A boy has survived after falling a 100ft at the Grand Canyon after he slipped over the edge while trying to dodge a photo being taken by other visitors.
Wyatt Kauffman, 13, fell off a cliff on Tuesday at the North Rim of the iconic national park in Arizona during a family trip, and plunged nearly 30 metres at the Bright Angel Point trail.
The teenager was airlifted to a Las Vegas hospital for treatment of nine broken vertebrae plus a ruptured spleen, a collapsed lung, a concussion and a broken hand and dislocated finger.
“I was up on the ledge and was moving out of the way so other people could take a picture,” Mr Kauffman told Phoenix television station KPNX.
“I squatted down and was holding on to a rock. I only had one hand on it.
“It wasn’t that good of a grip. It was kind of pushing me back. I lost my grip and started to fall back,” he added.
Rescue crews had to rappel down the cliff and get the injured boy out of the canyon in a basket.
“I just remember somewhat waking up and being in the back of an ambulance and a helicopter and getting on a plane and getting here,” to the hospital, said Mr Kauffman, who is from North Dakota.
A National Park Service search and rescue team set up a rope rescue down to the steep and narrow trail and raised the teen safely to the rim.
“We’re extremely grateful for the work of everyone. Two hours is an eternity in a situation like that,” the boy’s father Brian Kauffman said.
He said his son and his mother were on a trip to visit national parks when the incident occurred.
Brian Kauffman said his son was discharged from the hospital on Saturday and was taken home.
“We’re just lucky we’re bringing our kid home in a car in the front seat instead of in a box,” Brian Kauffman told KPNX.
The Grand Canyon search and rescue team respond to, on average, more than 300 calls each year, ranging from heat illness to falls over the edge of the canyon.
Meghan Smith, Preventive Search and Rescue Supervisor, said: “I can say with great confidence that they put to use advanced medical skills in an austere environment that are rarely executed in most other places.”
