By definition, the Grand Canyon is the premier place to die. Once I was hiking down to Indian Gardens and met some teenagers who had hiked to the bottom and were 3 miles from the top. I told them they could have died doing such a silly thing. They replied, “but what a great place to die in.” I would rather think of it as a great place to come alive.

Yet, we have had deaths. Just last week, a boy scout leader died hiking up the North Kaibab along the Redwall traverse. He was 42 and they think it had something to do with his heart. This is just a year from when a 70 year old man on a backpack with his wife slipped and fell off the trail along the same area.

Until these deaths, I didn’t think that anyone could get in trouble on that trail. I think maybe what it shows me is that we can never know when and how death will take us and we shouldn’t waste any time doing things we don’t like.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 5th, 2005 at 8:14 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.