Texas Man Falls 350 Feet to His Death at Grand Canyon

[tenderfoot]

30. Arizona: At the Grand Canyon, 683 scary stories, all true

A good article regarding mishaps in the Grand Canyon...

2. Most unusual death?

Being scared to death by a rattlesnake. No one has died due to snakebite in the canyon, though several visitors have been bitten. But in 1933, one guy, a 43-year-old prospector named Cochrane from California, was hiking down Snake Gulch (for real). He was terrified of snakes. A rattlesnake coiled up and rattled at him and made a partial strike, a feint. Cochrane leaped backward and died of heart failure, confirmed by a physician.

6. Is it true that somebody once fell to his death in the canyon because he slipped while pretending to fall to his death?

Sad to say this is true. In 1992, 38-year-old Greg Austin Gingrich leaped atop the guard wall and wind-milled his arms, playing-acting losing his balance to scare his teenaged daughter, then he comically "fell" off the wall on the canyon side onto a short slope where he assumed he could land safely. As his daughter walked on, trying not to fuel her father's dangerous antics by paying attention to them, Gingrich missed his footing and fell silently about 400 feet into the void. It took rangers quite a while to locate his body -- and to determine that his daughter was an orphan only due to his foolishness.

7. Is it true that someone once deliberately jumped to his death from a sightseeing helicopter over the canyon?

Hard to believe, but it is true. Richard Clam decided to commit suicide in this way in June of 2004. He had to wait three days to get the seat he wanted on the flight (the shotgun seat in the helicopter). He made the scenic flight, then forced his way out of the cockpit during the return. “Traumatized” understates the condition of the other passengers aboard and of the pilot. Clam plunged about 4,000 feet. It took 15 Park Service Personnel to gather the body parts. No scene in CSI was more grisly than Clam's impact point.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/19/news/la-trb-death-grand-canyon-20120315