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Arizona: Grand view from the edge By Mark Meredith With a yawning hole nearly 2km deep at his feet, Mark Meredith looks — very gingerly — into the abyss in Utah.
A couple take up a highly precarious position to enjoy the view of the Grand Canyon's North Rim. Photo / Mark Meredith
"The Grand Canyon wants to kill you," a park ranger told Lonely Planet's guide to America's second-most visited National Park. I discovered plenty of people want to do their best to help the canyon deliver on its wish. I found visitors, who may otherwise be quite sensible, had abandoned all rationality and decided that the perfectly adequate viewpoint overlooks thoughtfully provided by the US National Parks Service were, well, plain inadequate. They climbed over railings or left the well-made rim trails to clamber over rocks and boulders to stand or sit, legs dangling, on a finger of granite above a sheer drop hundreds of metres to the canyon floor. Not for them the security of a sturdy bench or ledge safely on the rim path to picnic and admire the awe-inspiring spectacle spread before them. No, they had to take their sandwiches to the very edge, to watch their crumbs spiralling into the abyss. What is it about the Grand Canyon that induces such behaviour? I put it down to sheer overexcitement and altitude sickness. At 2100m at the South Rim and 2400m at the North Rim, the body and brain receives less than three quarters of its normal oxygen intake. This might explain a lot. Certainly, your first glimpse of the canyon's immensity is a heart-stopping moment and has you wanting to edge that bit closer to the edge just to see better what lies directly beneath you. It's hard to resist. I found myself treading very gingerly, inching forward, but far enough away from the precipice to stop my wife having heart failure. Unfortunately, says Lonely Planet, adults and children have plummeted to their deaths engaged in "the most mundane activities". But climbing over a guard rail on a precipitous drop with your very young child to take a selfie with your Go Pro camera on a stick, as I witnessed at Roosevelt Point on the North Rim, I would not categorise as "mundane", but insane. In their 2012 book, Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon, Tom Myers and Michael Ghiglieri detail 685 deaths over the years. Being male, and young, seems to hold the greatest risk. Of 55 people who have fallen from the canyon's rim, 39 were male. Jumping between rocks and posing for pictures killed eight of them.