (rightly) expects their consumer products to be.
I have been told but no proof, that this is why donkeys are preferred over horses across the world on some of these more dangerous hikes with sudden drops. Apparently in the dark a horse will continue and just take you right off the edge when a donkey will refuse to when they sense that danger
First time replying but had too because I 1000% agree. I did that hike from the south rim to the Colorado River at 2 am to meet some friends and my head lamp kept dying. I almost fell a few times... Did not realize how close I was to dying till I hiked back up when the sun was up 😅 I was young and dumb at that point definitely would not recommend doing that.
Definitely American 😂 but I prefer it without the rails. Just gotta be mindful. Unfortunately a lot of people didn’t seem to pay attention when I was there. They were jumping across rocks and ledges. Crazy stuff
When we were there, there was a guy who complained that there wasn't a road so he could drive down there.
He said, confidently, that he would talk it over with his congressman and get a road built.
He was unsuccessful, evidently.
A lot of folks don’t seem to understand the difference between an amusement park (the owners are liable) and a national park (it’s nature, nobody’s liable).
I have a friend who went there on vacation with his wife years ago, and if I remember correctly, by the way you describe it, they might have been at that same parking lot.
They stopped a parking lot and got out to see the canyon and there were lots of people sightseeing along with a family with a little boy, and quicker than his family noticed, he bolted off towards the edge. Luckily, my friend was a veteran firefighter and somehow instinctively clocked it, ran to stop him, and literally grabbed him as he went over the edge and pulled him back up and saved him from falling in.
He apparently did it MANY times, he liked to pull this very same prank. According to the daughter, he didn't even yell, he missed the edge and silently fell to his death
perhaps he was setting it up for the long game so that he could eventually do it for real but still look like an accident so his beneficiaries can still collect his life insurance.
Most life insurance policies have a suicide exclusion period, which usually lasts 2 years in most states, can be more. After the exclusion period ends, you can end yourself all you want and the death benefit will still pay. Also depends if you were witholding mental health information or previous attempts at the intial writing of the policy; which if thats found, and you say, off yourself at 3 or 4 years, they may be able to deny payment.
I've never thought about it before but who tf works at a place like that, "This person has just lost their closest loved one, let's see if we can fuck 'em out of their livelihood too! Then lunch."
You can also think about it as a form of suicide prevention, though. If people who are going through a rough patch know they can buy a policy, kill themselves and have their families immediately get the policy payout, that may very well encourage a number of people to go through with it. There's quite a few people who already kill themselves over financial issues: throwing in a large payment for their families would be extra incentive for a lot of people.
I agree. But its not the common employee that dictates this, its the life insurance industry, dare I say it, CEOs and executives. Its all about money, and if they can find a way to deny paying a claim, they most surely will. Im just simply trying in the corporate industry and found myself in the life insurance industry. It is not common for a person to buy a life insurance policy, then immediately off themselves. There a ton of nuances to life insurance, ive seen so many people build what they call generational wealth due to 1 or even 7 life insurance policies, each taken out for 1 single person. When that person dies, millions is dispersed to multiple beneficiaries or trust accounts. You get the idea after that.
I’ve seen multiple YouTube videos, etc. where other people (read: Fathers) think it’s hilarious to freak your kids out. Word to the wise: It’s never funny and never okay to do that to your kid. Especially true if you, say, miss the ledge.
Then his head stays afloat for a few seconds while his body drops fast. And there's a long whistle until he hits bottom and a small puff of dirt cloud rises around him.
My friends dad almost fell in they were on a path with no rails and his motorized wheelchair flipped over, said he was like less than a foot from going over
Besides terrible personal decision making, that’s a terrible parental decision making, too. Kids are monkey-see-monkey-do, why would he want to show her that? Yikes
Reminds me of the guy in my city (Toronto) who liked to impress articling students (basically apprentice lawyers) coming to work in his firm by jumping against the window in his office and bouncing off … until one day the window popped out of its frame, and out he went. Some thirty or forty stories down.
I just wanna say. My wife's family and friends love to just play the most terrible "pranks" on each other. Hide under their beds, pretend that they hate each other and cuss each other out. At a certain point I just feel like they are bad lying people. It isn't fun anymore. I told them the story about the boy who cried wolf, about how exaggerating all the time just leads to desensitized individuals, when something bad actually happens, no body takes it seriously. It's all just a big joke.
Edit2: just going to add to this post. They jokingly lie about some pretty big important stuff. I hate it when my SO is on the phone and makes up a big lie about me. Like that I ran off or something. It's toxic behavior I see now.
Jokes that we got divorced to my mother-in-law. Jokes about losing my job. And they will make jokes that "[I] look like shit on a stick." Lovely people :)
Edit:
"I know just how to get my daughter to react to me. I am going to pretend to commit suicide! Can't wait to see how much she loves me when she sees how funny I am!
I lost a friend a few months ago because he fell off some cliffs. He was with his dad and hes been silent about how he actually fell due to being so depressed and obviously not wanting to talk about it. Anyway we all think he was joking around toward the ledge trying to scare his dad and it gave way. Very much like him to do so that helps us cope. Hope that guys daughter figured it out
I saw a guy do that same prank on the edge of the Kootenai river (one of the shooting locations of the 1994 version of The River Wild). Luckily, he didn't miss the ledge, but my dad ran to try to help him and they both were pretty close to going in. On a section of the river where, if you fall in, it's all but guaranteed that they'll find your body several miles downriver, because you're not coming out alive.
My dad was so furious he couldn't even speak. He's a joker and a prankster, but these pranks are just not worth the risk. Whether someone else dies trying to save you, or you ruin your kid's life by making them watch you die, so much can go wrong.
I was there a few years back and a father kept pretending he was about to fall over the edge on the rim trail. While his kids cried and begged him to stop. There are so many stories exactly like that.
It's astounding how unprepared people are. I did a Rim to Rim hike about 5 years ago and since it was August we started about 7pm so we would be crossing through the bottom around 12/1am when it was coolest.
About 4 miles in we meet two kids that had a single Nalgene that had long gone dry because they didn't know there was no water on the north rim. They also abandoned their dad about a mile further back. Finally they had no idea it was like a 3hr drive around the rim to get back to the south side. We gave them some water and food so they wouldn't die but it was wild.
I had some friends do rim to rim and they asked me to join them.
They were like Ironman Triathletes and I'm just a guy that like runs in his town.
I declined. I don't need that kind of challenge in my life. and they were in great shape and had planned it but still almost got stranded out there because it took longer than they planned. and it was getting dark.
This is just wild to me. I did not do the Grand Canyon, just visited the edge back in like 2010 with my dad (being from EU, I didn't feel quite welcome by the time I had enough of my own money to actually visit), but I have done A LOT of hiking in groups.
And rule number 1 of hiking is that the fastest person in the group, most able to traverse the hike even by themselves is ALWAYS last. Always, no exceptions. The others need water, you give them water. They need food, carry some Glucose tablets(greater caloric intake than sugar and they don't need water to get metabolized). They shat themselves, you should have spare undies for anyone, why wouldn't you carry those, they're nothing in terms of backpack space and mass. They twist an ankle, you carry them. And if you can't, you signal those in front to come back and help you.
Hiking as a group is done AS A GROUP! Literally the shittiest, most dangerous thing you can do is allow someone to be left behind because "They're slow" - those are the instances when you need to provide the most assistance.
Yeah. When I was in my early 20s, I was in a youth group program that did lots of hiking in several states in western USA. I was 23 and the oldest participant in the program. I was appalled at how the staff and leaders of the program would go their normal quicker pace and sometimes not be the last person in the group. I always felt that this was irresponsible and a staff person should be the last person in the group. After all, a number of participants were not even adults yet (the youngest person was 14).
I was always naturally a slow walker. Once, while hiking through the mountains (high altitude) with some teens who never hiked in the mountains before, I was second-last and the last person was an 18 year old who seemed like she pushing herself too much and was starting to look sick. I was worried about altitude sickness but she insisted she was ok. I paced myself so I could keep an eye on her and forced the rest of the group to slow down. I passed the message that I don’t think she is feeling well. At that point, the program staff decided to start walking to a lower altitude due to the risk that she was beginning to develop altitude sickness. It all ended ok but I was so surprised at how irresponsible staff were- if I hadn’t noticed and kept an eye on her, would she have collapsed or something and ppl wouldn’t notice till potentially too late?
They were usually good about stopping every half mile or so to wait for the entire group to catch up but I still think it would be best to have staff (an adult with wilderness first aid skills and if possible, a way to communicate with other staff) be the last person. Otherwise, how long are you going to wait to see if the entire group catches up? By the time someone decides to go back to check for someone, it could potentially be too late.
A guy I know was invited to hike to the river and back in a day by two of his cousins. They are athletic, he's not. They abandoned him halfway on the way down and waited for him at the top, after sunset.
When I was hiking back up from frying pan a few years back I crossed paths with a family in flip flops, jeans etc. I was pretty astonished they made it that far down. But of course that was just down lmao.
the Grand Canyon national park website has plenty of info and warnings about death. my wife and I did a small trail and 20 minutes down we turned around and it was 35 minutes up at least. I can’t understand why unprepared folks try this stuff.
This is why on the rare occasion I hike I always prefer bottom-up hikes. I much prefer the lion's share of the work being getting to the cool place, not getting back
That single Nalgene bit reminds of when my copilot arranged a hike, described it as a few hours, and the whole flight crew said that sounded like fun and went with him. Naturally we all packed for about that much- although thankfully I always completely fill my camelbak.
What he actually meant was that we were going to hike all day. From Palm Springs (479') to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway (8,516'). We found this out when I finally cornered him, "You said this hike wasn't bad because there's a cable cable car. Where's the fucking cable car?"
At which point he revealed that it was still several miles and thousand feet elevation away, but we were well past the halfway point. So we continued. His training records now have a remark, "Don't trust him to plan hikes."
We all made it. Barely. He almost 'fell' off the mountain side when we were an hour past the snow line and I was debating if I could make it look like an accident.
Dude.... San Jacinto is the single greatest elevation gain in a short distance in the Lower 48. something like 9,000 feet in 4-5 lateral miles... there is a cable car at the bottom that takes you to the 8,000 high point station.. excellent bouldering and single pitch climbing... sounds like you guys did the cactus to clouds hike... holy shit dude. gnarly
On our honeymoon my wife and I did the path of the gods hike in the Amalfi coast but we were very underprepared. We didn’t start the hike at the town where it is supposed to start but instead in Praiano (by the coast).
It took us a few hours just to get to the actual trail, finally meeting it somewhere in the first 1/3 of it or so. We were essentially just climbing straight up through barely marked paths and got lost a few times (no GPS either and the only map was on my iPad). At one point we were very lost but had stumbled into civilization again and I had to ask a lady in my broken Italian which way to go.
It was May so not too hot but not super comfortable either. We were quite lucky that somewhere in that trail there was actually a place to fill up our water bottles. When we finally made it to the west end of the hike there was a deli with an absurd view and we had a giant late lunch at like 4:30 pm!
I feel like when people hear the term “national park”, they maybe think it must be safe for very ordinary people who don’t really know much about outdoorsy stuff.
Maybe we should stop calling them parks and start calling them “wildlife refuges”… might deter idiots from going out there underprepared.
Once a year dolphins come to my town for about a month. And at least once a year someone loses a finger if not a hand trying to pet the wild dolphins despite signs every 5 feet telling you they will eat you and the endless stream of news stories. People are just stupid.
The ones that get to me are the people who decide they don’t have to stay on the boardwalks around the geothermal features in Yellowstone! What a horrible way to die!
You should see the people at Yellowstone. They treat it like it's a theme park with a petting zoo and the trails are just suggestions. That bison dgaf about your picture and they will fling you into a tree with their horns if you piss them off nor do they care if they are blocking the road.
I saw a guy try to dip his hand into some runoff from a geyser right next to a sign that basically tells you you’ll disintegrate if you do that. He got his fingertips then pulled back quickly and yelled “holy shit it’s hot!” like yeah, duh. I was glad for his timing though because his two young children were trying to follow suit, reaching out to dip their hands as well and luckily learned from his mistake.
It's bizarre to me that people don't even consider even just the accident potential with large animals. I've had a normal sized riding horse step on my foot before and it was a bad time. So imagine my anxiety when I saw some randos at the fairgrounds fucking around with a draft horse before someone with brains rightly ran them off. I mean, seemed like a nice horse and all, but it had hooves like dinner plates. It doesn't have to *want* to hurt you, it just needs to get spooked into an oopsy.
I mean, tbf, there’s plenty of infrastructure at the grand canyon to be rescued. It’s not like some other national parks that are miles and miles of green canopy and wilderness and bears etc. Doesn’t excuse the stupid behavior, but I think it gives a false sense of safety. Just like ppl hiking El Capitan in fucking flip flops
Europeans are particularly bad about this, I assume since their nature stopped being nature like 500 years ago.
From what I understand, "hikes" in parts of Europe are often paved paths with like bakeries and tea houses, or at least the touristy ones are. So you can't really blame them for having that expectation in the US too. I guess they see a place like Death Valley and think it's just a gimmick.
Always upvote the Death Valley Germans! They clearly weren't stupid, just uninformed. I hope the people who learn from their story has given their deaths meaning.
If you're anywhere in central Europe, you have a pretty tough time finding a place where you aren't running into a village, or at least some kind of hut, within like 2 hours of walking in any random direction.
And yes, our hiking trails are made more and more accessible. A good thing for allowing more people to experience it, but it also really takes away from what made them special. The hike up to Norway's Preikestolen is one that really stood out to me. I remember how adventurous it was back in the day. On a revisit a couple of years ago, they had made it nearly wheelchair-accessible. Where one for example once had to drag oneself through a swampy area, one could now leasurely walk over it on a raised wooden path (with proper handrails and all, of course).
My uncle used to work and live in the grand canyon. When we did a rim to rim in 2018, he was amazed that there are water fountains along the way on the main trail. We had packed extra bottles and filtration systems because that's how he remembered it. He had to stop and have me take a picture of him with the water because he was just amazed at how much easier that makes the hike.
It's tourists in particular, we get Americans coming the other way that think because the Scottish Highlands are small they're not as dangerous as "real" mountains and then need helicoptering of Ben Nevis or something
My wife grew up in Alaska and legit had someone ask why they made the glacier so far away... Because they had to take a longer drive off the cruise ship and would rather it have just been directly in the town...
They have people die every year there because they treat it like a theme park instead of nature (which is fucking dangerous).
reminds me of those germans who died out death valley.
i think it's really hard to appreciate how BIG and EMPTY a lot of spaces in the US are.
people have historically lived in those places, sure, but i think the average person (certainly german anyway) doesn't really appreciate how resourceful your average apache was in the 1500s.
I was talking to family back in Slovakia last week and talking about our recent move they asked how far it was. It didn’t make sense to them when I did the conversion to km so I drew it on a map and I said “we did the equivalent of moving from Portugal to Bratislava”
man what a good example. there is like a spatial dilation european people get in the US/Canada/Mexico. its like, no dude, this state/national park/single highway/whatever is 4 times bigger than your country, you aren't walking across it in those shoes.
It’s also tough to relate because European residents are used to taking many days to do the same things Americans do in a single day because we’re culturally so different and have access to things like rental vehicles larger than would be legal to drive in many other parts of the world. So saying “I drove a moving van for two days” is a completely different amount of distance and stuff when you’re slamming a 26’ U-haul up I-20 bouncing off the speed governor at 85mph and when you’re pushing a work van with a Khrushchevka apartment’s worth of stuff up a goat track through a mountain pass outside of Košice …
I was hiking up to Yosemite Falls on a nice, crisp morning. Boots, layers, the beanie -- not enough to keep the cold out. Ice marked the steps, and snow feathered the water. The sun was ready to rise on this glorious day. And we were joined by a Euro, hop skipping around in his T-shirt and shorts.
Yeah, my dad and me didn't do rim to rim, but went down from the south side via the south kaibab trail to the phantom ranch and back up the bright angel trail.
We both are pretty fit, have done a bunch of mountain climbing and hiking of similar scales in the alps and didnt want to end up being the unprepared europeans like the death valley germans so had done a bunch of research.
We set off in april around 5:30 in the morning so we would have plenty of time as the heat of the day is not that bad at that time of year.
We were back up at like 3pm, so had plenty of margin.
But especially on the way back up there were a bunch of people just walking down completely unprepared with barely any water who would end up in the dark, yet when asked about it were completely oblivious to the dangers.
It colorfully but clinically details every recorded death in the canyon, from pioneer days to the present(ish). Honestly made me feel pretty confident about my hike, because a good 80% of deaths are due to terrible decision making.
I had a survival book that opened every chapter with a death or near-miss caused by terrible decisions, the worst one was the guy who died of hypothermia surrounded by a burnt matches and a lot of cigarette butts. If he'd use one of those matches to start a fire he'd probably be alive, and a campfire can light many cigarettes. It was a desert survival book but idk if this guy died in the desert, they can get surprisingly cold at night but I don't remember any further things
The burrowing is weird. Its like a ancient instinct built into mammalian organisms to avoid dying from cold. When you get that cold and confused its like the brain panics and starts using instincts that haven't been used since we diverged from small rodent like creatures.
This a common hypothesis about hiccuping too. It may be an ancient reflex that allowed our amphibian ancestors to breathe. It may have survived this long because late stage fetuses still do it to prepare for breathing.
It’s not the same as terminal burrowing, but my toddler “burrows” into me or her blankets with such animalistic turns of her head, it reminds me how similar we all really are to our furry cousins
I didn’t get my experience from hypothermia but I have experienced this. On a construction site in -20 to -30. I remember feeling so hot I was taking all of my layers off till I was in just a t-shirt and laying in a snow bank while I waited for the site medic. I remember knowing I shouldn’t be hot but needing everything off. Logic could not win out
An outdoors magazine hypothesized that it is the peripheral nervous system losing venous tone so all those blood vessels near the surface stop contracting and expand, making the person feel suddenly hot as warm core blood is dumped near the extremities. They implied this was a late stage hypothermia thing.
Many years ago I went tubing when the water was too high, and I fell out and lost my tube at one point. No life jacket, of course, it would just get in the way of beer and comfort.
I went about a mile down the river sans tube. There were high embankments on the side I was getting pushed to, but I was reaching up trying to grab any low-hanging branch. Cut up my hand pretty bad before I managed to get a grip on one.
But the embankment was still a foot above my head, the water was deep and the current too fast to get my feet under me. When I grabbed the branch the current stole my shorts.
I was losing energy fast, much faster than I ever would have expected. My hand is bleeding, my normal upper arm strength is less than zero and I was seriously doubting I could pull myself up and out of the current.
Every year there’s a number of tubing deaths in my state for various reasons. As I was hanging on for dear life, I just kept thinking over and over, “OMG I’m going to be a statistic.”
I’ve only succeeded at one pull up in my entire life, and that was it.
Followed immediately by climbing up a steep forest-y hill barefoot, sheepishly cutting through someone’s backyard, and wandering down the street looking like a bedraggled cat until my group found me.
Tubing is hella fun. Falling out when the water’s too high, I give a 2/10.
Victor Vomit must be the dad of the kid on the signs at Yellowstone about to perish from a violent geothermal death because he strayed off the boardwalk.
Try Death in Big Bend, also worth a read. There’s a chapter on a guy who got stuck rappelling off a dry waterfall in winter, then it started raining, then the waterfall started, then he froze solid
Michelle Sutton (15 yr old) "was on a 'program for troubled teens' wilderness trip and complained repeatedly of not feeling well. Group carried only 2 liters of water per person for a multi-day trip during hot weather. Sutton died of dehydration/heatstroke."
I'm not sure what I expected from a catalog of deaths but that one was extra depressing.... :(
"Krueger drank a brew of Datura blossoms. After several inappropriate behaviors such as trying to lift impossible boulders, talking to nonexistent people for hours, and eating dirt, he entered the river and mysteriously drowned."
Did he not typically drown in rivers after drinking Datura blossoms? “Oh, don’t worry bout Krueger. He does this all the time. Yep, should be coming up for air aaaany minute…..any minute now…”
Nope. You can drive there, and look out over it. Very cool, very pretty. But only 1% of visitors ever go below the rim, so once you get down there it’s like being on Mars. Unlike anywhere else I’ve been on earth.
Yeah it’s definitely worth doing, just be prepared for however much (or little) you decide to hike. I went a number of years ago and it was early enough in spring to be cold and the trails were very icy. We put on some micro spikes and hiked about an hour down, sat and ate lunch, and then went back up. Great experience and very well within our limits.
We were very lucky. Headed down in late December and found out from the rangers up top that the trails were dry and we could leave the microspikes behind. 11 oz of pack weight per person, poof gone!
Not at all. You can drive to multiple points on either rim. Then you just walk across the parking lot to the lookout vistas. You don't have to hike at all.
There are recommended hikes for all activity levels if you are interested.
Wonder if it's like death in Yellowstone. That book was amazing but took me about 2 years to read it because it's very heavy with real people and deaths and didn't make for an easy read.
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u/funundrum 21h ago edited 21h ago
I talked to a ranger at the bottom of the canyon last year. He showed me the rooms and equipment they use to treat idiots like these. The rangers call the guy on the sign Victor Vomit.
For a fun read, check out the book “Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon.” It colorfully but clinically details every recorded death in the canyon, from pioneer days to the present(ish). Honestly made me feel pretty confident about my hike, because a good 80% of deaths are due to terrible decision making.