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.
