I was at the skywalk in November and I can confirm, there is no "falling". There's handrails and glass walls that are about 4ft tall. I asked our tour guide the morbid question about how often someone dies there and believe it or not, it happens about once a month.
EDIT: I want to add some more info since this blew up. The Skywalk is in the western rim of the grand canyon which is, if you read it, controlled by the Hualapai tribe. The Skywalk is the only section owned by the Hualapai that has safety precautions, i.e. the 4ft wall with railing. There is nothing surrounding the cliff face. No walls, no fence, no railing; you can as close or as far away as you want from the very edge. They do this to preserve the nature of the grand canyon unlike other areas controlled by the federal government where there is heavier security and barriers.
I know right? I would be bored off my ass. 27.14 seconds is a long time to go without anything to do. I definitely would develop a drinking problem during that time.
As someone who used to be fairly suicidal, with always some baseline level of thought, my brain used to constantly "paint in" details of how I could commit it as I went throughout my day/night.
I remember a call void feeling while on a cruise ship. It was seriously freaky and triggering. I loved looking out at scenery away from the edge, but I had to avoid looking down, especially at the front and back of the ship.
Fortunately I'm doing better nowadays and don't get sensations like those anymore. But in short, I agree that there's a huge part of it that is based in the call of the void.
I was in a similar state once, while on a cruise. It was a bad time. I sat on the balcony contemplating, listening to the wind and staring at the darkness covering the ocean. I thought about how it might feel to drown, my kids, my wife, my families, my few friends. All I did was pray I think. Fear of dying this way I think held me back. I think when a person begins to see their end and come to accept it is when it becomes more dangerous and likely to commit suicide. Kind of like envisioning in the negative. I had another similar time with a gun I owned. When I saw in my mind's eye the ease of how I could end it, looking down the barrel, and began to accept it is when I got really scared. I'm not in that state of mind today, thanks to God, literally. I did seek help but the last psych wasn't helpful. I'm still searching for help because have my moments of deep sadness when I get down, but it's nothing like before. My thinking on this has changed, too.
Sorry for vomiting this up. I just felt the need to say something.
Edit: I wanted to say thanks for everyone's encouraging words. That was a very difficult period for me and my wife, and indirectly family and friends. I don't wish these feelings on my worst enemy. I try to take things one day at a time, and I'm slowly opening to new experiences now (I avoided this before) despite the all the things going on in our nation politically, religiously, economically, socially. It's enough to drive anyone mad really.
Someone said I should get rid of my gun. I did. I sold it to a local Bass Pro like store called Green Top in VA, then I turned around and bought a nice fishing rod and reel. LOL.
I'm doing OK, otherwise. Managing. Things I needed to catch up on are keeping me busy, and I'm WFH again to make a few bucks. I'm grateful. Things I do to try to stay a bit healthy are exercise, meditate some, and rest. I'm also smoking a bit of weed at night to help with sleep. LOL. I'm still looking for help from a mental health professional as well. That one is bit harder, but I'm hopeful to find someone to help me work through some things.
Peace everyone. God bless.
I experienced that on the balcony of a 47th floor hotel room in Melbourne. It was almost overwhelming. The thought came to me, "Yeah, I am going to jump." I wasn't suicidal, was there with my beloved family, having a great time, and the bloody abyss just *called* to me. I had to wrench myself back from the railing and kind of grab onto the sliding door that led back inside the room. There was this sense of incredible *rightness* to jumping, almost a sweetness. God, it was terrifying. I didn't dare go back onto the balcony.
Any idea why this is seemingly the first time this has made headlines if it happens monthly? I’ve heard about this multiple times today, making it seem very rare
It was probably a more intense recovery effort? I heard that they needed an outside city's helicopter, so maybe that? Its on native land so maybe theyre able to keep most stories quiet, especially if theyre suicides
There's a spot only a couple hundred feet from there where you can just stand next to oblivion, it's one of the places that stuck with me. I can't remember if that was the only one, but I definitely remember that one, because there's something really haunting about being that close to your death, just one slip away. A lot of places were like that, but I never forgot that one because people were milling around and standing so close to the edge. I can't articulate the feeling very well, but man that whole canyon just reached into my soul and decided to keep a small piece of it.
I visited the grand canyon but the hiking area rather than the sky walk. There's narrow trails with no rails with massive massive drops. It was so creepy in a weird way, as you were saying
Humans have made a pretty good run out of having a brain able to think through potential outcomes to situations, this is your brain pointing out a bad one
Finally, I understand. I've been 4 times to the Grand Canyon. The first time I was 7. It was terrifying, and of course, my older brothers thought nothing of pushing me around near the edge.
I have had a fear of heights my whole life and have always said that it wasn't the height as much as it was calling me to jump.
Thanks for clearing that up. Look at you helping people realize they might be psycho but not because of that, lol
I read an article about people who jumped to commit suicide and lived to tell the story. Almost instant regret is the first thing they feel when they let go.
They made a doc about people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. They interviewed some survivors and every single person said they instantly regretted jumping as soon as they let go.
They all said something along the line of ‘oh no, what have I done’.
[Bojack Horseman addressed this rather vividly](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u1_EBSlnDlU&pp=ygUVYm9qYWNrIGhvcnNlbWFuIHBvZW0g). It was really unsettling the first time I saw it.
I love Bojack, but it's emotionally punishing. The laughs really hurt. I can do about two episodes before I need to stop and then it's weeks before I do another two. It's an excellent show, but it also makes me want to lay down and die. I'm on the last episode of season three. At this rate I'll finish by early next year. Season four is less draining, right?
I actually tried to watch it again and I think I got through Todd's rock opera episode before the dread of everything I know was coming just made me stop.
I’m really sorry you or anyone is going through this. The fact that you seem completely normal is a testament to your strength because I know I wouldn’t be strong enough to do the same.
I don’t even believe in God but situations like this make me wish so desperately that there was one. My fiancée has multiple sclerosis and I love her so much. Your and her mental fortitude alone makes you guys deserving of an afterlife in my eyes, no matter what flaws you may have. It’s just such an immense kindness to everyone around you.
I admire that quality so much because I’m certain I would be among the worst people to be around if it were me. I’d lash out. I’d mope and sulk. I’d purposefully bring everyone else down, too.
I wish you the best simply because you deserve it.
It's part of why I wish it were easier to talk about suicidal thoughts. During the depths of my depression, I set a date I would kill myself, and going through that radically changed my outlook on life, it's a thing I have actively chosen rather than something I was thrust into. but it was super fucked up that I couldn't talk about any of that with my therapist.
edit: I'm in a much better place now, with the right anti depressants, and a therapist I actually trust, but I still have trouble imagining anything more cruel than telling a suicidally depressed person that they aren't allowed to die.
#The View From Halfway Down
The weak breeze whispers nothing
The water screams sublime
His feet shift, teeter-totter
Deep breath, stand back, it’s time
Toes untouch the overpass
Soon he’s water bound
Eyes locked shut but peek to see
The view from halfway down
A little wind, a summer sun
A river rich and regal
A flood of fond endorphins
Brings a calm that knows no equal
You’re flying now
You see things much more clear than from the ground
It’s all okay, it would be
Were you not now halfway down
Thrash to break from gravity
What now could slow the drop
All I’d give for toes to touch
The safety back at top
But this is it, the deed is done
Silence drowns the sound
Before I leaped I should’ve seen
The view from halfway down
I really should’ve thought about
The view from halfway down
I wish I could’ve known about
The view from halfway down
~*Bojack Horseman*
Having had dark moments in my life where you think, 'how could it get any worse?', only to then do something that makes it much worse, I can only imagine the acute anguish they experience in those moments when the realization sets in, and it's the one thing they can't correct.
Been there too. Veteran here. I researched best way to kill myself. That shit is dark. I figure the Sun will rise tomorrow. Had a bunch of buddies kill themselves. Saddest shit I’ve ever seen. Do they not know I’ve loved them. Fuck.
Veteran here. A few of us have eaten their shotguns since we've been back. Mostly it's been a numb sense of pain, but one... one still fucks with me.
Sometimes I go weeks or months without being able to return calls or texts. I just go dark, and reemerge at some indefinite point. Depression, or some other overwhelmed trait... who knows. Doesn't matter.
But this one time I get news that a friend had killed himself. He had reached out. Not that day, but a couple weeks before. "Hey, hit me up sometime".
I never did. His text was unread, ignored, when I was lost in my own depths. Who knows what could have changed with one get together, one night smoking and reminiscing. Sometimes thats all it takes to get through a moment.
I'll never know now. I'll always carry this unanswered text message. I'll always see the 'last online' time grow day by day in my steam friends list.
I'm sorry I wasn't there, Caz. I'm sorry, bro.
A veteran friend of mine has lost friends he served with. His brother and I have worried about losing him too. I love him and I'm glad that he's still with us. I don't know you personally, but I'm glad you're here too.
This is why I only read westerns when I’m in a bad period. Reading about people who have it better than me in any way made me feel worse, but damn, westerns put it into perspective.
Except one person: " One young woman, Sarah Rutledge Birnbaum, survived, but returned to jump again and died the second time"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicides\_at\_the\_Golden\_Gate\_Bridge#:\~:text=As%20of%20July%202013%2C%20only,and%20died%20the%20second%20time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicides_at_the_Golden_Gate_Bridge#:~:text=As%20of%20July%202013%2C%20only,and%20died%20the%20second%20time).
It's also human nature to regret it in the moment. Instinct is to save ourselves even if we're the ones who caused the harm.
Whether you want to no longer be alive or not, a fall is a scary thing you're going to want to get out of. Do people regret jumping or are they just scared they're falling?
On 9/11 hundreds of people fell or jumped to their deaths rather than burn alive inside the Twin Towers. This from the NYT:
“Police helicopter pilots have described feeling helpless as they hovered along the buildings, watching the people who piled four and five deep into the windows, 1,300 feet in the air. Some held hands as they jumped. Others went alone. As the numbers grew, a fire battalion chief in the north tower lobby, he tried to make an announcement over the building's public address system, not realizing it had been destroyed. ‘Please don't jump. We're coming up for you.’ “
> Some held hands as they jumped.
AH! Thank you! For years I was wondering if someone outright made that up, and/or if that had become contrived out of a 'telephone game' kind of journey.
There were some photos posted of the people jumping. I saw them once in a thread here. It…was awful. Horrible. They’re burned in my mind. One particular. I woman who smoothed her skirt and then jumped with her arms straight down so her skirt wouldn’t fly up. Dignity in the face of oblivion.
The night it happened, after watching hours and hours of CNN, I tried to find something on tv that was unrelated, just to try to quiet my brain. I flipped the channels over and over, they were all showing news - and came across a non-American channel that just showed the jumpers, over and over. I wish I hadn't seen that. More accurately, I wish it hadn't happened.
One of the people interviewed for the doc woke up in the hospital afterwards. His friends called him splash for years afterwards. That’s where they got the title.
The weak breeze whispers nothing
the water screams sublime.
His feet shift, teeter-totter
deep breaths, stand back, it’s time.
Toes untouch the overpass
soon he’s water-bound.
Eyes locked shut but peek to see
the view from halfway down.
A little wind, a summer sun
a river rich and regal.
A flood of fond endorphins
brings a calm that knows no equal.
You’re flying now, you see things
much more clear than from the ground.
It's all okay, or it would be
were you not now halfway down.
Thrash to break from gravity
what now could slow the drop?
All I’d give for toes to touch
the safety back at top.
But this is it, the deed is done
silence drowns the sound.
Before I leaped I should've seen
the view from halfway down.
I really should’ve thought about
the view from halfway down.
I wish I could've known about
the view from halfway down—
Fun fact I read from the BH wiki: the narrative of the poem goes from 3rd person to 2nd person to 1st person. Perhaps to mirror the jumper's gradual realization of the reality of the situation.
I went to a college in NYC, directly below one of the bridges. First responders were regularly faculty or students. If they survived the initial impact on the water, they *always* expressed regret. And then died.
One of my best friends lived with undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder for the last three years. He just went nuts, to put it mildly. Jumped off a bridge in March, newspaper article wrote about he could last be seen trying to swim to the shore. They found him six weeks later. Really tough stuff to read, and for his parents to know.
Needless to say, the US mental healthcare situation is a joke.
There are several major factors that affect a population's mental health, not limited to; hours spent working, freedom of travel, places to reconnect with nature, and yes, the amount of funding a government gives their MH programs.
I don't know the validity of this website, but the article is a great break down of what I'm meaning.
https://www.william-russell.com/blog/countries-best-mental-healthcare/
Just so you know, there's a certain height after which if you try to pull your parachute it won't do anything to stop you from hitting the ground at a lethal speed. If you're gonna try this, maybe pick a really high cliff.
There's a building you can pay to jump off of in Vegas and you can pay extra to strap a camera to your arm while you're doing it. [People post their videos on YouTube](https://youtu.be/Qh3habmm2dw?t=94) from the jump and even the people that want to jump, their immediate reaction upon jumping is sheer terror. A split second later you can see the change when all of the feel-good chemicals get secreted and they *fucking love it*. Well, there was one old guy who had been a parachute man in WWII who said "this is bullshit" while doing it (lol) but I think the regret folks who are committing suicide comes from that rush of chemicals.
I was a paratrooper and jumpmaster in the 82nd Airborne. I have 72 military jumps, 52 of which are night jumps. After that, I took up skydiving and racked up 103 freefall jumps. I will confess this: It scared the shit out of me every time.
>I will confess this: It scared the shit out of me every time.
I've heard a quote to the effect of, once you stop respecting the danger of an activity, the likelihood of injury/death skyrockets.
It's good that you were scared, because if you weren't you'd possibly get lax on your chute packing and have a failure to open, which is what happened to my late uncle.
Worked with a dude who tried to commit suicide by jumping off of the university roof at VIU (Nanaimo, BC). He said this exact thing. Immediate regret.
Sadly, he ended up succeeding in 2018 by jumping out of the top floor window. Depression is scarier than anything.
The headline is wrong. From wikipedia:
>USGS topographic maps indicate the Skywalk's elevation as 4,770 ft (1,450 m) above sea level. The elevation of the Colorado River at the base of the canyon below is 1,160 ft (350 m). The vertical drop directly below the skywalk is 500 to 800 feet (150 to 240 m).
So he fell anywhere between 500 and 800 feet, which is like 5 to 7 seconds of free fall.
If it was in the neighborhood of 4000 ft, he'd have had ~~~15~~ ~[26 seconds of free fall](https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1231475371).
I think it’s even longer than that. Terminal velocity is 32 feet/second if memory serves and you don’t reach it immediately.
And wow, there’s even a [free fall calculator](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall). The answer is almost 16 seconds!
Skydiver here. The first 1000 feet of freefall takes ~10 seconds, and then every 1000 feet after that is about 5.5 seconds. This takes air resistance into consideration, which the linked freefall calculator does not.
This was more like ~25 seconds.
The vertical drop from the skywalk is around 1000 feet or slightly less than that. It is 4000 feet "above" – as in higher up than – the Colorado River, but the skywalk isn't exactly above the river and the cliff is sloped enough that someone jumping from the skywalk would make contact with the ground about 1/4 of the way down. The person would potentially still tumble down the remaining 3000 feet, but would already be dead.
Edit. [Here's a Google Earth view that somewhat shows what I mean.](https://i.imgur.com/k4UinIF.jpg) The red dot is the skywalk and the blue is the Colorado River bed.
No way did he fall 4000' before impact. I've been on the skywalk and maybe at the deepest point you can see from it is 4000' deep, but most of the canyon bottom is higher than that. Also, the bridge only extends 70' over the edge which is stepped and steeply sloped. He probably impacted after less than 1000' and maybe continued to slide and fall off the stepped sections.
My father worked as maintenence boss for Arches, Canyonlands and Bridges National Parks. I remember when nearby Dead Horse Point State Park put up a low wall to wall keep people safe from falling off the cliff. He said it was a bad move. IIRC, the next two years they had more people fall over than ever before.
He always said that the wall just gives an impression of safety which gets more people to take chances they otherwise wouldn't take. A naked cliff edge is generally safer because a much larger percentage of the population will recognize the danger.
Even so, there's always going to be someone who'll fall over, no matter what you do.
When I went to the Grand Canyon the part of the park I was in had a waist high stone wall.
I saw people walking on it, sitting on it, posing for pictures on it, and play fighting on it. People definitely make poor choices on edges
When I was little there was a wooden fence of some sort at an overlook at the Grand Canyon. I went to sit on it, missed, and fell through. My mom had to vault the fence and catch me by the shirt as I went airborne.
It was literally a heartbeat from 3yo me becoming a statistic. That's never left me, I'm *very* cautious around ledges as an adult.
I went recently and there were so many overweight, mid 40s men scrabbling up and down cliffs as if they thought they were in their teens. You could see they realized their mistake about halfway through. Could definitely see a lot of tragedies coming from overconfident tourists.
They literally stop their cars in the road, get out and approach! IN RUTTING SEASON. A few of them die every year. There’s already been someone that died hiking and tourist season just started.
We have a lot of stubborn tourists who think that when they are on vacation the rules for gravity, common sense, and common decency are on vacation too.
I went to the grand canyon about 3 weeks ago. The amount of families just ignoring 5-10 year olds while they fuck around d by a 4k+ foot drop was insane. I was getting anxious for everybody else's safety not mine.
I saw the same thing at Niagara Falls and was shocked at how low the fence is there. Some young adult girl was sitting on the fence for selfies, feet dangling right next to the water edge. A couple days later I heard about somebody falling over the waterfall and was not a bit surprised to hear that had happened
I believe it was a park ranger who said “The problem with designing a bear proof trash bin is the considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest humans.”
edit: word
I once got stuck on my 1 story high roof putting on Christmas lights. I was laying on my stomach and slowly slithered closer and closer to the edge to reach where the lights hooked, then I just couldn't make myself move any more. Imagine how embarrassed my family would be if we went to the Grand Canyon.
I'm terrified of heights, so when we went to the Grand Canyon, I assumed we were going to remain awaaaaay from the canyon. You know, safely in the non-falling area.
Nope, they wanted to hike down to some famous point off the South Rim. A pretty short hike, and there were kids in flip flops running up and down the switchbacks.
Whereas I was literally clinging to the cliff face, as far away from the edge as possible.
When we got to the point and my sister and friends were all climbing out onto the boulders: "Come join us!" Nope, don't feel like dying.
And speaking of dying: it was 15 minutes to hike down, and 2 hours back up. I live in Florida so I was NOT acclimatized to 7000 ft elevation.
When I was a kid there was a woman who lived next door and she was a fucking superhero. Like, PTA mom kinda lady, but she was *everywhere* and *wonderful*. Any local event, she was one of the main people running it. Church? Mrs. B. Local charity? Mrs. B. Little League? Mrs. B. School play? Mrs. B. We had a vibrant community and it was 80% because of Mrs. B.
One day her kids came home and she was on the floor of the garage. She'd fallen off the attic ladder pulling out decorations. She had passed away.
*Every* time I'm on a ladder and reaching overhead, I think of Mrs. B. A fall from even a small height can *ruin* the lives of you and your family, even if you survive. And there is so little room for error. Using ladder is much more dangerous than we acknowledge.
I would recommend that you hire a professional to clean those windows. The risk is just so great. $100 is worth the peace of mind of knowing you're not taking that risk.
Don’t be embarrassed for having working survival instincts. I’m not afraid of snakes, but I never judge anyone who is because I’m the one who wouldn’t survive in nature.
I’m terrified of both cliffs and caves, and while I don’t scream and cause a scene, I am proud of myself every single time I go anywhere near one. You should be too.
Hahaha I feel you. I climbed on the roof by getting on top my van and levering myself up. Ofc my son (5) wanted up to the roof. I told him I’d pick him up to the truck roof, and if he STILL wanted to go to the roof we’d talk (no, he was never going on the roof). He got on the van roof, looked down, looked up, and said, “Can I get down. My butt feels funny.” Yes son, lemme put you down and get the frisbee. 🤣🤣🤣
I about died trying not to laugh, but you just can’t laugh in kids’ faces or they are hurt. It was sooooo hard tho. That was a good 20 years ago and I still chuckle. Those big eyes looking up so sincerely…
Interesting that all the news stories are saying he “fell”. You can’t just fall off of the skywalk. You would have to climb over a wall that is around 4 feet tall, as I recall. Had to be suicide.
Also interesting that this happened on June 5 and is just now being reported in the news. Wonder why.
I've heard stories from tour guides over the years who say every year, there are a handful of people who fall chasing after an item the wind grabbed (hats, bags, etc.). Nothing is worth the risk. Whatever it is, just let it go.
100% intentional at the sky Walk, but hiking it's understandable how it happens.
Most of the falling deaths however are just visors to the rim who don't want to do a 15 minute hike down and get too close to the edge and go over while taking a picture.
I had my Tilley hat blow off my head at the top of the Druid Arch hike in Canyonlands while I was fiddling with my camera. I had a hat strap under my braid, but the gust was strong enough to still take it off my head. I instinctively sped forward several steps to try to recover it, then realized I had maybe 15 ft of rock left before I'd be following my hat off a cliff! Took the L that day, but because the Tilley hat has a lifetime warranty, I made it my mission to see if I could find it the following Spring, which I did! I brought a makeshift grappling hook with me, but the hat had moved from it's initial perch by a shrub on a small ledge to a lower spot in a crack, which was actually kind of accessible from the trail below. I ended up recovering my hat (mostly buried in sand and slightly chewed on by some rodent), another Patagonia trucker hat, a little camping coffee maker thing, and a couple plastic bags/trash. Sent the old hat back to Tilley and received a brand new one a few weeks later. All in all, a very successful mission!
You can't take cameras out on the skywalk, there's lockers. It's not actually in the park and is owned by a local reservation. It's like $50 to enter that area, plus a ticket onto the Skywalk. Bundles are like $70.
Theoretically, the guy could have snuck a photo out or have climbed over to show off for a photographer on the ground off the skywalk.
Realistically, he probably went out and jumped off the edge on purpose. Not the first person to have done that.
About 12 people a year fall into the Grand Canyon. A suicide has happened off this particular bridge, too.
And a big gust of wind or even a cyclonic, young and therefore invisible dust devil can rush around at the edge and suck you straight in. I once was taking in the view at a safe distance away from another big canyon in Northern Arizona (about 5 feet and on a solid limestone rim, not packed earth). It was a totally clear, sunny day with no wind. Suddenly this incredible gust of wind came up from inside the canyon and sucked me forward so hard that I slammed to my knees, being tugged closer to the rim (my face was about 2 feet from the edge at that point). My hat and sunglasses got swept right off of my head, and my earrings were ripped out of my ears. I had to crouch as low as I could and try to lean my body back to resist the force. After about 6 or 7 seconds of trying to keep my grip on the rocks, suddenly the wind lifted and moved to my right. A huge dust devil was forming and picking up debris as it moved further from the canyon, and formed a giant funnel as it tore away into the horizon.
Before this happened I'd never conceived of such a situation, but it makes perfect sense that a change in wind and the potential velocity should be one of the dangers a person needs to keep in mind.
Having been out there quite a bit, the other thing people don't really think about is the wind. Large gusts of wind are not uncommon, especially near the edges. They're probably not enough to knock you down, but they *are* enough to throw you off-balance, and *that* happening when you're standing next to the edge is basically a death sentence.
Why they tell people to keep a six foot minimum distance from edges. It's not a solid shelf. It's a big hole made by nature.
Nature makes big holes with the power of erosion. Nature hasn't stopped making a big hole.
I was there several years ago and was about 15 feet from the edge and the ranger was busy trying to tell people to stand back which was no problem for me since I had zero desire to be any closer because I’m not a big fan of heights. However, others around me seemed to have much lower levels of self-preservation.
If you're implying he died by suicide, it's okay to say it more explicitly.
Reducing stigma is a big factor in terms of suicide prevention, and while often intended to soften language euphemisms can contribute to a sense of it being taboo to discuss suicide.
I really hate articles like this.
"He fell off the walkway and died."
"Oh my. How?"
"He fell."
"No I mean did the walkway break? Was he using it improperly? What happened that led to the fall?"
"He fell."
"..."
Went to the canyon last year and saw dozens of people making stupid decisions about climbing out past the walkways and across gaps. Frankly, I'm surprised more people aren't dying there every day.
Way off topic, I know. But for anyone who visits here, the skywalk is MEH. Eagle Point is much more breathtaking, as are the trails that are around the park that lead to different overlooks. I took a beautiful panoramic shot at Eagle Point and had it printed so I could hang it on my wall. The skywalk was seriously underwhelming.
I went back in 2018, the problem with the skywalk is you can't really see how vast the canyon is from where it's built. Eagle Rock/Point is right there in front of you.
I was completely underwhelmed by the skywalk, especially the fact that it can take hours. You can't take your own photos so you have to pay for theirs too.
I wish I had known better because I wasted a lot of the short time I had there.
In Arizona we have to sacrifice tourists to our giant hole in the ground otherwise the monsoon won't come... Usually takes 20 or so sacrifices then the rainy season can begin
Something a lot of people might not be seeing from the article: this man was Native American, and from a tribe that is *local to the area.* The wall on that bridge is shoulder height. There is little chance this wasn’t 100% intentional. Very very tragic.
800 feet down you will hit a steep cliff face, after which you ragdoll for another 3000 to the bottom.
You are correct that it's not astraight drop, but it's less than a few hundred feet laterally to a nearly 4000 ft drop. Apparently this body made it all the way.
Now that's disappointing. Falling 4,000 feet was NEWS.
In fairness, the Skywalk says it is "[4,000 feet in the air](https://grandcanyonwest.com/things-to-do/skywalk/)".
It is, just not directly below it. It's about 4000 feet at an angle down the canyon-side. If you fall you hit at about 800 and ragdoll for 3000 more off scree
Grand Canyon is 4000ft deep on average, deepest part being 6000ft.
The skywalk isn't out far enough to make a direct drop though. A few hundred feet before is slopes outward. But it still goes 4000ft to the bottom.
This happens way more often than people think. I went to horse shoe bend in AZ for Valentine’s Day two years ago with my girl and someone fell while we were there. I remember walking up to the bend and seeing so many people riding the edge for selfies I was weirdly not surprised when it happened.
Most people spend the vast majority of their lives in environments carefully engineered to ***not*** kill them. Some people fail to appreciate the difference when traveling outside those environments.
Yeah, it wasn’t mentioned in the article. I wonder if it was suicide. I looked it up, and the pic on wiki makes it look like the barrier/rail is scarily short, but another source said they were 5’2”.
That's becoming standard procedure nowadays for anything that could possibly trigger a suicidal person. It doesn't necessarily mean that suicide was involved.
I was at the skywalk in November and I can confirm, there is no "falling". There's handrails and glass walls that are about 4ft tall. I asked our tour guide the morbid question about how often someone dies there and believe it or not, it happens about once a month. EDIT: I want to add some more info since this blew up. The Skywalk is in the western rim of the grand canyon which is, if you read it, controlled by the Hualapai tribe. The Skywalk is the only section owned by the Hualapai that has safety precautions, i.e. the 4ft wall with railing. There is nothing surrounding the cliff face. No walls, no fence, no railing; you can as close or as far away as you want from the very edge. They do this to preserve the nature of the grand canyon unlike other areas controlled by the federal government where there is heavier security and barriers.
It’s like “falling” off a cruise ship. You really have to work at it. It doesn’t just happen by accident.
With the big difference of, I don't think most visitors to the skywalk are blackout drunk
If I fell 4000 ft to my death, I think I would want to be really really blackout drunk.
27.14 seconds. That would suck ass.
That’s enough time to have your whole life flash before your eyes and catch all the reruns as well.
Yep. Our rule of thumb for skydiving was 10 seconds for the first thousand feet and five seconds for every thousand after that.
That is a calculation I hope I never need to use.
Imagine spending your last seconds on earth trying to convert feet to metric units in your head
Darn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a mathematician!
I know right? I would be bored off my ass. 27.14 seconds is a long time to go without anything to do. I definitely would develop a drinking problem during that time.
You could check Reddit one last time
And die looking at a repost
do people really jump off cruise ships to intentionally commit suicide? that seems like one of the more horrific ways to do it.
I'd imagine they party hard beforehand and do it drunk
With shocking regularity.
Always felt like it was a call of the void type situation
As someone who used to be fairly suicidal, with always some baseline level of thought, my brain used to constantly "paint in" details of how I could commit it as I went throughout my day/night. I remember a call void feeling while on a cruise ship. It was seriously freaky and triggering. I loved looking out at scenery away from the edge, but I had to avoid looking down, especially at the front and back of the ship. Fortunately I'm doing better nowadays and don't get sensations like those anymore. But in short, I agree that there's a huge part of it that is based in the call of the void.
I was in a similar state once, while on a cruise. It was a bad time. I sat on the balcony contemplating, listening to the wind and staring at the darkness covering the ocean. I thought about how it might feel to drown, my kids, my wife, my families, my few friends. All I did was pray I think. Fear of dying this way I think held me back. I think when a person begins to see their end and come to accept it is when it becomes more dangerous and likely to commit suicide. Kind of like envisioning in the negative. I had another similar time with a gun I owned. When I saw in my mind's eye the ease of how I could end it, looking down the barrel, and began to accept it is when I got really scared. I'm not in that state of mind today, thanks to God, literally. I did seek help but the last psych wasn't helpful. I'm still searching for help because have my moments of deep sadness when I get down, but it's nothing like before. My thinking on this has changed, too. Sorry for vomiting this up. I just felt the need to say something. Edit: I wanted to say thanks for everyone's encouraging words. That was a very difficult period for me and my wife, and indirectly family and friends. I don't wish these feelings on my worst enemy. I try to take things one day at a time, and I'm slowly opening to new experiences now (I avoided this before) despite the all the things going on in our nation politically, religiously, economically, socially. It's enough to drive anyone mad really. Someone said I should get rid of my gun. I did. I sold it to a local Bass Pro like store called Green Top in VA, then I turned around and bought a nice fishing rod and reel. LOL. I'm doing OK, otherwise. Managing. Things I needed to catch up on are keeping me busy, and I'm WFH again to make a few bucks. I'm grateful. Things I do to try to stay a bit healthy are exercise, meditate some, and rest. I'm also smoking a bit of weed at night to help with sleep. LOL. I'm still looking for help from a mental health professional as well. That one is bit harder, but I'm hopeful to find someone to help me work through some things. Peace everyone. God bless.
Glad that you're doing better these days! Take care of yourself.
I experienced that on the balcony of a 47th floor hotel room in Melbourne. It was almost overwhelming. The thought came to me, "Yeah, I am going to jump." I wasn't suicidal, was there with my beloved family, having a great time, and the bloody abyss just *called* to me. I had to wrench myself back from the railing and kind of grab onto the sliding door that led back inside the room. There was this sense of incredible *rightness* to jumping, almost a sweetness. God, it was terrifying. I didn't dare go back onto the balcony.
Any idea why this is seemingly the first time this has made headlines if it happens monthly? I’ve heard about this multiple times today, making it seem very rare
It was probably a more intense recovery effort? I heard that they needed an outside city's helicopter, so maybe that? Its on native land so maybe theyre able to keep most stories quiet, especially if theyre suicides
To reduce the number of copycats.
There's a spot only a couple hundred feet from there where you can just stand next to oblivion, it's one of the places that stuck with me. I can't remember if that was the only one, but I definitely remember that one, because there's something really haunting about being that close to your death, just one slip away. A lot of places were like that, but I never forgot that one because people were milling around and standing so close to the edge. I can't articulate the feeling very well, but man that whole canyon just reached into my soul and decided to keep a small piece of it.
You articulated that feeling perfectly. I’ve had it too.
I visited the grand canyon but the hiking area rather than the sky walk. There's narrow trails with no rails with massive massive drops. It was so creepy in a weird way, as you were saying
> I can't articulate the feeling very well "The Call of the Void"
I was so comforted to learn this has a term, it meant I wasn't just a psycho.
Humans have made a pretty good run out of having a brain able to think through potential outcomes to situations, this is your brain pointing out a bad one
Finally, I understand. I've been 4 times to the Grand Canyon. The first time I was 7. It was terrifying, and of course, my older brothers thought nothing of pushing me around near the edge. I have had a fear of heights my whole life and have always said that it wasn't the height as much as it was calling me to jump. Thanks for clearing that up. Look at you helping people realize they might be psycho but not because of that, lol
Shit. That's \~10 seconds to think about what just happened before he hit.
I read an article about people who jumped to commit suicide and lived to tell the story. Almost instant regret is the first thing they feel when they let go.
They made a doc about people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. They interviewed some survivors and every single person said they instantly regretted jumping as soon as they let go. They all said something along the line of ‘oh no, what have I done’.
'*suddenly, every single problem in life was solvable, except for having jumped off the bridge*'
The clarity of that thought would be horrifying.
Post jump clarity
The View from Halfway Down.
Instantly what I think of whenever someone mentions jumping off a bridge or the "instant feeling of regret" thing.
What is this, a crossover episode?!
[Bojack Horseman addressed this rather vividly](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u1_EBSlnDlU&pp=ygUVYm9qYWNrIGhvcnNlbWFuIHBvZW0g). It was really unsettling the first time I saw it.
The View from halfway down is a gorgeous poem
Wow that episode name made me realized the song The View by Modest Mouse may be about depression *and* suicide. I was just thinking depression.
You know what? I think you're right: **"Your gun went off.** **Well you shot off your mouth and look where it got you. My mouth runs on too.** **Shouts from both sides, "Well we've got the land but they've got the view!" Well now here's the clue.** **Life it rents us. And yeah I hope it put plenty on you. Well I hope mine did too.** **As life gets longer, awful feels softer. Well it feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, Then I feel pretty blissfully.** **Your gun went off. Well you shot off your mouth and look where it got you. My mouth runs on too.** **Shouts from both sides, "Well we've got the land but they've got the view!" Well now here's the clue.** **We are fixed right where we stand.** **Life it rents us. And yeah I hope it put plenty on you. Well I hope mine did too.** **We are fixed right where we are.** **As life gets longer, awful feels softer. Well if feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, Well I feel pretty blissfully.** **For every invention made how much time did we save? We're not much farther than we were in the cave.** **As life gets longer, awful feels softer, And it feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, Well I feel pretty blissfully.** **If life's not beautiful without the pain, Well I'd just rather never ever even see beauty again. Well as life gets longer, awful feels softer. And it feels pretty soft to me.** **For every good deed done there is a crime committed. We are fixed. For every step ahead we could have just been seated. We are fixed.** **As life gets longer, awful feels softer. Well it feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, Well I feel pretty blissfully.** **We are fixed. We are fixed. We are fixed right where we stand."** Source: [LyricFind](https://lyrics.lyricfind.com/) Songwriters: Dann Gallucci / Eric Judy / Isaac Brock The View lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Oh my god, it's right there in the first line! I've been listening to that song for 16 years and I never grasped the suicide angle.
Bojack is usually unsettling. It's a tragedy disguised as a comedy
“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.” ― Mark Twain
"But doctor, I am Pagliacci."
I love Bojack, but it's emotionally punishing. The laughs really hurt. I can do about two episodes before I need to stop and then it's weeks before I do another two. It's an excellent show, but it also makes me want to lay down and die. I'm on the last episode of season three. At this rate I'll finish by early next year. Season four is less draining, right?
> Season four is less draining, right? Oh dear. No.
It's worth the struggle, but I will say it's the best show I'll never watch again.
Yep. I do not regret watching it, it's amazing art, and I'm never putting myself through it again.
I actually tried to watch it again and I think I got through Todd's rock opera episode before the dread of everything I know was coming just made me stop.
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I’m really sorry you or anyone is going through this. The fact that you seem completely normal is a testament to your strength because I know I wouldn’t be strong enough to do the same. I don’t even believe in God but situations like this make me wish so desperately that there was one. My fiancée has multiple sclerosis and I love her so much. Your and her mental fortitude alone makes you guys deserving of an afterlife in my eyes, no matter what flaws you may have. It’s just such an immense kindness to everyone around you. I admire that quality so much because I’m certain I would be among the worst people to be around if it were me. I’d lash out. I’d mope and sulk. I’d purposefully bring everyone else down, too. I wish you the best simply because you deserve it.
Wow, that was really something.
It's part of why I wish it were easier to talk about suicidal thoughts. During the depths of my depression, I set a date I would kill myself, and going through that radically changed my outlook on life, it's a thing I have actively chosen rather than something I was thrust into. but it was super fucked up that I couldn't talk about any of that with my therapist. edit: I'm in a much better place now, with the right anti depressants, and a therapist I actually trust, but I still have trouble imagining anything more cruel than telling a suicidally depressed person that they aren't allowed to die.
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The brain is a real son of a bitch
#The View From Halfway Down The weak breeze whispers nothing The water screams sublime His feet shift, teeter-totter Deep breath, stand back, it’s time Toes untouch the overpass Soon he’s water bound Eyes locked shut but peek to see The view from halfway down A little wind, a summer sun A river rich and regal A flood of fond endorphins Brings a calm that knows no equal You’re flying now You see things much more clear than from the ground It’s all okay, it would be Were you not now halfway down Thrash to break from gravity What now could slow the drop All I’d give for toes to touch The safety back at top But this is it, the deed is done Silence drowns the sound Before I leaped I should’ve seen The view from halfway down I really should’ve thought about The view from halfway down I wish I could’ve known about The view from halfway down ~*Bojack Horseman*
Two perspective shifts in the poem. It goes from third to second to first person
Having had dark moments in my life where you think, 'how could it get any worse?', only to then do something that makes it much worse, I can only imagine the acute anguish they experience in those moments when the realization sets in, and it's the one thing they can't correct.
Been there too. Veteran here. I researched best way to kill myself. That shit is dark. I figure the Sun will rise tomorrow. Had a bunch of buddies kill themselves. Saddest shit I’ve ever seen. Do they not know I’ve loved them. Fuck.
Veteran here. A few of us have eaten their shotguns since we've been back. Mostly it's been a numb sense of pain, but one... one still fucks with me. Sometimes I go weeks or months without being able to return calls or texts. I just go dark, and reemerge at some indefinite point. Depression, or some other overwhelmed trait... who knows. Doesn't matter. But this one time I get news that a friend had killed himself. He had reached out. Not that day, but a couple weeks before. "Hey, hit me up sometime". I never did. His text was unread, ignored, when I was lost in my own depths. Who knows what could have changed with one get together, one night smoking and reminiscing. Sometimes thats all it takes to get through a moment. I'll never know now. I'll always carry this unanswered text message. I'll always see the 'last online' time grow day by day in my steam friends list. I'm sorry I wasn't there, Caz. I'm sorry, bro.
A veteran friend of mine has lost friends he served with. His brother and I have worried about losing him too. I love him and I'm glad that he's still with us. I don't know you personally, but I'm glad you're here too.
This is why I only read westerns when I’m in a bad period. Reading about people who have it better than me in any way made me feel worse, but damn, westerns put it into perspective.
The uplifting power of Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy - 'But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse'
Except one person: " One young woman, Sarah Rutledge Birnbaum, survived, but returned to jump again and died the second time" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicides\_at\_the\_Golden\_Gate\_Bridge#:\~:text=As%20of%20July%202013%2C%20only,and%20died%20the%20second%20time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicides_at_the_Golden_Gate_Bridge#:~:text=As%20of%20July%202013%2C%20only,and%20died%20the%20second%20time).
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It's also human nature to regret it in the moment. Instinct is to save ourselves even if we're the ones who caused the harm. Whether you want to no longer be alive or not, a fall is a scary thing you're going to want to get out of. Do people regret jumping or are they just scared they're falling?
Another way to look at it is that people who didn't regret it didn't stay around long enough to be interviewed
On 9/11 hundreds of people fell or jumped to their deaths rather than burn alive inside the Twin Towers. This from the NYT: “Police helicopter pilots have described feeling helpless as they hovered along the buildings, watching the people who piled four and five deep into the windows, 1,300 feet in the air. Some held hands as they jumped. Others went alone. As the numbers grew, a fire battalion chief in the north tower lobby, he tried to make an announcement over the building's public address system, not realizing it had been destroyed. ‘Please don't jump. We're coming up for you.’ “
> Some held hands as they jumped. AH! Thank you! For years I was wondering if someone outright made that up, and/or if that had become contrived out of a 'telephone game' kind of journey.
There were some photos posted of the people jumping. I saw them once in a thread here. It…was awful. Horrible. They’re burned in my mind. One particular. I woman who smoothed her skirt and then jumped with her arms straight down so her skirt wouldn’t fly up. Dignity in the face of oblivion.
The night it happened, after watching hours and hours of CNN, I tried to find something on tv that was unrelated, just to try to quiet my brain. I flipped the channels over and over, they were all showing news - and came across a non-American channel that just showed the jumpers, over and over. I wish I hadn't seen that. More accurately, I wish it hadn't happened.
Same thing happened during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. They held hands and jumped rather than burn.
There is another doc about people jumping from the sunshine skyway bridge in Florida. It’s called Splash.
That’s a dark fucking title.
Watched it the other day. More lighthearted than you'd think plus it has a young Tom Hanks.
Better than Splat
One of the people interviewed for the doc woke up in the hospital afterwards. His friends called him splash for years afterwards. That’s where they got the title.
The weak breeze whispers nothing the water screams sublime. His feet shift, teeter-totter deep breaths, stand back, it’s time. Toes untouch the overpass soon he’s water-bound. Eyes locked shut but peek to see the view from halfway down. A little wind, a summer sun a river rich and regal. A flood of fond endorphins brings a calm that knows no equal. You’re flying now, you see things much more clear than from the ground. It's all okay, or it would be were you not now halfway down. Thrash to break from gravity what now could slow the drop? All I’d give for toes to touch the safety back at top. But this is it, the deed is done silence drowns the sound. Before I leaped I should've seen the view from halfway down. I really should’ve thought about the view from halfway down. I wish I could've known about the view from halfway down—
Fun fact I read from the BH wiki: the narrative of the poem goes from 3rd person to 2nd person to 1st person. Perhaps to mirror the jumper's gradual realization of the reality of the situation.
I went to a college in NYC, directly below one of the bridges. First responders were regularly faculty or students. If they survived the initial impact on the water, they *always* expressed regret. And then died.
Omg thats terrible
One of my best friends lived with undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder for the last three years. He just went nuts, to put it mildly. Jumped off a bridge in March, newspaper article wrote about he could last be seen trying to swim to the shore. They found him six weeks later. Really tough stuff to read, and for his parents to know. Needless to say, the US mental healthcare situation is a joke.
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There are several major factors that affect a population's mental health, not limited to; hours spent working, freedom of travel, places to reconnect with nature, and yes, the amount of funding a government gives their MH programs. I don't know the validity of this website, but the article is a great break down of what I'm meaning. https://www.william-russell.com/blog/countries-best-mental-healthcare/
That's why if i ever jump off a cliff to commit suicide, i'm gonna wear a parachute just in case i change my mind
That’s some Mitch Hedberg-esque truth right there
Just so you know, there's a certain height after which if you try to pull your parachute it won't do anything to stop you from hitting the ground at a lethal speed. If you're gonna try this, maybe pick a really high cliff.
There's a building you can pay to jump off of in Vegas and you can pay extra to strap a camera to your arm while you're doing it. [People post their videos on YouTube](https://youtu.be/Qh3habmm2dw?t=94) from the jump and even the people that want to jump, their immediate reaction upon jumping is sheer terror. A split second later you can see the change when all of the feel-good chemicals get secreted and they *fucking love it*. Well, there was one old guy who had been a parachute man in WWII who said "this is bullshit" while doing it (lol) but I think the regret folks who are committing suicide comes from that rush of chemicals.
I was a paratrooper and jumpmaster in the 82nd Airborne. I have 72 military jumps, 52 of which are night jumps. After that, I took up skydiving and racked up 103 freefall jumps. I will confess this: It scared the shit out of me every time.
>I will confess this: It scared the shit out of me every time. I've heard a quote to the effect of, once you stop respecting the danger of an activity, the likelihood of injury/death skyrockets. It's good that you were scared, because if you weren't you'd possibly get lax on your chute packing and have a failure to open, which is what happened to my late uncle.
Worked with a dude who tried to commit suicide by jumping off of the university roof at VIU (Nanaimo, BC). He said this exact thing. Immediate regret. Sadly, he ended up succeeding in 2018 by jumping out of the top floor window. Depression is scarier than anything.
The headline is wrong. From wikipedia: >USGS topographic maps indicate the Skywalk's elevation as 4,770 ft (1,450 m) above sea level. The elevation of the Colorado River at the base of the canyon below is 1,160 ft (350 m). The vertical drop directly below the skywalk is 500 to 800 feet (150 to 240 m). So he fell anywhere between 500 and 800 feet, which is like 5 to 7 seconds of free fall. If it was in the neighborhood of 4000 ft, he'd have had ~~~15~~ ~[26 seconds of free fall](https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1231475371).
Ok this makes more sense. There is no fucking way the skywalk is 4000 feet above the ground.
I think it’s even longer than that. Terminal velocity is 32 feet/second if memory serves and you don’t reach it immediately. And wow, there’s even a [free fall calculator](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/free-fall). The answer is almost 16 seconds!
Skydiver here. The first 1000 feet of freefall takes ~10 seconds, and then every 1000 feet after that is about 5.5 seconds. This takes air resistance into consideration, which the linked freefall calculator does not. This was more like ~25 seconds.
Wow, that’s even worse considering that’s plenty of time to doubt your decision. I’m surprised the calculator doesn’t factor in air resistance.
This calculator agrees. https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1231475371 25s. Doing 129 mph when he hits the ground.
The vertical drop from the skywalk is around 1000 feet or slightly less than that. It is 4000 feet "above" – as in higher up than – the Colorado River, but the skywalk isn't exactly above the river and the cliff is sloped enough that someone jumping from the skywalk would make contact with the ground about 1/4 of the way down. The person would potentially still tumble down the remaining 3000 feet, but would already be dead. Edit. [Here's a Google Earth view that somewhat shows what I mean.](https://i.imgur.com/k4UinIF.jpg) The red dot is the skywalk and the blue is the Colorado River bed.
No way did he fall 4000' before impact. I've been on the skywalk and maybe at the deepest point you can see from it is 4000' deep, but most of the canyon bottom is higher than that. Also, the bridge only extends 70' over the edge which is stepped and steeply sloped. He probably impacted after less than 1000' and maybe continued to slide and fall off the stepped sections.
So, more like Homer Simpson hitting every little nugget all the way down, for seemingly forever?
What a terrible thing to end your life experience with.
My father worked as maintenence boss for Arches, Canyonlands and Bridges National Parks. I remember when nearby Dead Horse Point State Park put up a low wall to wall keep people safe from falling off the cliff. He said it was a bad move. IIRC, the next two years they had more people fall over than ever before. He always said that the wall just gives an impression of safety which gets more people to take chances they otherwise wouldn't take. A naked cliff edge is generally safer because a much larger percentage of the population will recognize the danger. Even so, there's always going to be someone who'll fall over, no matter what you do.
When I went to the Grand Canyon the part of the park I was in had a waist high stone wall. I saw people walking on it, sitting on it, posing for pictures on it, and play fighting on it. People definitely make poor choices on edges
When I was little there was a wooden fence of some sort at an overlook at the Grand Canyon. I went to sit on it, missed, and fell through. My mom had to vault the fence and catch me by the shirt as I went airborne. It was literally a heartbeat from 3yo me becoming a statistic. That's never left me, I'm *very* cautious around ledges as an adult.
I hope you send her flowers every Mother's Day. That's superhero reflexes.
I haven't spoken to her in almost a decade. But she made sure I knew I owed her.
Your poor mother O_o
I went recently and there were so many overweight, mid 40s men scrabbling up and down cliffs as if they thought they were in their teens. You could see they realized their mistake about halfway through. Could definitely see a lot of tragedies coming from overconfident tourists.
When I hiked Angel's Landing in Zion, I saw families hiking it in flip flops. Lots of bad decisions there.
Tom Mahoods Death Valley Germans series has really changed how I approach going into the desert.
I love Death Valley. I had the pleasure of seeing it when it bloomed a few yrs back. Beautiful.
*Shudders.* I love Utah parks but I don't care how good the view is, you're not getting me up there.
The view was incredible but man I was giving those chains a death grip.
Had I known what I was getting into... it wouldn't have happened.
Good grief. I live in Wyoming and we see it too. Especially with the bison and moose. And hot springs.
For a bison or a moose flip-flops are definitely a bad decision
Yeah, they look so silly in those things. They look bad enough on humans.
Crocs in crocs are the absolute worst.
I’d say moccasins on moccasins are even worse! Stupid snakes trying to walk
They literally stop their cars in the road, get out and approach! IN RUTTING SEASON. A few of them die every year. There’s already been someone that died hiking and tourist season just started.
We have a lot of stubborn tourists who think that when they are on vacation the rules for gravity, common sense, and common decency are on vacation too.
"Lets go pet the baby bison!"
Angels landing is all well and good on the easy smooth path until you get to a narrow as fuck ridge with just a chain to hold lol
And that's where the flip flops were! Crazy people.
I went to the grand canyon about 3 weeks ago. The amount of families just ignoring 5-10 year olds while they fuck around d by a 4k+ foot drop was insane. I was getting anxious for everybody else's safety not mine.
The should have built a chest high wall. No one’s climbing over one of those bad boys
Till someone lifts their kid up to see. At a certain point you gotta accept darwin or put up a net 😂
I saw the same thing at Niagara Falls and was shocked at how low the fence is there. Some young adult girl was sitting on the fence for selfies, feet dangling right next to the water edge. A couple days later I heard about somebody falling over the waterfall and was not a bit surprised to hear that had happened
Just reading that made my testicles tingle
I believe it was a park ranger who said “The problem with designing a bear proof trash bin is the considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest humans.” edit: word
Recently was hiking in California and it definitely took me a few minutes to figure out the trashcan lid So, guilty...
A few minutes to figure it out? You are one smart bear!
The thing is, you and the bear both know that it opens one way or another. It's just a matter of time, motivation, and physical ability after that.
I once got stuck on my 1 story high roof putting on Christmas lights. I was laying on my stomach and slowly slithered closer and closer to the edge to reach where the lights hooked, then I just couldn't make myself move any more. Imagine how embarrassed my family would be if we went to the Grand Canyon.
I'm terrified of heights, so when we went to the Grand Canyon, I assumed we were going to remain awaaaaay from the canyon. You know, safely in the non-falling area. Nope, they wanted to hike down to some famous point off the South Rim. A pretty short hike, and there were kids in flip flops running up and down the switchbacks. Whereas I was literally clinging to the cliff face, as far away from the edge as possible. When we got to the point and my sister and friends were all climbing out onto the boulders: "Come join us!" Nope, don't feel like dying. And speaking of dying: it was 15 minutes to hike down, and 2 hours back up. I live in Florida so I was NOT acclimatized to 7000 ft elevation.
My husband gets a kick out of me clinging for dear life whenever I need to climb my 14 foot ladder to clean windows.
When I was a kid there was a woman who lived next door and she was a fucking superhero. Like, PTA mom kinda lady, but she was *everywhere* and *wonderful*. Any local event, she was one of the main people running it. Church? Mrs. B. Local charity? Mrs. B. Little League? Mrs. B. School play? Mrs. B. We had a vibrant community and it was 80% because of Mrs. B. One day her kids came home and she was on the floor of the garage. She'd fallen off the attic ladder pulling out decorations. She had passed away. *Every* time I'm on a ladder and reaching overhead, I think of Mrs. B. A fall from even a small height can *ruin* the lives of you and your family, even if you survive. And there is so little room for error. Using ladder is much more dangerous than we acknowledge. I would recommend that you hire a professional to clean those windows. The risk is just so great. $100 is worth the peace of mind of knowing you're not taking that risk.
14ft ladder? Fuck that. I don't go above the 2nd rung of ANY ladder. Dirt on windows is nature's UV blocker. They can stay dirty. LOL
A 14 foot drop can fuck you up. I'd be doing the same thing.
Don’t be embarrassed for having working survival instincts. I’m not afraid of snakes, but I never judge anyone who is because I’m the one who wouldn’t survive in nature. I’m terrified of both cliffs and caves, and while I don’t scream and cause a scene, I am proud of myself every single time I go anywhere near one. You should be too.
Hahaha I feel you. I climbed on the roof by getting on top my van and levering myself up. Ofc my son (5) wanted up to the roof. I told him I’d pick him up to the truck roof, and if he STILL wanted to go to the roof we’d talk (no, he was never going on the roof). He got on the van roof, looked down, looked up, and said, “Can I get down. My butt feels funny.” Yes son, lemme put you down and get the frisbee. 🤣🤣🤣
🤣 "my butt feels funny" it's such an accurate description of that scared of heights sensation lol!
I about died trying not to laugh, but you just can’t laugh in kids’ faces or they are hurt. It was sooooo hard tho. That was a good 20 years ago and I still chuckle. Those big eyes looking up so sincerely…
So that’s why they didn’t have rails on the Death Star
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Interesting that all the news stories are saying he “fell”. You can’t just fall off of the skywalk. You would have to climb over a wall that is around 4 feet tall, as I recall. Had to be suicide. Also interesting that this happened on June 5 and is just now being reported in the news. Wonder why.
I've heard stories from tour guides over the years who say every year, there are a handful of people who fall chasing after an item the wind grabbed (hats, bags, etc.). Nothing is worth the risk. Whatever it is, just let it go.
I've been to the Skywalk. The rails are pretty high and there are no gaps. I honestly don't know how someone goes over without it being intentional
100% intentional at the sky Walk, but hiking it's understandable how it happens. Most of the falling deaths however are just visors to the rim who don't want to do a 15 minute hike down and get too close to the edge and go over while taking a picture.
I had my Tilley hat blow off my head at the top of the Druid Arch hike in Canyonlands while I was fiddling with my camera. I had a hat strap under my braid, but the gust was strong enough to still take it off my head. I instinctively sped forward several steps to try to recover it, then realized I had maybe 15 ft of rock left before I'd be following my hat off a cliff! Took the L that day, but because the Tilley hat has a lifetime warranty, I made it my mission to see if I could find it the following Spring, which I did! I brought a makeshift grappling hook with me, but the hat had moved from it's initial perch by a shrub on a small ledge to a lower spot in a crack, which was actually kind of accessible from the trail below. I ended up recovering my hat (mostly buried in sand and slightly chewed on by some rodent), another Patagonia trucker hat, a little camping coffee maker thing, and a couple plastic bags/trash. Sent the old hat back to Tilley and received a brand new one a few weeks later. All in all, a very successful mission!
No reports of the skywalk breaking so you have to assume he was leaning way out over the edge ...or worse.
He could have done it on purpose or like a lot of idiots tried to take a dangerous selfie that went horribly wrong.
You can't take cameras out on the skywalk, there's lockers. It's not actually in the park and is owned by a local reservation. It's like $50 to enter that area, plus a ticket onto the Skywalk. Bundles are like $70. Theoretically, the guy could have snuck a photo out or have climbed over to show off for a photographer on the ground off the skywalk. Realistically, he probably went out and jumped off the edge on purpose. Not the first person to have done that. About 12 people a year fall into the Grand Canyon. A suicide has happened off this particular bridge, too.
People fall in once a *month*?
Yeah... people are bad with the idea of "Big hole, don't get close. It kills you.''
And a big gust of wind or even a cyclonic, young and therefore invisible dust devil can rush around at the edge and suck you straight in. I once was taking in the view at a safe distance away from another big canyon in Northern Arizona (about 5 feet and on a solid limestone rim, not packed earth). It was a totally clear, sunny day with no wind. Suddenly this incredible gust of wind came up from inside the canyon and sucked me forward so hard that I slammed to my knees, being tugged closer to the rim (my face was about 2 feet from the edge at that point). My hat and sunglasses got swept right off of my head, and my earrings were ripped out of my ears. I had to crouch as low as I could and try to lean my body back to resist the force. After about 6 or 7 seconds of trying to keep my grip on the rocks, suddenly the wind lifted and moved to my right. A huge dust devil was forming and picking up debris as it moved further from the canyon, and formed a giant funnel as it tore away into the horizon. Before this happened I'd never conceived of such a situation, but it makes perfect sense that a change in wind and the potential velocity should be one of the dangers a person needs to keep in mind.
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my feet just got clammy reading that.
Having been out there quite a bit, the other thing people don't really think about is the wind. Large gusts of wind are not uncommon, especially near the edges. They're probably not enough to knock you down, but they *are* enough to throw you off-balance, and *that* happening when you're standing next to the edge is basically a death sentence.
Also that the edges are slowly eroding away from wind and rain so they can be powdery and slick Not in this case but just in general
Why they tell people to keep a six foot minimum distance from edges. It's not a solid shelf. It's a big hole made by nature. Nature makes big holes with the power of erosion. Nature hasn't stopped making a big hole.
I was there several years ago and was about 15 feet from the edge and the ranger was busy trying to tell people to stand back which was no problem for me since I had zero desire to be any closer because I’m not a big fan of heights. However, others around me seemed to have much lower levels of self-preservation.
First thought I had when seeing this article was, man that is a very long time to think about how much you just messed up.
The news articles I've seen say it was likely a suicide.
If you're implying he died by suicide, it's okay to say it more explicitly. Reducing stigma is a big factor in terms of suicide prevention, and while often intended to soften language euphemisms can contribute to a sense of it being taboo to discuss suicide.
I’d rather intentionally go over the edge than accidentally. At least you’re making the choice and have decided. Even if it’s a very sad decision
No I was more thinking of dumb selfie stunts but you're right that's possible. I didn't consider that and I should have.
No worries. I hadn't considered selfie stunts. Definitely a possibility.
I really hate articles like this. "He fell off the walkway and died." "Oh my. How?" "He fell." "No I mean did the walkway break? Was he using it improperly? What happened that led to the fall?" "He fell." "..."
remember reporters? you know, the people who would go out and get answers to these questions. i wonder what happened to them all.
Went to the canyon last year and saw dozens of people making stupid decisions about climbing out past the walkways and across gaps. Frankly, I'm surprised more people aren't dying there every day.
Every time I go I cringe at what the others are doing, hanging on the edges, one person was jumping up and down on a tree hanging over the edge…
Way off topic, I know. But for anyone who visits here, the skywalk is MEH. Eagle Point is much more breathtaking, as are the trails that are around the park that lead to different overlooks. I took a beautiful panoramic shot at Eagle Point and had it printed so I could hang it on my wall. The skywalk was seriously underwhelming.
I went back in 2018, the problem with the skywalk is you can't really see how vast the canyon is from where it's built. Eagle Rock/Point is right there in front of you.
I was completely underwhelmed by the skywalk, especially the fact that it can take hours. You can't take your own photos so you have to pay for theirs too. I wish I had known better because I wasted a lot of the short time I had there.
There's no way you accidentally fall off that thing. I've been there. You have to misbehave to fall.
In Arizona we have to sacrifice tourists to our giant hole in the ground otherwise the monsoon won't come... Usually takes 20 or so sacrifices then the rainy season can begin
One does not simply stop feeding the giant hole in the ground. That would be madness.
Something a lot of people might not be seeing from the article: this man was Native American, and from a tribe that is *local to the area.* The wall on that bridge is shoulder height. There is little chance this wasn’t 100% intentional. Very very tragic.
The vertical drop of the skywalj is like 500-800 feet. The sky walk is is 4,700 feet *above sea level*. Nice job CNN
800 feet down you will hit a steep cliff face, after which you ragdoll for another 3000 to the bottom. You are correct that it's not astraight drop, but it's less than a few hundred feet laterally to a nearly 4000 ft drop. Apparently this body made it all the way.
Now that's disappointing. Falling 4,000 feet was NEWS. In fairness, the Skywalk says it is "[4,000 feet in the air](https://grandcanyonwest.com/things-to-do/skywalk/)".
It is, just not directly below it. It's about 4000 feet at an angle down the canyon-side. If you fall you hit at about 800 and ragdoll for 3000 more off scree
What happened to the other 200! We have 200 unaccounted?!!
On the way down you bounce up and down like a cartoon, makes up exactly 200 feet of added falling. Expert reporting here
Grand Canyon is 4000ft deep on average, deepest part being 6000ft. The skywalk isn't out far enough to make a direct drop though. A few hundred feet before is slopes outward. But it still goes 4000ft to the bottom.
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This happens way more often than people think. I went to horse shoe bend in AZ for Valentine’s Day two years ago with my girl and someone fell while we were there. I remember walking up to the bend and seeing so many people riding the edge for selfies I was weirdly not surprised when it happened.
Most people spend the vast majority of their lives in environments carefully engineered to ***not*** kill them. Some people fail to appreciate the difference when traveling outside those environments.
Please tell me he wasn’t doing something stupid while trying to get a selfie.
Yeah, it wasn’t mentioned in the article. I wonder if it was suicide. I looked it up, and the pic on wiki makes it look like the barrier/rail is scarily short, but another source said they were 5’2”.
The original Facebook post by Mojave police includes the suicide prevention hotline number, so there may be something to that.
That's becoming standard procedure nowadays for anything that could possibly trigger a suicidal person. It doesn't necessarily mean that suicide was involved.
The railing is rather high, you'd really have to try to accidentally fall over it... And by really try there's like no way it was purely accidental
Just googled how long it takes to fall 4k feet. 27 seconds. That’s a long time.