20 Most Dangerous Places In The Grand Canyon...

Bright Angel Trail is the most hiked trail in the Grand Canyon. It is also the location of more search and rescue operations than any other trail in the park. The park service has a specific term for what keeps happening there. They call it the Day Hike Problem: people descend when they're fresh and discover, on the way back up, that 4,460 feet of climbing in afternoon heat is a completely different problem from the one they solved on the way down. The most dangerous trail in the Grand Canyon looks exactly like the safest one. At river mile 179.7, the Colorado drops 37 feet in roughly one hundred yards, runs at 20 miles per hour, and rates Class 10 on a scale that stops at 10. River guides spend days upstream talking about Lava Falls. They scout it from shore. They run it understanding that something is going to happen in the next twenty seconds and the only variable is whether the boat is still upright when the rapid releases it. These are the 20 most dangerous places in the Grand Canyon. We count down to Number 1. The canyon averages 300 search and rescue operations per year and roughly 15 deaths. Those aren't random. They're the product of a pattern the canyon has been running on a reliable schedule for decades — and Number 1 isn't a trail, a rapid, or a ledge. It's the design of the whole experience. We are Unreal Earth. Subscribe for more geography that actually surprises you.