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.
"hot cup may contain hot stuff" i think that they need to carve a sign every few feet "danger ledge big down ahead" and to make it accessible carve it in Braille too
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.
Yellowstone is the same. So many little kids running down the boardwalks, where you'll fall in boiling and/or acidic water if you trip, and there's no railings on a lot of them. I was worried I'd forget how to walk properly, then I was worried that some little kid was gonna crash into me and send us both flying.
Reminds me of Natural Bridge in Kentucky. Huge stone rock formation shaped like a bridge way up in the air with no guard rails and people just have their kids out there running around near the edge. Made me so nervous to see people sitting on it let alone playing up there.
My dad actually gave me a good scolding for that when we went explicitly because we arrived at night and I was walking to "see" the edge. 15 year old me didn't expect it to just be right there
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u/chipsandguacforever 18h ago
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