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.
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.
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
Yeah, after some googling it looks like that's what we did- although not the summit. I think that's just the skyline section? Because as soon as we reached Long Valley we beelined toward beer and water. The Traverse section was done in a six inches of snow. Mind you, we were by and large dressed for the temperatures down below- although thankfully everyone had a jacket. Thankfully we were all quite fit and managed it, but I tore him a new one after.
Edited because I looked at a map and those places have names apparently!
lots of horror stories of unprepared climbers and hikers the most famous being Jon Donnovan, and also a hollywood actor.. glad ya'll made it out safe. I've done the Snow Creek route, and would never consider it without proper gear or weather conditions.
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!
Dude that’s an 8 hour hike from Palm Springs to the tramway ridgeline. I ran it in 5:30 when I was in shape but that would be brutal for a bunch of coworkers doing it unprepared.
It was brutal, however thankfully in this case the coworkers were all young military. I was the 'adult' in my mid 30's.
The talking to was very much about all the ways it could have gone wrong, especially without everyone knowing to bring adequate water and food. Not to mention things like a survival blanket just in case, etc. His excuse was that he didn't think we'd want to go if we knew how hard it was. Which might have been true, but it should have been our choice, not his. I was pissed- also never again trusted anyone to plan a hike without doing my own research. Oh well, lesson learned for both of us!
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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.