Ways to Die in National Parks

Before we started on our journey to the Grand Canyon, I read the glossy travel brochures, the history behind important places, rocks, trails, the history behind its exploration, the original trailblazers, their victories, and failures. I was excited and ready to explore even though I had no intention of going down into the canyon based on my age and physical abilities.

Upon return, I brought three books which cured me of the desire to explore on foot anything having to do with national parks and the dangers hidden behind the beautiful landscapes, the rock facades, the verdant mountain forests, and the wild animals residing within.

Recently, while on the official boardwalk of a Yellowstone Park thermal area, the tourists were too close to an erupting volcano, and did not run away immediately; they appeared stopped in their tracks, mesmerized by the sudden explosion of hot mud and gases. Only when they felt the heat and smelled the burning ashes did they decide to run away. I hope nobody got burned from that sudden and unexpected eruption.

To say that there are hidden dangers in parks, it is a mild description of all the things that can kill you. I know that we cannot spend our lives worrying about things that we have little control over, but we can be meticulous and not throw caution to the wind just because the view is breathtakingly beautiful and nature has its plans anyway, why fight it?

I learned that a gorge’s vastness, a park’s natural beauty, and wild animals can kill in so many ways. Experts claim that most of the time accidents and deaths happen because humans are uninformed, take foolish chances, don’t know much about their environment, step into wild animals’ habitat without being prepared or are prepared and die anyway, are not aware of dangers, don’t value their lives enough to take basic precautions, have really bad luck, or think that they are invincible in the face of terrible odds. Thus, people continue to tempt fate and die unnecessarily because of:

-         Scalding in thermal baths accidentally or on purpose to take in hot baths, not knowing that some water holes have temperatures more than 150 degrees Fahrenheit; some tourists accidentally step on a thin crust of dirt which gives way into a 205 degrees Fahrenheit water hole; others fall in while walking in the dark, drunk, or lost.

-         Drownings in deep lakes and due to swift currents in rivers such as the mighty Colorado; clothing bogs down with silt and even good swimmers are pulled to the bottom and drown.

-         Accidental falls of all types.

-         Falling trees and branches.

-         Falling rocks from above (usually thrown carelessly by people on the rim, not thinking that they would dislodge larger rocks which would strike people below who would be killed).

-         Struck by lightning  (being on mountain top ridges and on high rocks; the most dramatic instances were recorded near the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone in 1966 when a bolt of lightning struck the cone of the geyser, it traveled via a wire underneath the wet boardwalk, jumped to it and injured numerous people; in 2005 a bolt struck fifteen yards in front of the boardwalk at Old Faithful, causing crowd pandemonium and 11 injuries).

-         Hot springs which appear innocuous and cold.

-         Grizzly bears attacks (they need little provocation to attack, kill, and feed on humans).

-         Bison attacks (park visitors usually get too close to take pictures with or pet huge animals who can stomp them to death).

-         Poisonous gas (hydrogen sulfide gas and carbon dioxide which emanate from the geysers and are also found in caves or in trenches or dug holes).

-         Ingesting poisonous plants like water hemlock, confusing it with an edible plant.

-         Poisonous mushrooms (there are six types in Yellowstone National Park, i.e., the death cap, the destroying angel, the deadly conocybe, the deadly cort, the deadly galerina, and the conifer false morel).

-         Falls off the rim of a gorge or inner gorge like the Grand Canyon.

-         Falls while rock climbing or rappelling.

-         Fatal goring by mountain goats (it is rare, but it happens)

-         Attack from coyotes and wolves.

-         Attacks from a pregnant elk or a momma bear with cubs.

-         Attacks from mountain lions.

-         Poisonous snake bites while far away from any medical help.

-         Scorpion bites especially in Arizona’s Grand Canyon.

-         Death from avalanches and freezing (at least six people died this way inside Yellowstone National Park).

-         Freak accidents such as death by a cave-in when an embankment broke free and buried Peter Hanson in 1907 – he died of asphyxia in Yellowstone.

-         Falling trees which suddenly hit and kill people while hiking, walking, or camping below (trees can fall because of high winds, blizzards, logging or cutting incidents, or plain rot that finally overcomes the precarious balance of nature).

-         Hypothermia sometimes strikes even when prepared with adequate clothing if items get soaked.

-         Heat stroke (below the rim in the Grand Canyon, temperatures rise way above the temperatures around the rim, to 120 Fahrenheit plus, killing those hikers unprepared or physically unable to withstand such hot temperatures for extended periods of time).

-         Suicide (hurtling through empty space in free fall, Thelma and Louise style, is a nightmare that some people have experienced purely by accident, i.e., backing their cars over the rim, forgetting to put on the parking breaks, or deliberately by driving their cars over the rim of a deep gorge, or deliberately jumping to their deaths; Michelle Shocked wrote in her song “Over the Waterfalls,” It don’t hurt you when you fall, only when you land).

-         Forest fires (in Yellowstone National Park 15 firefighters lost their lives).

-         Earthquakes (on August 17, 1959, an earthquake measuring 7.5 on Richter scale killed twenty-eight people in the Madison Canyon just northwest of Yellowstone).

-         Drowning in the rivers and lakes of national parks.

-         Diving (into unknown depths with skull crashing sharp rocks; crushing vertebrae and instant paralysis from hitting shallow bottoms of pools which appear deeper than they are).

-         Horses, mules, and wagons (crushing passengers when they overturn).

-         Accidental and self-defense shootings (Whittlesey wrote that there were at least ten such deaths in Yellowstone National Park).

-         Murders (Lee Whittlesey documents several murders in Yellowstone and a few are documented in the Grand Canyon).

-         Missing and presumed dead.

-         Gas stove explosions (a few died grizzly deaths while camping in Yellowstone).

-         Deaths on the park’s roads and in the air above a national park (Grand Canyon holds the record for the one-time, largest number of deaths in the air, 178, from the collision of two commercial airplanes in 1956).

For national park visitors, hikers, campers, explorers, fishermen, hunters, and fun-seeking persons who are oblivious to potential dangers, this list should be a good starter to remember that nature is not a Disney ride, wild animals are not our friends, they should never be approached, photographed too close, or petted, and warnings from the park rangers should be carefully considered and followed.

Note: I have read by now several books on accidents in the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and other national parks and I can honestly say that my encounter with the chasm at Grand Canyon was a type of "fatal attraction." On one hand I was in awe of its magnificent beauty and geological significance, and on the other hand I was utterly terrified of it.