A 70-year-old woman died after a 200-foot drop last week at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim—the third person to fall to their death in the national park, and the fourth body recovered in the area in less than a month, AZ Central reported.
Rangers at Grand Canyon National Park received reports at around 1 p.m. of a person in need of aid near Pipe Creek Vista, officials said. The woman fell before rescue efforts could begin. A technical rescue team was deployed via helicopter to locate the woman’s body, and a group of about 15 people later assisted in recovering the body, officials said in a statement.
On March 28, a 50-year-old tourist from Hong Kong died after falling hundreds of feet while taking photos at Eagle Point in Grand Canyon West. Less than one week later, a 67-year-old man fell over the canyon edge. His body was recovered about 400 feet below the rim. A fourth body, identified as a possible international tourist, was also recovered in March in a wooded area south of Grand Canyon Village.
How Not to Die at the Grand Canyon
About a dozen people die each year in the park, and while that’s a small number compared to overall visitors, there are ways to make sure you don’t become one of those fatalities.
Watch your step. It may sounds like a cliché, but it’s a salient bit of advice in the wake of a third death in 10 days in (and near) Grand Canyon National Park, whose centennial celebration is expected to lure five million visitors to its rims this year. National Parks are often so well manicured and lighted and signed that selfie-snapping tourists tend to forget they’re in a dangerous expanse of a park that lies between 7,000 and 8,000 feet of elevation, where rattlesnakes roam, where temperatures easily creep past 100 degrees, and where there are a dozen ways to die.
How to survive the Grand Canyon, therefore: Don’t underestimate it. This may be a National Park, but it’s also a wild place.
What goes down must come up. What those who stumble down from various points into the canyon itself can too easily forget is that the route down is twice as easy a trek as the way back out when it’s likely to be hotter, windier, and steep. People need to know their limits. It’s easier in than it is out with the return typically taking twice as long. It never hurts to train for a few weeks before your trip. Not a lot of people live in an area that’s nearly 7,000 feet in elevation.
Get wet. With water, that is. Many of the 685 deaths catalogued adroitly in the oft-updated book Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon by Thomas Myers and Michael Ghiglieri are from dehydration and heat stroke, which can be prevented by hauling enough of that precious stuff of life to keep you hydrated for the long haul: A minimum of a liter per hour. And be sure to add some salty snacks, to keep the electrolytes flowing.
Get dressed. But leave the Instagram-cute outfits back at the Airbnb and be sensible about your wardrobe choices especially if you plan on hiking into the canyon. Flip-flops? Nope. Sturdy boots or trail runners. Tank tops and crop tops? No! Layers, bandannas, even a couple not-so-cool trekking poles. Consider that depending on the time of day and time of year you start your hike, the way back may be windy and frigid.
Watch the weather. The Grand Canyon can see monsoons from July to September, often accompanied by thunder and lightning strikes. Be on the lookout for bad weather and be ready to call it a day.
Take the path more traveled. While the designated trails are well-maintained (and often paved) in the park, visitors craning for a better view (or selfie) often sneak a few feet off the trail, where they may not realize until it’s too late that what presents as stable ground is actually paper-thin, thanks to millennia of the very same erosion that carved that canyon wall in the first place.
Pay attention to your surroundings. Among the more modern dangers in the Grand Canyon or anywhere is distraction from people who are on their dang phones walking and texting, not looking where they’re going.
Increasingly, people endanger themselves in that never-ending quest for the epic selfie which is doubly dangerous on an unstable trail because it typically means you’re neither looking at the ground nor how close you might be to the edge of a cliff. Selfie taking is scary, in part because your focus is typically on the camera. Put the phones away and enjoy yourself.
None of this advice is to suggest the Grand Canyon has turned into a deathtrap locale best avoided altogether in favor of the sanctity of a Florida theme park. About a dozen people die each year in the park but the odds of that tragic end are roughly 1 in 400,000, which is less than those of being attacked by a dog, killed in an airplane crash, or stung by a bee, according to the National Safety Council.
Worth Pondering…
Take care of yourself. You’ll find it hard to get a replacement.
