Grand Canyon Fall: Man Falls To His Death At The South Rim Of Grand Canyon


A Grand Canyon fall is the reason for a man’s tragic death that happened Thursday afternoon at Grand Canyon National Park.

The man apparently fell off a cliff’s edge of the natural wonder, USA Today reports. Officials were able to find his body at 400 feet below the rim Friday morning by helicopter.

A report of a man who had fallen from the edge of a rim trail east of Mather Point was called into the Grand Canyon Regional Communications Center at about 4:20 p.m. Park rangers, technical search and rescue team, and the park helicopter responded to the emergency, the Daily Mail adds in the report. No one was able to find the man after the Grand Canyon fall Thursday, however. It wasn’t known if he’d survived the fall until his body was found by air search Friday morning.

An investigation by the National Park Service is being conducted. At this point, the man has yet to be identified.

As the Daily Mail additionally writes, this isn’t the only Grand Canyon fall at the park’s South Rim. John N. Anderson, 53, of Grapevine, Texas, was killed after he fell off a rim in March of last year. The rim was located near El Tovar Lodge. He was visiting the national park with his family. As CBS News covered, officials believed Anderson was trying to retrieve something that he’d dropped — possibly a hat. His fall was 350 feet below the rim.

The report went on to reveal that about 12 deaths per year happen at the Grand Canyon; those deaths can have anything to do with things like natural causes, medical problems, suicide, heat, drowning, and traffic crashes. On average, two to three deaths per year are from falls over the rim, park spokeswoman Kirby-Lynn Shedlowski said.

The Daily Mail reported that not long after Anderson’s Grand Canyon fall, Jody McDaniel, 45, of Flagstaff, Arizona, fell off the South Rim at Mather Point. She too died close to the same spot where the man on Thursday landed after falling off the rim’s edge.

Other tragic falls from cliffs like the ones at the Grand Canyon have been reported by the Inquisitr. Many are from various attractions around the nation and the world. Some have survived, but most have died. In the case of a woman in the middle of a photo shoot, she fell off the edge of Sunset Cliffs in San Diego last year.

[Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]

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