Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.
Some fun stuff from the notes:
park ranger who has seen people spread bacon grease on their campsite in the hopes of seeing a bear
British person who is appalled that North American national parks kill people
people who lure bison calves away from their mothers to photograph them
a lot of it involves bison
a LOT of it involves people trying to swim in the yellowstone thermal vents
woman who tried to retrieve her dropped cell phone from a pit toilet and FELL IN
Lots of people reminding me that caves are a problem too. I know, I just try to forget that caves exist because I hate them.
Guys who tried to hike the entire length of Florida in flip flops
Someone who approached a bear cub because they thought it was a raccoon
Someone who works at an unspecified national monument and says dead bodies keep turning up at the picnic area (Hello???)
A few Alaskans laughing at everyone
Scottish person who wishes their parks were as effective at killing tourists as ours are
A few NPS staffmembers saying the NPS is far, far too incompetent to wage any sort of large scale conspiracy about disappearances
Several death threats against David Paulides
People accusing me of being Bigfoot (I plead the fifth)
A group who got on a raft in a river assuming it would loop back around... like at a waterpark
Person recalling a time they saw a hiker "saved by monkeys" but did not elaborate on that
BISON
I met a girl last semester who volunteered at a national park for several years and she told a story of the time a facility that rehabilitates bear cubs had a lady pull up with a Black Bear in the back seat of her car because she had hit the bear with her car and drove an hour to the rehab facility with the bear in the car with her. They had to make a post that was like "PLEASE DO NOT BRING BEARS TO US. BEARS WILL KILL YOU"
Anyone who would like to have these points emphasized to them should look up a couple of books that I read cover to cover and really enjoyed* (for certain definitions of "enjoyed"):
"Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite"
and
"Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon"
Both are by Michael P. Ghiglieri, along with others more specialized in those parks. They are both just basically "here is every single death (and quite a few disappearances) recorded in the park, and a sometimes brief, sometimes longer write-up about the circumstances of each". They're hefty books, but still, in the 100+ years that these parks have existed, it's a finite number, you know? And they're both VERY readable.
I happened to read them both after visiting Yosemite, but before going to the Grand Canyon; so that when I took a trip to the latter, I made sure to drill into my friends' heads "DO NOT EVER leave one person out of your sight", because the main takeaway from those books is, "And they were never seen again, and their body was never found." One of your hiking companions might sit down on a trailside rock to rest for a little bit and tell you to go on, they'll catch up, it's only a half a mile to the end of the trail... do not fall for this. It won't hurt you to sit or stand with them for a while until they're ready to go again.
But mostly the phrase that I made sure stuck in everyone's head was, "Do you have enough water? No, you don't -- here, take some more." Especially in the desert southwest parks (where we went during summer), but this goes for most parks if you're hiking in warm weather.
Because another salient example was that when we arrived at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and were walking into the visitor center, there was a big sign on a stand right beside the door, and it said (to paraphrase), "Are you in good enough shape to run a marathon?" It went on to report that, not that long before, a woman who had run the Boston Marathon was visiting the GC and went for a hike with a friend. Like MANY PEOPLE, they underestimated the distances (especially common in the desert parks, where you can see for a long way and you are bad at estimating how far away some of the things you can see actually are), and underestimated how much water to take with them, and underestimated how warm out it really was. They hiked for too long and didn't drink enough, and started to experience heat exhaustion. The marathon runner went into heat stroke sooner, IIRC. She sat down in the shade, while her friend tried to hike out to find help. The friend did make it out and survived. The marathon runner died.
The point being: even if you are young and very in shape and athletic, you can still make some very unwise decisions when you head out on a hike into the wilderness. Most people who visit the parks are NOT nearly that in shape or athletic, and they are often making bad decisions, too. Bright Angel trail is the most well-known trail from the South Rim of the GC down to the river. It's 7.8 miles down. (Another sign we saw frequently in GC: "Down is Optional; Up is Mandatory".) There is a park ranger who is stationed to hang around the first few hundred feet of the trail, where it finally just goes below the rim, and their sole purpose is to stop tourists who are descending the trail wearing flip-flops and carrying one (1) 12 oz. bottle of water.
Another anecdote: on the same trip, at the end, two of us went to Mesa Verde NP in Colorado. When we arrived, there were signs posted on basically every building door with a photo of an older man, who had gone missing only the week before. Obviously, the signs were to alert people to watch for anything unusual that might help find the guy (who by that point was probably no longer alive; and in fact it would turn out, he definitely wasn't).
This was Dave Stehling, who was 51. He was there with his wife and elderly parents. They all stayed around the visitor center, while he decided to go on a short, paved quarter-mile hike to a look-out. (Mesa Verde mostly consists of the mesa top, and most trails to see the cliff dwellings and other sights drop down into the canyons. The park is a maze of deep canyons and steep drops from the mesa.) He did not take water with him, although the temps were 90-100 F that day. His wife described him as a little directionally challenged sometimes; but he was on a very short and clear path near the visitor center. An extremely easy hike. Witnesses placed him as having diverted onto the longer (2.8 mile) Petroglyph trail; either he took a wrong turn, or he decided he wanted to see the petroglyphs. Even that longer trail should only have taken a hour to walk.
He disappeared. Despite a massive search (made difficult by the terrain), his body was not discovered for 6 more years. He was the subject of theories about paranormal activity by David Paulides (the guy behind Missing411, who is the source of a LOT of conspiracy theories about people going missing/dying in the national parks/public lands and the NPS covering it up; most of his theories involve Bigfoot, and/or portals to other dimensions, sometimes both). And yes, Stehling's disappearance seems to defy logic. How could you go missing on a short trail, where there is a very finite area into which you might have fallen, and not be discovered by a huge search and rescue effort?
But I've read enough about this kind of thing by now to have read statements by people who work in SAR. And one of the take-aways is that until you experience it firsthand, it's hard to appreciate how difficult it actually is to locate a person who is lost in the wilderness. There are multiple stories about volunteers who played the role of the victim in SAR training -- who would just go out and lay down in the woods and be still and quiet, while a search team tries to find them. And they consistently report the searchers walking past them within touching distance, but not seeing them. (Usually, that has to do with underbrush, but it's also just a testament to how much a body can blend in with its surroundings even if you would *think* it would not; even if you'd think the clothes or something would stand out.)
Stehling's body was found a little over 4 miles away from where he'd disappeared. It seems like he had fallen, probably sustained injuries, but tried to hike out of the canyon he'd fallen into by following it downwards. (I'm not sure that an autopsy was ever released, which is why I don't know if he sustained injuries or not; but in a fall like that, it does seem very likely.) He might have been unconscious during the height of the searching, hidden in dense, scrubby vegetation. In June, he would have had to hike further to finally hit running water. But in the temperatures they were getting at that time, he almost certainly succumbed to hyperthermia.
All of this is just to emphasize what's said in the posts above and in the replies or other posts. A lot of tourists visit the national parks, and they think the word "park" means that it's a tame, safe environment. So many people express shock at the idea that the environment and landscape can hurt them, even though the NPS does post warnings all over the place. They don't take the idea of hiking seriously, and often don't have the right supplies or equipment. They don't realize that even the shortest, friendliest-looking trail can have hazards. They think a running stream looks inviting and they'll just dip their feet in to cool off, and don't realize how fast the current is running or how slippery the rocks are. One of the shortest, flattest, best-paved trails in Yosemite (from the ring road to Mirror Lake) has a sign right by the road warning people that there may be mountain lions around, and not to allow children to run ahead, or trail behind.
And yeah: BISON. And bears. Just yesterday I opened my weather.com app on my phone and on the front page is a video story about some tourists who dragged two black bear cubs out of a tree so they could pose with them to take photos. (This was NOT in a national or state park, but is still an example of people being idiots about interacting with wildlife.) The cubs got away quickly, and authorities "decided not to press charges because the cubs were released quickly". (They should have pressed charged, ffs.) These people will likely never appreciate how lucky they were that the mother bear did not show up.
You really don't need Bigfoot to explain weird disappearances, or paradoxical undressing (something that regularly happens as hypothermia sets in). You don't need holes between dimensions to explain how someone wasn't found by SAR, but their body was later discovered in an area that had been searched previously.
All you need to know is that in 2023, across all of the properties in the national park system, there were 325.5 million visits; an increase of 13 million over 2022 alone. The total population of the United States is 333.3 million. I wish we had a way to estimate how many of those millions were unprepared for the wilderness, but who took risks they shouldn't have anyway. I'd be willing to bet that number is pretty high.
You can't have *nearly the population of the U.S.* venturing out into the wilderness and not expect some of them to die or go missing. Honestly, the surprisingly thing is that it's as relatively rare an occurrence as it is -- deaths and disappearances in the parks still make national headlines.
pulls up a chair and sits down. So small potatoes example compared to the above, deeply important, super true *nightmare litany*. But.
I grew up literally smack dab in the middle of the north-northern californian redwoods. And genuinely, I recommend if you have any ability to go and see them, you should. Its one of the most beautiful places in the world. Just please don't stop dead in the middle of a road that goes through the redwoods to take a photo, and don't drive 30 miles under the speed limit because Trees Pretty locals use those roads. Stop and pull over somewhere to enjoy the view.
But if you do stop and pull over. If you go to one of the beautiful national redwood tree parks. I need you to listen to me.
There's going to be signs saying to stay on the trail and you need to listen to them because otherwise you're going to fall into a potentially ten foot hole full of sharp sticks.
"What the fuck" you may immediately think. Well. Heres the thing.
Redwoods generate something called 'duft' from the bark being shed off. It's kind of a reddish fiberous substance, and tends to coat the ground a lot. It's light on its own.
The forests also sometimes have large dips and holes in even fairly flat looking terrain.
Redwoods also shed branches sometimes.
Hole fills with branches, which are often p sharp from having broken off trees during storms.
Redwood duft coats top of branches, but doesnt fill up the hole underneath.
Sometimes you even get clover growing on the duft over an absolutely deadly hole.
So in closing: Please take nature seriously and the signs arent just there to keep you from trampling the delicate ferns. But also leave the dag ferns alone.
Another good book to read is Ranger Confidential: Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks by Andrea Lankford. She was a ranger in Yosemite and Grand Canyon among others, and she has a LOT of stories of people who got into trouble doing something stupid (the people illegally BASE jumping off El Capitan haunt me to this day).
I just visited Joshua Tree NP and every other sign was about proper hydration. The trails weren't rated on difficultly in terms of terrain or elevation but on how much water you should bring. My absolute favorite example was that every restroom stall I went in had an official poster (on NPS stationary in their standard fonts/formats) telling you how to assess your hydration levels based on the shade of your pee. Deserts are not a joke.
It also occurs to me that we should have called them national wilderness areas or something other than park because I really do think the word "park" gives people the absolute wrong impression of what these places are.
the first time I met my sister in law, we almost got rammed by a bison in a drive through park because some IDIOT stopped in the middle of the road to gawk despite clearly posted signs warning visitors that bison are Not Friendly.
The near-death experience did make me quite fond of her pretty immediately, though! (once my fiancee explained to my city girl ass how much danger we were actually in lmao)
For a personal story of How Easy It Is To Get Lost: I live in a small city in northwestern Washington. We have a lot of nature trails and wooded patches all over the place, especially once you're away from the city center. One day I was walking home from the grocery store and decided to take a shortcut through one of the trails. It was getting late, and a fog rolled in and I made a wrong turn and spent a very uncomfortable amount of time wandering in circles before I finally found a street. Again: not a national park. Not a rural area. Just a tiny patch of trees and trails, and me being kind of dumb.
One of my favorite things to do is to pick a random date and look up the NPS Morning Report for that day: https://npshistory.com/morningreport/
I usually come across a story or two or people doing stupid shit in the parks.
