Posted on 06/17/2023 3:03:48 AM PDT by Libloather
A man fell to his death at the Grand Canyon Skywalk earlier this week, as the Grand Canyon National Park was recently named the deadliest of America's 63 national parks.
The unidentified man, 33, went over the edge of the Sky Walk the morning of June 5, falling 4,000 feet down to his death.
Search and rescue teams from the Mohave County Sheriff's Office used ropes and a helicopter to try and help the fallen man.
Crews pronounced the man dead at the scene and transferred him to the Hualapai Nation, who operate the attraction.
It's not clear if the victim fell from the edge of the canyon or from the Skywalk structure itself, though the county search and rescue team posted a link to a suicide prevention hotline on Facebook.
The investigation into his death is ongoing but the Grand Canyon has consistently proved to be a dangerous spot for those taking risks from great heights.
It is best known for the Skywalk, a horseshoe-shaped glass bridge that juts out 70 feet from the canyon walls and gives visitors a view of the Colorado River 4,000 feet below.
The Canyon and the river have deep threads in the Hualapai tribe's history. The lower 108 miles of the Canyon and parts of the Colorado River are situated on the Hualapai Reservation.
Meanwhile, Grand Canyon National Park - which is not affiliated with the Skywalk - was named the deadliest national park in the United States.
A Freedom of Information Act request uncovered that at least six people have died and 56 more have gone missing over the last five years at Grand Canyon National Park.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The best Manhattan views however are from Top Of The Rock at Rockefeller Center. Not as crowded and as you are midtown, the views are spectacular all around.
Empire State Building observatory is overcrowded and nothing special. The main observation deck is on the 86th floor so you aren't even near the top of the building unless you want to pay much more for access to the 102nd. Plus, in order to get tickets, you have to dodge the unauthorized vendors on the street selling overpriced "fast lane" tickets - which only just put you in the regular line.
Never been to the new World Trade Center (Freedom Tower), which also has an observation deck.
....toured the Grand Canyon a few years back...the one statistic the tour guides never talk about are the suicides that happen every year or so there...those 56 “missing” people are probably suicides....jus’ sayin’ ......
After the first 1,000 feet of fall he was heard to say “so far, so good”
Whoa! Tallest building I’ve been in was Chicago. Sears Tower, maybe.
Yes, there were some Darwin Award contestants posing at the very edge of the cliffs.
It was called the Sears Tower, now it’s called the Willis Tower.
I was up there, too.
And I visited the observation floor of the Empire State Building (yeap…nothing special).
And each time, I felt like mankind wasn’t supposed to be that high up.
I’ve never been there, but I really doubt that there’s an uninterrupted vertical drop of 4,000 feet below the Skywalk. It says that the Colorado River is some 4,000 feet lower in elevation than the Skywalk, which extends horizontally 70 feet out from the rim of the canyon. I doubt if the river below is only 70 feet laterally from the rim. If I’m wrong about this, I’m sure someone will let me know.
The guy might have struck a few hundred feet down, then bounced a very long way down after that, but I don’t think he did a 4,000-foot free fall. I also don’t think the S & R team would have tried to rope down 4,000 feet, either.
Another piece of Daily Mail journalism.
If he fell 4,000 feet, I'm pretty sure there was no "helping" him. It's a recovery operation -- or more accurately, a wash-down.
Ah, Phoenix! A lovely place.
You’ll presumably never know that you landed, because your brain is dead before it recognizes you stopped. Or so I’ve read.
Yes,it’s not difficult to imagine anyone falling that distance having a massive,fatal heart attack or stroke on the way down. And I suspect that that would even be true with a young,healthy person.
“A free falling human body quickly reaches a max speed of about 120 mph.”
World record is 318 mph.
I read a story Kevin Hines, a suicidal man who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and lived. In 2018, Hines told his story to ABC News, recalling the feeling he had the moment that he jumped.
“Instant regret, powerful, overwhelming,” he remembers feeling. “As I fell, all I wanted to do was reach back to the rail, but it was gone. The thoughts in those four seconds, it was ‘What have I just done? I don't want to die.'”
Luckily for Hines, he turned around in mid-air and hit the water in a seated position. While he shattered three vertebrae in the fall, he was still alive. While he soon surfaced, it's no surprise that given his injuries, it was hard to stay afloat. That's when something incredible happened.
“Something began circling beneath me, and I mean something very large, very slimy, and very alive,” Hines recalls. “And I'm freaking out, and I'm thinking ‘You've got to be kidding me, I didn't die jumping off that stupid bridge, and a shark is going to eat me?.' I realized I'm not trying to stay afloat. I'm now lying on my back, being kept buoyant by this thing.”
(It was a sea lion that) kept Hines afloat until he was rescued by the Coast Guard.
i see what you did there. and it will have an impact.
Turns out it was closed because several people had committed suicide by jumping off of it.
Yup,I did the WTC twice. The first time the rooftop deck was closed so we did the enclosed deck. The second time we did the rooftop. One of the things I recall most vividly that day was seeing a helicopter fly by...*below* us!
Guess he won the Darwin Award; what’d he do? Climb over the rail or something? Is there no fence? People can just walk off that thing?
I’m afraid of heights. No way I would ever walk out on that thing.
A 4,000 foot fall tends to leave no survivors, eh?
Parkour enthusiast
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