In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals how careless errors lead to death in America’s most famous national parks.
Transcript:
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Why people die in America’s national parks lessons from preventable tragedies. An article I want to share with you today because I have been obsessed with the subject lately. Sometimes you fall down the YouTube rabbit hole, and I started one episode after another of people who make very poor decisions in U.S. national parks and do not live to tell the tale.
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Something maybe you can learn from today, especially if you have a vacation coming up soon. Going to to one of these parks and they’re wonderful. I’ve been to several, but they are, you know, they’re not like Disneyland. Okay. It’s it’s the outdoors. It’s the wilderness. There is danger and something for us to be aware of, but. Welcome to Council of Trent.
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Free for all. Friday. Mondays and Wednesdays. Talk about whatever I. Sorry. Mondays. Wednesdays. Apologetics and theology was still whatever I want, but within a particular guardrail. Fridays I talk about whatever I want to talk about. And today I want to read this to you and share especially an article. And it focuses on three specific areas that I that I think are particularly dangerous and that people don’t think about a lot.
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I love going to national parks as a kid. I really want to take my children more. We haven’t been as much with them, but we took them when they were a lot younger. I remember taking them to the Grand Canyon, for example, and we will be talking about the Grand Canyon. There’s a whole book just on deaths in the Grand Canyon.
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I saw it in the gift shop and I was taking my toddler there. And you can imagine the stress of going around the Grand Canyon with your toddler running around. He’s going to peek over the edge and fall hundreds of feet or whatnot. But it was still it was a really fun family memory. And I mean, people go to national parks, millions of people go to these things, right?
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And nothing happens to them. But bad things can happen, and one must be aware of that. So that’s what I want to. So I’ve been where have I been, by the way? Grand Canyon. I went to Yosemite with my family, went to White Sands. I think it’s a national park. But I went and saw the White Sands with Laura because she was in southern New Mexico, and that was a really cool place to see.
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But there’s a lot of others that I wish that I that I could see, but I want to take precautions. So here’s the article. America’s national parks are among the safest places to enjoy the outdoors, provided visitors respect the environment and follow the guidance of park rangers, millions of people, Heitkamp and sightsee safely every year. Yet many of the deaths and serious injuries that occur in national parks are not the result of freak accidents, but of ordinary people underestimating nature or overestimating their abilities, or ignoring clearly posted warnings.
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One of the most famous and dangerous hikes in the national park system. And I’m going to be honest, this is one I really want to do. I haven’t done it yet. It looks super cool, but I know it’s dangerous. Is Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park so it’s a hike. You go there, there’s like these huge buttes that stick up, there’s canyons and drops hundreds of feet.
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And it’s the last part that’s dangerous. There’s the final half mile follows a narrow sandstone ridge with thousand foot drop offs on either side, where hikers use chains bolted into the rock for support. Although falls often receive the most attention, dehydration and exhaustion frequently contribute to accidents. In 2015, park rangers rescued an unconscious hiker at Scout Lookout after he became severely dehydrated.
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Investigators concluded he had traveled for nearly 24 hours before beginning the hike and had consumed little food or water, leaving him physically unable to continue. More tragically, fatal falls continue to occur on the change section of the trail, including the 2026 death of 68 year old Gilberto Ramos after falling from the exposed ridge. So what people don’t understand is that they’ll go out hiking and they don’t realize how exhausted they’ll get, especially with the sun beating down on you while you’re traveling.
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If you don’t have a proper hat, you don’t have proper hydration equipment you’re walking through and then you get dehydrated. Some people who fall, they are hydrated. They just slip. It’s dangerous. You have to have proper footwear. Sometimes people will be going. They’ll have one hand loose, try and take a selfie while holding on to the chain. So it’s very, very sad.
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There was another case of a girl she was hiking. There’s a similar change section in Yosemite on Half Dome and she was hiking with her dad. She just slipped and then fell and then, like, slid down the side of half down and fell off the mountain. So there is there is wrist now, there’s a lot of trails, of course, that are there very safe.
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You could stay on those. But I definitely want to see this. But if you’re going to do it, you got to take it really, really, really seriously. Go. It goes on to say the Grand Canyon provides another powerful example of how visitors underestimate the environment. Every year, hikers attempt to walk from the South Rim to the Colorado River and back in a single day, despite repeated warnings in the National Park Service of the journey is too strenuous for most people.
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The downhill trip often feels easy, causing hikers to overlook the grueling climb back in extreme desert heat. In May 2023, a 36 year old woman from Indiana died while attempting a one day hike to the Colorado River and back on bright Angel trail. Rangers noted the temperatures on the exposed sections of the trail can exceed 120°F, and emphasize the park does not recommend completing the single the trip in a single day.
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Similar tragedies occur almost every summer, including several recent heat related fatalities evolving hikers who underestimated the canyons conditions. So yeah, I grew up in Arizona and I have been to the Grand Canyon a lot. I’ve never hiked down to the river, though, because if I were to do that, I would probably stay at Phantom Ranch down at the base.
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I would never try to do it there and back in one day it’s like 7 or 9 miles down to the river itself, depending. There’s two trails. There’s Kaibab Trail, which is a lot steeper and has less amenities. By amenities I mean things like a water station. Refill your stuff. Bright Angel trail is longer and it’s more gradual, and there’s more shade and more places like refill water and stuff like that.
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But some people will try to do it there and back in the same day. And Rangers usually are at the trailhead. They talk to people who think about doing it, and they’ll still go because the ranger can’t stop you. You’re a free person, but they’ll just keep in mind. And then sometimes they go and they pick up your body later because you’ve overexert yourself.
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Because here’s what happened. Here’s what happens to these people. They go to Grand Canyon and let’s say it’s summer vacation or summer vacation, and you want to go to Flagstaff, Arizona flag, especially when you’re in Phoenix. Flagstaff is nice in the summer. You know, it’s like 112. In Phoenix. It could be like 70s 80s in in Flagstaff and the rim of the Grand Canyon.
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You’re high up. It’s like, oh, the weather’s really nice. And you start off at the top of the Grand Canyon and it’s like, oh, this is a lot of fun. And, you know, it’s just like 70 degrees. It’s nice out. But as you descend into the canyon, you’re descending into a trap because the temperature gets warmer as you go down into the canyon.
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So it could be like 70 degrees at the rim and 100 degrees down by the Colorado River itself. And the problem is, as the sun is baking the canyon, the rocks absorb the sunlight and the energy from the sun and creates radiating heat. So as you’re trying to walk back so people will make it down to the canyon, you’ll get there, you know, in a few hours, and they’ll get there.
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Let’s say they leave. And a lot of times they don’t leave, because if you were to do it, you’d have to leave it like five in the morning. They’ll leave it like 7 or 8. They’ll get down to the canyon, they’ll get down to the river at like noon or 1:00. But then here’s the problem. You have to hike back out, and you are now in an inverted mountain hike because you think about when you hike a mountain, right?
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When you hike up a mountain, the first part is the hardest part. You’re trudging up. Then you get there and you’re really tired and it’s like, well, then you got to go back down. Still hard, but not nearly as hard as going up. So you realize you’re tired and you just make it. Then you go down with your depleted energy.
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But it’s a downhill walk with the Grand Canyon. It’s different. It’s a mountain in reverse. Going, starting your trek. It’s easy because you’re walking down. Then you have to get back up and you’re climbing up in the hottest part of the day if you try to do it in one day. And so there’s tons of stories of people who hike down and they try to get back up and then heatstroke.
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It sneaks up on you very slowly. You don’t realize it. In fact, you start to feel cold a little bit because your body’s starting to shut down, and then you feel confused and disoriented. You can’t think straight. You sit down to collect yourself and you pass out, and then you die. And there’s a lot of other people who die from different things.
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Grand Canyon Falls are very common. People go over the railing and they’ll look over, and then they’ll slip and they’ll fall. That is that is a very common one. Rafting down the Colorado River is dangerous. You don’t have the right equipment. It’s still it could be a dangerous rafting ride. But as I said, there’s a whole book. I think it’s called deaths in the Grand Canyon.
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If you want to depressing read to go through. One of the most famous deaths in Grand Canyon was like, back in, I want to say, like the 50s. There was an inner transcontinental flight. They, you know, back in the early days of aviation, they were flying people over the Grand Canyon. The pilots like air. Check out the view, folks.
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And he’s not watching where he’s going as somebody else is. Also looking in that direction is also doing that. And they collide over the Grand Canyon. This passenger plane is, you know, cut in half. It crashes in the canyon. And for a while people don’t know because there’s no tracking of it. You just check in at a waypoint and they hadn’t checked in, and then they have to go and collect it.
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And it inspired a lot of aviation safety after that. Okay. So I’ve talked about Zions Landing, Grand Canyon, a lot of that’s dealing with heat. Do you go to a place that’s hot and the weather will will come after you? It’s not always that though. Sometimes the natural environment itself, that’s where the danger lies. So the article says Yellowstone National Park presents a different type of hazard.
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Beneath its colorful hot springs and steaming pools lies boiling, often acidic water covered in many places by only a thin crust of mineral deposits. Visitors who step off designated boardwalks risk breaking through the fragile surface. One of the most widely reported incidents occurred in 2016, when 23 year old Colin Nathaniel Scott left the boardwalk in the Norris Geyser Basin while searching for a place to soak.
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The thin crust collapsed beneath him and he fell into a boiling thermal pool. Despite rescue efforts, he could not be recovered because of the extreme heat and acidity of the water. His death remains on the Yellowstone. Starkest reminders of the barriers and boardwalks are not merely suggestions, but life saving protection. So that’s a oh, what a way to go.
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Oh my goodness. So there are people they will get. There’s these like wooden boardwalks in Yellowstone. You can look at the geysers. You can look at the hot springs. These hot springs. It’s not like hot tub. It’s boiling water acidic boiling water. And if you go in and even for a second, it’ll melt your skin off. But people are idiots.
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And they’ll they’ll think they can walk out and look at the water and get close to it. They think they’re walking on ground, but it’s not ground. It’s like thin ice on a frozen lake. But it’s the minerals from the hot springs forming together a crust. And they walk on it and it breaks under them. Even if it only sometimes people, the crust will break and it’ll fallen up to their knees.
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But like all your skin will melt off and you’ll go into shock. And you can die from that, from infection, small kinds of things. It was another case of a guy, his dog ran into the hot spring, and then he ran into the hot spring to get his dog. And he died as they both died. So fall low.
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The signs don’t walk on. It’s a beautiful hot. Springs are beautiful things. I would love to see them one day, but from a distance, safely, says. Yellowstone also demonstrates why visitors are instructed to keep their distance. Every year, people are gored by bison after approaching too closely for photographs and attempting to interact with the animals bison kueh nearly a ton and run three times faster than human beings.
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Although they often appear calm, they can charge with little warning when they feel threatened. Yes, people will go there and think it’s like Disneyland. Oh, look at this bison. Go up. Take a picture with it. Pettit. That’s a wild animal. It could kill you. It doesn’t care. Doesn’t care? Your tourist or human being. He’ll kill you. You got to keep your distance.
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I saw this as well in San Diego. It’s not a national park, but as a protected environmental area at La Jolla Cove. Loyal Cove is beautiful, I love snorkeling, there is a beautiful area and there’s sea lions tanning, sunning themselves, swimming around. And when you’re swimming in the cove, the sea lions will kind of swim right by you.
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It’s a super cool sight to see, and but they’ll come up on the beach and people will walk up to these sea lions and try to pet them or talk or see them and take pictures. These are five 600 pounds animals that don’t like you and don’t want you in their space, and they can mess you up if you’re not careful.
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But that just the people just unawareness of thinking like I’m the main character in life and I got to get this shot. Nothing bad will ever happen to me. It’s truly unbelievable in that respect. So the article clues. These examples share a common theme. Victims are not necessarily reckless thrill seekers. Many were ordinary tourists who made a series of seemingly minor decisions carrying two little water, hiking beyond their abilities, stepping off a boardwalk, getting too close to wildlife and national parks over small mistakes, and clearly become fatal.
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Because rescue is often difficult and nature offers little margin for error. So. So you think about the next time you go to a national park, but hey, take some water, follow the signs, talk to the ranger. I’m sure you’ll be just fine. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you have a very blessed weekend.